It’s her! The sparkling diamond!” is the line of dialogue that introduces Nicole Kidman as the courtesan Satine in Baz Luhrmann’s 2001 musical Moulin Rouge! We first see the actress swinging on a trapeze high above a throng of top-hatted Frenchmen. It’s a dizzying height, and from her gravity-defying perch she sings “Diamonds Are a Girl’s Best Friend,” summoning images not only of Marilyn Monroe but also of Madonna, Rita Hayworth, and Ann-Margret.
It was a spectacular re-introduction of Nicole Kidman to the world, coming on the heels of Eyes Wide Shut, the last of three films she made with Tom Cruise and the swan song of their 11-year marriage (and also of director Stanley Kubrick’s august career; he died five days after Kidman and Cruise saw the completed film for the first time in a screening room in New York).
Luhrmann described Nicole’s performance in Moulin Rouge! as “a chrysalis experience—she went in as Mrs. Tom Cruise, but like Satine on the trapeze over the heads of clamoring men, she emerged as her own person. She was no longer with the king—she was Nicole Kidman, icon.”
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