Some like it hot, indeed! Channeling her inner Marilyn Monroe, Nicole Kidman covers the latest issue of Interview magazine, wearing steamy vintage-style lingerie and the blonde icon’s perfectly undone curls.
Looking positively ageless in the photographs, Kidman, 48, models lace balconette bras, plunging shirtdresses, ruffled hemlines, and cinched waists, all of which put her incredibly taut frame on display.
The Oscar-winning mom of four spoke to the magazine about her return to the stage in Photograph 51 (about English chemist Rosalind Franklin, who contributed to the discovery of DNA). Nevertheless, Kidman confessed that she was terrified to return to the stage.
“Terrified and exhilarated, because I’ve got to make this incredibly acerbic, prickly woman real and vulnerable,” the Aussie beauty told her interviewer, Lee Daniels, who directed her in 2012’s The Paperboy. She also added, “It’s a 95-minute play and I haven’t done that for 17 years. It’s a whole different ballgame.”
Turns out, all she needed was to see Bradley Cooper‘s stunning performance in The Elephant Man to put her at ease—that, and the encouragement of another famous actress. “Laura Linney said it to me,” Kidman told Interview. “I told her, ‘I’m really scared.’ She said, ‘It’s good, honest work.’ And the simplicity of that really resonated. It’s so nice to be doing honest work.”
According to Daniels, that commitment makes Kidman very special—almost mythical, in fact. “When you find a rare breed, like yourself, like Taraji [P. Henson], like Halle Berry… I call you guys unicorns, because you’re beautiful to look at, but if you detect bullsh—t, you’ll nip me,” he said, and added, “You’ll nip anybody who’s coming at you with bullsh—t. You don’t play around. You take this craft very seriously. It’s what separates you, what separates an actor from an artist.”
To that, Kidman replied, “I really want to be a unicorn.”