Nicole Kidman stood backstage at the 2024 Venice Film Festival, minutes away from accepting the Volpi Cup for best actress, when she learned her mother had died. She went back to her hotel room, got into bed, and lay there alone — no husband, no children — trying to understand how to keep going.
“I was completely devastated,” Kidman told journalist Hoda Kotb during a History Talks panel in Philadelphia on Saturday. “I’m not sure how I’m going to move forward or function now,” she recalled thinking. “She was so much a part of my existence.”
Janelle Ann Kidman, 84, died in September 2024 following a prolonged illness. Her daughter had arrived in Venice that day, learned the news shortly after landing, and faced an impossible choice. She got into a boat on the canal in the middle of the night, trying to reach the airport, before turning around and going back to bed. Director Halina Reijn accepted the award in her place and read a statement from Kidman to the assembled crowd: “She shaped me, she guided me and she made me. The collision of life and art is heartbreaking, and my heart is broken.”
The grief has since pushed Kidman toward an unexpected path. She is training to become a death doula, driven by the loneliness her mother experienced in her final days. “As my mother was passing, she was lonely, and there was only so much the family could provide,” Kidman said at a University of San Francisco event earlier this month. Between her sister Antonia and herself, the family had too many children, careers, and competing demands to give Janelle the constant presence she needed.
Janelle Kidman was a nursing instructor and member of the Women’s Electoral Lobby, an Australian feminist organization who sacrificed her own career ambitions to raise her daughters and support her husband through his PhD. That selflessness left a mark. It was Janelle who, when roles dried up for her daughter in her 40s, urged her not to quit. “I think you need to still keep your toe in the water,” she told Nicole. “You’ve been doing this since you were little.”
What followed was what Kidman called “a much more interesting road” — producing films, championing difficult projects, and eventually earning a third Oscar nomination for Rabbit Hole, a $3.5 million film she had to fight to get made.
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Kidman spoke at the Kimmel Center for the Performing Arts alongside Tom Brady, Tina Fey, and four former U.S. presidents, as part of History Talks, an A+E Networks live speaker series marking America’s 250th anniversary. She is currently set to appear in Practical Magic 2, the sequel to the 1998 film with Sandra Bullock, as well as two new streaming series: Margo’s Got Money Problems on Apple TV+ and Scarpetta on Prime Video.
Her mother’s death, she said, did not break her. It confirmed something she already suspected. “She told me: don’t ever let anyone break your spirit.” Kidman says she took the lesson.
