Nicole Kidman Just Broke Down How 'Shattering' Some Parts of Her Acting Process May Be

Over the years, our favorite actors and actresses have gotten candid about their thoughts on “method acting.” The practice, which involves a more immersive approach to embodying a role, is a loved method by some, and a highly criticized one by many others.

In a new interview with Nicole Kidman, she even hesitated to admit that she does, at least partly, have her own approach to being “method.”

“I’m willing to go to whatever place to make it real and deep,” The Perfect Couple star told GQ as part of her Men of the Year cover. “And certain things just click and it’s cellular.”

“You can absolutely tell when people are phoning something in,” she explained. “For me, that doesn’t work. I’m not moved by that.”

Instead, Kidman really dives into the role, feeling her characters’ thoughts, feelings, and experiences long after she’s left the set. Of course, that then becomes a challenge with some of her most complex characters like Grace in Dogville, or Romy in her upcoming movie Babygirl, in which she lives a secret steamy love affair with her intern.

“I get sick or I get disturbed,” Kidman said of her experiences playing these characters. “It penetrates my dreams, I don’t sleep well, I shake, I have all sorts of different physical manifestations from it.”

“Your body is just going, ‘Oh right, this is happening, and I’m responding as anyone does to stress,’” Kidman added.

That was especially the case for her Golden Globe-winning role as Celeste in Big Little Lies. “[It] was pretty shattering,” she said of Celeste, who struggles to leave her physically abusive marriage. “It short-circuits your brain.”

In Babygirl, director Halina Reijn could feel Kidman’s commitment to the role, perhaps even to her own detriment. “Seeing her act for me is like an exorcism,” Rejin told the outlet. “She goes beyond ego, beyond sanity and beyond fear… It’s not that she’s not afraid, you know, she’s super afraid, but she still goes there.”

This isn’t the first time Kidman has talked about how draining a role can be. “It left me ragged,” Kidman said to Vanity Fair of Babygirl in August. “At some point, I was like, ‘I don’t want to be touched. I don’t want to do this anymore,’ but at the same time I was compelled to do it.”

“I felt very exposed as an actor, as a woman, as a human being,” she said of the filming process. “I had to go in and go out like, I need to put my protection back on. ‘What have I just done? Where did I go? What did I do?’”

Luckily, Rejin was right by her side throughout. “Halina would hold me and I would hold her, because it was just very confronting to me,” Kidman remembered.

It looks like an actor’s life isn’t all glitz and glamour after all!

Before you go, check out here to see which movies had the steamiest sex scenes with an older woman and younger man: