More audacious than ever, the Australian actress has found herself in one of the richest and most productive periods of her career at 50 years-old. 

Nicole Kidman had so much going on this year&nbsp;that we saw her in the press several times.&nbsp;First, in Los Angeles, in February, for the launch of the great series&nbsp;Big Little Lies, which&nbsp;she co-produced with Reese Witherspoon and for which she won the Emmy Award for best actress.&nbsp;Then again in Cannes, in May, where she had come&mdash;so glamorously&mdash;to present Y&oacute;rgos L&aacute;nthimos&#39;s&nbsp;The&nbsp;Killing of the&nbsp;Sacred&nbsp;Deer,&nbsp;and where she received the 70th Anniversary Award, a sign of the highest accolades.&nbsp;It wasn&#39;t until September at the Toronto International Film Festival that Kidman&mdash;in a bewildering and magical kindness in a glittering Prada dress&mdash;took the time to take stock with us on her career and her upcoming films.&nbsp;

The Killing of a Sacred Deer

JULIETTE MICHAUD: For two years now, you have been filming, each time with intense and very different roles.&nbsp;How do you do it? 
 
NICOLE KIDMAN:&nbsp;It amuses me to think that when I was pregnant with my daughter Sunday, nine years ago, I wanted to retire.&nbsp;I have been working since the age of 14, I stopped school at 16 to become an actress with the blessing of great parents. I thought it was time to ask myself.&nbsp;I finally had a happy private life, maybe it was time to live peacefully in Nashville, where Keith [country singer Keith Urban, her second husband]&nbsp;and I have a farm.&nbsp;My mother&nbsp;had advised me to keep &quot;a toe in the water,&quot; in case the desire to work arose in&nbsp;me again... [Laughs]

JM: Do you escape unscathed from your movies?&nbsp; 
 
NK: I often go out on a shoot.&nbsp;That&#39;s why I just did&nbsp;Aquaman&nbsp;in Australia: besides the happiness of working in my homeland, I had to have a little fun!&nbsp;I had followed up&nbsp;Big Little Lies,&nbsp;where I play an abused wife, with the very confusing&nbsp;Killing of a Sacred Deer.&nbsp;I shot Sofia Coppola&#39;s&nbsp;Prey&nbsp;and&nbsp;Top of the Lake&nbsp;detective series,&nbsp;China Girl&nbsp;by Jane Campion.&nbsp;I needed to be a mermaid in a superhero movie!

JM: Do you play a siren in Aquaman?&nbsp;It suits you so well!&nbsp;

NK: I find myself at one point on a rock with my hair scattered on my shoulders, but I am not in the true sense of the term a siren that moves his tail from right to left [laughs].&nbsp;I am rather a queen, with a beautiful crown, who is the mother of Aquaman.&nbsp;The film is comic and my daughters have been so mesmerized by filming that one of them wants to become a filmmaker.&nbsp;I owed them that: by making films too adult where my children could not visit me on the set, I began to have scruples.

"I vowed to work with at least one woman director per year." -Nicole Kidman

JM: You also played in Neil Burger&#39;s comedy&nbsp;The Upside, the American remake of the French film&nbsp;Intouchables.&nbsp; 
 
NK: I really liked the original that producer Harvey Weinstein had shown me, so when he bought the rights and offered me the remake, I signed.&nbsp;It was a breath of fresh air.&nbsp;Bryan Cranston and Kevin Hart take on the roles of Fran&ccedil;ois Cluzet and Omar Sy.

JM: You&#39;ve worked with so many legendary filmmakers: how do you define your relationship with them?&nbsp; 
 
NK: I am, first of all, a movie buff.&nbsp;When I did&nbsp;Eyes Wide Shut&nbsp;with Stanley Kubrick, I had the feeling that it was my destiny, I felt invested, I had been marked at age 15 by&nbsp;A Clockwork Orange.&nbsp;I am not someone who has self-confidence. But, at the same time, I like venturing onto the screen where I dare not go in life, that&#39;s how I feel safe in the world, and I never judge my characters.&nbsp;Only human nature fascinates me, which can bring you far.&nbsp;So I defer to the directors, and I am so grateful to them for helping me to find the truth, that I will do everything for them.&nbsp;Even when they ask me for disconcerting things, like Y&oacute;rgos L&aacute;nthimos.

JM: Your accomplice Colin Farrell warned you that working with the director of&nbsp;Lobster&nbsp;would be disturbing.&nbsp; 
 
NK: Yes, I was warned! [Laughs]&nbsp;With The&nbsp;Killing of a Sacred Deer,&nbsp;Y&oacute;rgos has writted a frightening, modern Greek tragedy.&nbsp;Once you have assimilated the phrasing of his universe, which resonates very peculiarly in the viewer&#39;s psyche, it is fascinating to play.&nbsp;This filmmaker reminds me a lot Stanley Kubrick.&nbsp;For an actress of my age, having the opportunity to move from such an offbeat universe to more realistic films, like&nbsp;Boy Erased&nbsp;that I shoot under the direction of Australian actor Joel Edgerton, with Russell Crowe, a film about reconversion Forced homosexuals by the Church, it is rather unheard of.

JM: What were the major turning points in your career?&nbsp; 
 
NK: Ready for everything&nbsp;(1995) from Gus Van Sant, who gave me credibility.&nbsp;Portrait of a Woman&nbsp;(1996) by Jane Campion,&nbsp;Moulin Rouge&nbsp;(2001) by Baz Luhrmann,&nbsp;Dogville&nbsp;(2003) by Lars Von Trier...&nbsp;Lion, last year, a poignant film by Garth Davis about roots and adoption.&nbsp;I did not expect a fourth Oscar nomination for this role of adoptive mother.&nbsp;Becoming friends with director John Cameron Mitchell, who gave me a small role in&nbsp;How to Talk to Girls at Parties, which we presented in Cannes, with Elle Fanning.

“Mise à mort du cerf sacré”, de Yórgos Lánthimos (2017).

JM: Do you also consider television to be&nbsp;an important step?&nbsp; 
 
NK: Yes, even if nothing replaces the cinema.&nbsp;Reese and I produced&nbsp;Big Little Lies, which portrays middle-class women full of cracks and secrets in Monterey, because we do not find enough complex female roles.&nbsp;It&#39;s a project born of our frustrations of actresses in a Hollywood.&nbsp;But it&#39;s also the first season of&nbsp;Top of the Lake&nbsp;that made me want to watch television.

JM: What was your reaction to your role&nbsp;of a lesbian mother in season two of&nbsp;Top of the Lake? 
 
NK: This is one of the roles that gave me the most trouble!&nbsp;I have four children, and now I&#39;m given a lot of mother&#39;s roles, but this one is different.&nbsp;I play the adoptive mother of a girl who was abandoned by the detective played by Elisabeth Moss.&nbsp;I have long gray hair, my character, Julia, who lives in a relationship with a woman, is fierce, full of contradictions and just hilarious.&nbsp;But go internalize all that!

JM: After Sofia Coppola, you will meet another director with a very personal style, Rebecca Miller.&nbsp; 
 
NK: I swore to work with at least one female director per year.&nbsp;I was very touched by Sofia&#39;s talent for creating an atmosphere, and by her combination of determination and gentleness.&nbsp;Rebecca, I had met her already since I shot&nbsp;Nine&nbsp;with her husband Daniel Day-Lewis.&nbsp;She is a beautiful woman and artist.&nbsp;We&#39;re shooting&nbsp;She Came to Me,&nbsp;with Steve Carell and Amy Schumer, a comedy in the world of contemporary opera.

JM: It&#39;s impossible not to mention your name without thinking of glamour.&nbsp;What is your relationship with fashion today?&nbsp; 
 
NK: Amazed.&nbsp;All this has a very Cinderella side.&nbsp;The dresses I wear for galas, I have to give them back.&nbsp;But I do not just call my stylist who lives in New York.&nbsp;I am very interested in fashion.&nbsp;Having participated in the great campaign of Chanel N &deg; 5 with Baz Luhrmann remains a very strong memory.&nbsp;I recently went to a Dior exhibition in Melbourne, I was seized by the beauty of the dresses, exhibited as works of art, especially when I realized having worn two of his wonders.&nbsp;It is a privilege to wear one&#39;s &quot;works&quot; on red carpets, to show them to the world.

&nbsp;

The Killing of a Sacred Deer&nbsp;by Y&oacute;rgos L&aacute;nthimos is in theatres now.

Nicole Kidman on The Killing of a Sacred Deer and Her Biggest Year Yet

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