Nicole Kidman says being nominated for an Oscar has never felt so good as she leads one of the country’s strongest showings at next month’s Academy Awards.
“The older I get, the absolutely sweeter it is,” the acclaimed actor said from her home in Nashville after hearing she had been recognised for playing Lucille Ball in the drama Being The Ricardos. It is her fifth Oscar nomination, winning for The Hours.
“The older I get, the absolutely sweeter it is”: Nicole Kidman at the Australian premiere of Being The Ricardos.Credit:Getty
Kidman, 54, is one of an impressive 10 Australians whose nominations for the 94th Academy Awards were announced in Los Angeles early on Tuesday.
She heard the news in a FaceTime call while getting her daughters ready for school.
“This [role] was the hardest thing I’ve ever done,” she said of the playing Ball both on and off screen during a tumultuous week in the 1950s. “Ever…
“And, at this stage in my life, just being at the breakfast table with the girls and [husband] Keith [Urban], there’s something very, very special about that.”
“Absolutely ecstatic”: Kodi Smit-McPhee in The Power of the Dog. Credit:Netflix
Jane Campion’s western The Power of the Dog, made as an Australian-New Zealand co-production for Netflix, topped the Oscar nominations with 12, followed by the sci-fi epic Dune with 10 and both Irish drama Belfast and musical revival West Side Story with seven.
Making her first film for more than a decade, Campion has been nominated for producing, directing and writing The Power of the Dog. She has become the first woman to be nominated twice for best director at the Oscars.
After making two seasons of the TV series Top of the Lake, Campion’s passion for cinema was reignited when her late father’s second wife, Judith, gave her a copy of Thomas Savage’s 1967 novel The Power of the Dog.
“Once I got into it, I thought ‘freakin’ hell, this is good’,” she said just before the film’s release.“What a surprise to read a novel that actually gets exhilarating and exciting towards the end. I had to start reading it again to see if I really understood it, but I couldn’t stop thinking about it.”
Actor Kodi Smit-McPhee has his first Oscar nomination at the age of 25 for brilliantly playing a fey young medical student in The Power of the Dog. He told Variety that he watched the nominations with his mum and little brother in the Melbourne house he grew up. “I’m absolutely ecstatic,” he said.
Producer Emile Sherman, down with COVID-19 in Sydney, had gone to bed hoping to sleep through till morning.
“My body had a different plan and at 12.16 it woke me up,” he said. “Then [after watching the announcement] I went back to sleep which was difficult after the excitement.”
Sherman, who won best picture with The King’s Speech and has also been up for Lion, said 12 nominations for The Power of the Dog “was beyond what we thought was possible”.
Two Australians have been nominated for best cinematography: Greig Fraser (Dune) and Ari Wegner (The Power of the Dog). They have been friends since working together on the 2009 film Last Ride.
“Oh man, this is awesome”: Greig Fraser at an awards screening of Dune in London on November. Credit:Getty
Fraser was busy in the middle of the day in London, preparing to shoot the second Dune movie, so was only half paying attention to the announcement.
“Of course I was like ‘oh man, this is awesome’,” he said. “What was super amazing also was seeing Ari Wegner nominated.”
Fraser has been nominated for Lion previously in a stellar Hollywood career that has also included Zero Dark Thirty, Rogue One, Vice, The Mandalorian and soon-to-be-released The Batman.
“Freakin’ hell, this is good”: Jane Campion at a Los Angeles screening on The Power of the Dog late last year. Credit:Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP
Wegner, the daughter of Archibald Prize-winning artist Peter Wegner, is only the second woman to be nominated for best cinematography. She told The Hollywood Reporter that she was up watching a livestream of the announcement from her home in Melbourne.
“Nothing compares to hearing your name read out like this,” she said. “It’s a wild experience … For any DP it’s really a dream come true, especially for those of use forging an unconventional path.”
In a bumper year for Australians, Peter Sciberras is nominated as best editor for The Power of the Dog; Robert Mackenzie, an Oscar winner for Hacksaw Ridge, and Tara Webb are up for best sound on The Power of the Dog; and Joe Farrell and Dan Oliver are nominated for best visual effects for Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings.
Joining The Power of the Dog, Dune, Belfast and West Side Story with best picture nominations are deaf community drama CODA, apocalyptic black comedy Don’t Look Up, Japanese drama Drive My Car, tennis biopic King Richard, 1970s coming-of-age film Licorice Pizza and modern film noir Nightmare Alley.
Benedict Cumberbatch and Jesse Plemons in The Power of the Dog.
Campion, whose first best director nomination was for the 1993 romantic drama The Piano, is up this time against Paul Thomas Anderson (Licorice Pizza), Kenneth Branagh (Belfast), Steven Spielberg (West Side Story) and Ryusuke Hamaguchi (Drive My Car).
Longtime friends since they worked on the 1996 film The Portrait Of A Lady, Kidman called Campion to share her delight at all the nominations for The Power of the Dog.
“It’s really extraordinary that she’s dominating in the way she is at this stage,” Kidman said. “Considering the decades we’ve known each other, it’s an amazing coincidence that it’s this year that we’re both showing up at the Oscars.
“I love her and I love that she’s being lauded.”
After a largely virtual Hollywood awards season, the Oscars will take place on Monday, March 28 Australian time.
AUSTRALIANS HEADING TO THE OSCARS
Best picture: producer Emile Sherman for The Power of the Dog
Best actress: Nicole Kidman for Being The Ricardos
Best supporting actor: Kodi Smit-McPhee for he Power of the Dog
Best cinematography: Greig Fraser for Dune and Ari Wegner for The Power of the Dog
Best editor: Peter Sciberras for The Power of the Dog
Best sound: Robert Mackenzie and Tara Webb for The Power of the Dog
Best visual effects: Joe Farrell and Dan Oliver for Shang-Chi And The Legend Of The Ten Rings.
And there’s more: An Australian-New Zealand co-production, Jane Campion’s The Power of the Dog leads the Oscar nominations with 12. (edited)
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