Nicole Kidman recalls an early acting regret

Nicole Kidman has recalled one of her earliest acting regrets.

The Australian star has confessed that she regrets turning down the opportunity to work with acclaimed director Jane Campion before she became famous.

“(Her weekend drama school) did the Tennessee Williams play Sweet Bird of Youth. I was playing the Princess (an older, once famous actor who is involved with a young gigolo), and I had no understanding of what the actual text meant,” Kidman recalled in an interview with W Magazine.

“The director Jane Campion came and sat in the back of that little theatre and then cast me in one of her student films. But I didn’t do it – I didn’t want to wear a shower cap in the film and not look pretty… (It is a) huge regret. What a big regret!”

Although she didn’t work with the New Zealand filmmaker as a teenager, they collaborated years later on 1996’s The Portrait of a Lady and the 2017 miniseries Top of the Lake: China Girl. The Piano filmmaker went on to win the Best Director Oscar in 2022 for The Power of the Dog.

Elsewhere in the interview, the Big Little Lies star explained that she started performing as a child to keep herself occupied while her mother was at work.

“My mom was working. So we always had to find things to do in the afternoon. I did ballet and then mime work, and when I was 13 they found me a little weekend drama school,” the 57-year-old shared.

Kidman’s mother Janelle Ann Kidman passed away in September at the age of 84.