Nicole Kidman: `I want to be brave'

Kidman began acting in Australian films, but became known to American audiences with 1990's "Days of Thunder," where she met Tom Cruise, her former husband of 10 years. Her breakout performance was in 1995's "To Die For," but through the `90s, many perceived her only in relation to her famous husband.

Their divorce in 2001 coincided with Kidman's most successful period, artistically and commercially. She starred in Baz Luhrmann's "Moulin Rouge!" and "The Others" in 2001, and followed up those movies with the career-making "The Hours" as well as Lars von Trier's "Dogville."

"I'm curious. I will remain curious. I want to be brave," she says, explaining what she laughingly calls her "erratic" choices. "I'm not interested in what I know. I know what I am and what I'm capable of, so I'm not interested in exploring those things."

Kidman, who had two children with Cruise, married Urban in June of last year — an event which, along with Urban's subsequent trip to rehab, kept Kidman in the tabloids. She recently confided to Vanity Fair that she and Cruise early on lost a baby, leading them to adopt. She also said she was briefly engaged to someone after Cruise, but declined to name him.

"You know, I have trouble believing that people are that interested, and then I see myself on the cover of a magazine and I go, `Oh, why did I say that?' or `I didn't say that!'" Kidman says. "That all seems a little foreign and out-of-reach in a way. That's probably why I live in Tennessee."

She and Urban have recently bought a rural parcel of land, though the actress will be Down Under finishing Luhrmann's epic romance "Australia" until the end of the year. Knowing that the large production was next on her schedule, Kidman was eager for a film like "Margot."

"I wanted something small that was all just about performance, the intricacies of performance," she says. "I wanted to do something where I was in the hands of somebody that I really trusted and I didn't feel like I was having to lead the ship. I was able to sit back in an ensemble group."

That person she trusted, Baumbach, says that though Kidman happens to be a star, "she got there by having a really enviable acting career."

"I just love watching her," says Baumbach. "She will often not do the same thing from take to take. It was very kinetic and very intuitive. She would really feel her way into a scene. You could see it. She's not afraid to try things and get it wrong."

Though Kidman has said she'd like to have a baby with Urban, she insists she's not about to take a long break from acting.

"I'm not someone who's just going to lie down in the backyard," she said. She eagerly rattles off her goals: doing a play, making a "really powerful political film," making a film that "shocks people again."

"I would like to walk through my life saying, `Maybe I took a lot of risks, but I'm glad I took them,'" she says. "`I'm glad I didn't take the easy way out.'"