Nicole Kidman receives historic Hollywood honour

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Nicole Kidman has been awarded the 49th American Film Institute Life Achievement Award, 1 of the astir prestigious prizes successful Hollywood. Kidman is the archetypal Australian histrion to person the honour.

“It’s affectional for maine due to the fact that the thought of looking backmost astatine things, really, it’s antithetic for me,” Kidman said connected the reddish carpet. “And past radical accidental respire and bask it and consciousness it and that’s what I’m trying to do, adjacent though it’s not needfully my instinct to bash that.

Nicole Kidman is introduced to the assemblage during the 49th AFI Life Achievement Award Tribute Gala.

“My instinct is not to judge excessively galore compliments and ever downplay, and truthful I’m trying not to beryllium awkward, and my mum’s ever like, conscionable relax, you’re truthful overmuch amended erstwhile you conscionable relax,” she said. “It’s the introvert versus this extroverted life.”

The grant was presented to Kidman astatine a gala ceremonial astatine Hollywood’s Dolby Theatre, the aforesaid venue arsenic the Oscars. The impermanent database included galore A-listers including actresses Meryl Streep and Reese Witherspoon, and besides high-profile Australians successful LA specified arsenic histrion Naomi Watts and manager John Polson, who came to wage tribute.

Though some her parents were absent – Kidman’s mum Janelle is successful Sydney, and her dada Tony passed distant successful 2014 – she said she felt their publication to her beingness and the way that led her to the AFI’s highest honour, deeply.

“They are everything,” Kidman said. “My dada would get connected a level if I was hopeless and needed support, and this career, this life, is tough, and we each cognize that. And immoderate happened, wherever I was at, helium would get connected a level and travel spot me, and helium would beryllium connected a telephone for hours.”

Nicole Kidman takes a selfie with a instrumentality earlier the gala event.

Her mum, she says, had an oculus connected the large picture. “She was my support, she was manager arsenic well, similar successful my caput and my biggest champion. And she wouldn’t sugar-coat things, which was bully due to the fact that erstwhile she gives a compliment, you judge her. Without them, there’s not a accidental I would beryllium here.”

Kidman besides acknowledged that her teenaged self, the miss who walked onto the acceptable of BMX Bandits backmost successful 1983, would person had nary inkling that she was connected a way that would pb to Hollywood success, an Oscar, a BAFTA, six Golden Globes and present the AFI Life Achievement Award.

“My happening has ever been, I’m a moving histrion and I emotion that,” she says. “So I was ever like, what’s the adjacent opportunity? What’s the adjacent job? I was trained to enactment and to larn and to support increasing and to support exploring. And I emotion being a portion of these [film and television] families. They’re my families.”

Kidman was accompanied by her hubby Keith Urban and their children, arsenic good arsenic her sister Antonia Hawley, and Antonia’s girl Lucia Hawley. Kidman’s lifelong champion friend, Annette Rechner, the sister of newsreader Peter Overton, was besides present. Rechner was accompanied by her son, histrion Sam Rechner.

Nicole Kidman and hubby Keith Urban get astatine the 49th AFI Lifetime Achievement Award Tribute Gala.

Australia’s consul-general successful Los Angeles, Tanya Bennett, described the lawsuit arsenic a immense infinitesimal for Australia. “The archetypal Australian honoured with this award, I deliberation it’s a immense deal,” she said. “Nicole Kidman is specified an ambassador for Australians moving successful film.”

Bennett said the grant besides highlighted the powerfulness of brushed diplomacy, arsenic Australia’s planetary publication to civilization and the arts.

“I deliberation for a state similar Australia, having taste ambassadors who beforehand the champion of the champion of what we are, and who we are, is great, and surely Nicole Kidman shines retired and tonight’s accomplishment truly recognises that,” she said.

AFI president Bob Gazzale said Kidman embodied the “glamour and romance of Hollywood past. But she besides has the daring and the bravery of 1 of this creation form’s large quality actors. She’s a existent surface icon, but she’s besides a risk-taker. Each show is thing caller and thing profound.”

Gazzale said Kidman besides had the uncommon powerfulness of driving civilization forward.

“She’s doing it with her committedness to amplifying the voices of pistillate directors and producers. Nicole has been precise circumstantial astir what she wishes for america to deliberation about.

The grant was archetypal fixed retired successful 1973, and it’s intended for artists whose careers person “fundamentally precocious the creation of movie and whose achievements had been acknowledged by movie scholars, critics, their idiosyncratic peers and the public.”

Gazzale acknowledged that Kidman is the archetypal Australian histrion to person the AFI award. “This creation signifier is simply a planetary unifier astatine a clip erstwhile needed most,” helium said.

In its archetypal decade, AFI Life Achievement Award recipients included actors John Ford, James Cagney and Bette Davis, and manager Alfred Hitchcock.

Since then, it has been fixed to less than 50 individuals successful the modern past of cinema. The database includes actors Barbara Stanwyck, Gregory Peck, Elizabeth Taylor, Jane Fonda, Jack Nicholson, Harrison Ford and Sidney Poitier, and directors Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese and others.

The astir caller recipient was histrion Julie Andrews successful 2022. No grant was fixed retired successful 2020, 2021 oregon 2023. One of the qualifying factors is that the recipient’s enactment “must person withstood the trial of time”.