Nicole Kidman opened up about how a personal loss helped her learn about becoming a death doula.
“As my mother was passing, she was lonely, and there was only so much the family could provide,” Kidman, 58, said at the University of San Francisco’s War Memorial Gym on Saturday, April 11, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
Kidman’s mother died in September 2024 at age 84. She recalled looking into the career despite it sounding “a little weird.”
“Between my sister and I, we have so many children and our careers and our work, and wanting to take care of her because my father wasn’t in the world anymore, and that’s when I went, ‘I wish there was these people in the world that were there to sit impartially and just provide solace and care,’” she explained. “So that’s part of my expansion and one of the things I will be learning.”
According to the International End-of-Life Doula Association, “An end-of-life doula advocates self-determination and imparts psychosocial, emotional, spiritual, and practical care to empower dignity throughout the dying process.”
Kidman previously lost her father in 2014. A decade later, the actress learned of her mother’s death while at the 2024 Venice Film Festival.
“Today I arrived in Venice to find out shortly after, that my beautiful, brave mother Janelle Ann Kidman has just passed,” Babygirl director Halina Reijn shared in a statement on Kidman’s behalf at the event. “I am in shock and I have to go to my family, but this award is for her, she shaped me, she guided me and she made me.”
She continued: “I am beyond grateful that I get to say her name to all of you through Halina, the collision of life and art is heart-breaking, and my heart is broken.”
Two years earlier, Kidman spoke candidly about her mother’s health challenges.
“We’re down here [in Australia] primarily to take care of my mother and to have her surrounded by her grandchildren,” she said on NPR’s “Fresh Air” podcast in January 2022. “So luckily, last — yesterday, even though [Covid strain] Omicron is raging through this country, we were able to take her into the gallery after hours and show her the Matisse exhibit, which, coming from a mother who’s raised me in the arts was very, very — it was soothing balm.”
In March 2025, Kidman paid tribute to her mom on what would have been her 85th birthday.
“Missing Mumma and Papa so much on what would have been her birthday today,” she wrote via Instagram alongside a photo of her parents smiling together.
In a separate post shared last month, she wrote, “Remembering my Mumma on her birthday. Always in my heart.”
