Nicole Kidman – The Oscar-Winning Actress Explores Loss and Grief in Rabbit Hole

Nicole Kidman at the New York press date for “Rabbit Hole.”

Nicole Kidman – The Oscar-Winning Actress Explores Loss and Grief in Rabbit Hole

by Brad Balfour

Originally posted on February 22, 2011.

Everyone experiences loss and grief, but few films show it in such a naked and matter-of-fact manner as does Rabbit Hole. The Aussie actress Nicole Kidman was so passionate about David Lindsay-Abaire’s original Pulitzer Prize-winning play that she signed on as one of its producers as well as its star in order to see to that his script would get made.

Directed by John Cameron Mitchell, this unvarnished and austere movie pairs Kidman (Becca) with Aaron Eckhart (Howie) as a couple struggling to cope with and live past the accidental death of their child. And Dianne Wiest brings her wonted pathos to the role of a mother with her own story of loss and recovery.

In taking Rabbit Hole to the big screen, this glamorous Oscar winner took an incredible chance in bringing this dark examination of loss and recovery to a much larger audience. But in doing so, it has already garnered her a 2011 Golden Globe nomination for Best Dramatic Actress. Kidman has fully matured from being another pretty face into an actress who provides directors of the stature of a Stanley Kubrick, Lars Von Trier or Jane Campion with a masterful performance and can now get risky films made.

During a recent press conference and afterwards, the 43-year-old lithe redhead answered questions about what it took to get this film made and play such an emotionally-wrenching part.

This film is about understanding the process of coping with grief. What did you learn about that process in making this film? Did you draw from experiences in your life to connect to the characters?

It’s something that I’ve always wanted to explore. I’ve explored it in other films in different ways. I explored it in a film called Birth, which was in a very different way. So I feel like it is territory that I would even explore again because it’s so much a part of our journey, what we love, what we lose and the fear of that.

Those emotions are so palpable and so powerful that I’m just drawn to exploring them and expressing them. But I think that with this film it’s very much about a family as well and it’s about how a family works through it together, about how you can help people and how in some ways  you’re just so isolated. I think that’s what Howie and Becca are, completely isolated, and yet they are reaching out and they don’t know how to connect.

I find that so touching and it was something that was beautifully, beautifully rendered in the screenplay. It’s a very difficult place to exist in, but also the words came easily and the emotions. Actually, a lot of it was how to keep them in because they were available I think to all of us and all the actors in the film. A lot of it is restraint because as actors we’re asked to mine those areas often, and a lot of it is up to the editing and to the director about how you modulate it.

Did you go under the radar and attend grief counseling sessions like Aaron Eckhart did?

We both had different experiences. I tried to and was told, “Unless you’ve actually lost a child or a loved one you’re not to come into the room.” I completely respected that because they said, “It’s just too raw and it’s too dangerous and it’s a very sacred place and we can’t let you in to observe.”

I’m glad that they didn’t now, when I look back because the way that the emotions came to me in the character were through just my own, the way that I vibrate and the rawness of loving my children. I was able to leap there very quickly. I was amazed at how deep that well is and how available it is.

It’s probably as David [Lindsay-Abaire, the play’s creator and film’s screenwriter] said, that he wrote about this thing that terrifies him the most, and as an actor I played the thing that terrifies me the most. Aaron has a different story.

It seemed that at some point that your character would want her husband to show more of an emotional reaction – have an outburst or something – and talk more about the tragedy with her.

That I needed to have an emotional outburst? Or that he did? No. It’s eight months down the road. [So no, he doesn’t need to do that by this time.] This [also] answers the other question about how we prepared to play the role – we rehearsed. We talked.

Part of the preparation that I do as an actor is that I create from birth through now – which is sort of like my homework – of where we met, how we got married, all of those things. What happened to my father, because you never see my father, just all the details of the [character for the] performance.

Then you come to the rehearsal period and you do scenes and then sort of slowly layer the performance. So, no, I don’t think it [needed] an emotional outburst. I’m not saying that didn’t happen in the period of eight months prior that you don’t see.

That’s what I find very beautiful about this film, that this is not about five days after. This isn’t the day of the loss. This is [happening] eight months later. This is life. This is how do you stay alive? How do you choose life when you feel like everything to live for has been taken away? How do you then live? That’s the subtlety to the film.

How do you live with someone that you used to have moments of great joy with and a normal life with when suddenly you’ve been completely destroyed? That’s why I wanted to make the film, because there are so many people in the world existing in [such] places. I’ve certainly been in a place of extreme depression and pain where choosing life everyday is a choice – if that makes sense.

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