The Toronto Sun
15 May 2001
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Moulin Rouge Star a Trouper for her New Film
by Bob Thompson

BEVERLY HILLS -- Everybody knows the marriage trouble Nicole Kidman has seen.

Staying low profile has been impossible for Kidman, who last week promoted her latest film, Moulin Rouge, at the media-intense Cannes Film Festival.

Yesterday, she was here at the L'Ermitage Hotel doing more of the same, still refusing to talk about her crumbled marriage.

If 33-year-old Kidman was feeling the physical and emotional grind, she wasn't showing it.

"I am really jet lagged right now," said the tall, perky actress at a press conference. There's more jet lag to come.

Kidman said she's taping an Oprah Winfrey show in Chicago this week, then flying home to Sydney before heading to New York for more Moulin Rouge promotional interviews.

In two weeks, she'll be in London to shoot her co-starring role as doomed writer Virginia Woolf in On The Hours.

"But I try to remember there's so much more to life than just acting," she said. "I want to be known as a great cook, a great mother."

Later in the day, Moulin Rouge director Baz Luhrmann said she'll be remembered for something else.

"She's got guts," said fellow Australian Luhrmann. "Getting out there and promoting herself and the movie at this time is not the thing for her to do. But she has done it, and she's never complained."

Added co-star John Leguizamo, "I've learned a lot from Nicole," he said. "She didn't get crazy with all this media stuff. She deals with it in such a classy way."

Opening in theatres in Toronto June 1, Moulin Rouge is a stylized musical that has Kidman playing an 1890s Parisian nightclub courtesan who falls for a bohemian writer (Ewan McGregor).

Some speculated that on-screen love became an off-screen affair between Kidman and McGregor, but it's been dismissed as just another ugly rumour.

It hasn't been pretty since husband Tom Cruise filed for divorce in February. To make matters a lot less private, Kidman suffered a miscarriage in March.

Meanwhile, Cruise seems determined to proceed with the divorce.

Kidman, who emotionally thanked reporters at Cannes and here for not asking personal questions, said she's most concerned about protecting Cruise and Kidman's two adopted children, Isabella, 8, and Connor, 6.

Although she did reveal one thing at the L'Ermitage -- what she got for her Mother's Day present Sunday from her kids. "Home-made candles," she said proudly.