Nicole Kidman has had a long and illustrious career working with Hollywood’s most celebrated directors, including Jane Campion, Sofia Coppola, Stanley Kubrick and Gus Van Sant. Yet there’s one director she hasn’t worked with whom she’d like to — though he is not known to make movies that centre female characters.
In her latest interview with Vanity Fair, the Oscar-winning Australian actor said, “I’ve always said I want to work with [Martin] Scorsese…if he does a film with women.”
Her comment is rather apt. Scorsese’s films have historically focused on the humanity of its male characters. Think The Irishman, The Departed, The Wolf of Wall Street, Gangs of New York, Shutter Island, The Last Temptation of Christ, GoodFellas, Raging Bull… you get the picture.
Scorsese has written a movie with a female protagonist — 1974’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, where Ellen Burstyn plays a widowed mother who spends the movie negotiating her romantic relationships with two violent men. Then there’s The Aviator, starring Cate Blanchett and Kate Beckinsale as beautiful accessories to our main character, Leonardo Di Caprio.
Sure, women do appear in his films, but they’re mostly designated as the fawning love interests, and rarely have their own narrative arc. In Casino, Sharon Stone plays a former sex worker turned seductive con artist who the protagonist (Robert De Niro) falls in love with. In Wolf of Wall Street, Margot Robbie plays lingerie designer Naomi Lapaglia, the titular character’s second wife. In The Departed, Vera Farmiga plays a police psychiatrist who becomes sexually involved with two of the male characters in the movie.
In movies such as Killers of the Flower Moon, Shutter Island, and Gangs of New York, there’s usually just a singular female character (somebody’s wife, or girlfriend) whose presence in the movie merely serves to tell audiences that the male protagonist is desirable and masculine.
Nicole Kidman isn’t interested in these sorts of movies. She’s interested in working with filmmakers who write meaty parts for women.
“I’m trying to support all of these women at all different ages, at all different stages in their careers, put my weight behind them and go, “I’m here and I’m at your disposal and I’m ready,” she told Vanity Fair.
She is known to have worked with both established and emerging filmmakers and writers, including Nora Ephron, Lulu Wang, Erin Cressida Wilson, Kim Farrant, and Karyn Kusama.
She’s recently stared in Susanne Bier’s Netflix series, The Perfect Couple, and is next seen in Babygirl, written and directed by Dutch filmmaker Halina Reijn. Her upcoming projects also feature collaborations with female directors and writers such as Mimi Cave, Janine Sherman Barrois and Janelle Brown.