Gus Van Sant likens Nicole Kidman to a second director while filming To Die For

Nicole Kidman is beloved not only by audiences, but by filmmakers. You can see by her extraordinary resumé that she likes to challenge herself, and by the incredibly diverse variety of directors she’s worked with that she wants to have a well-rounded career. (Kidman famously pledged to work with a female director every 18 months.) The people behind the camera see and appreciate her efforts, as evidenced by a New York Times piece about what directors love about her. Five directors were quoted, including Gus Van Sant, who says he cast her in To Die For because “Nicole called and said she was destined to play the part, so I believed her.”

“I thought she was incredibly dedicated to making a fantastic performance through study of the script and the part, in a way I had never seen before,” Van Sant said. “There were notebooks, and scene exercises, and voice exercises—it was very thorough. Nicole was so versed in the scenes that she was like having a second director there, who helped with the kids that we had playing her students, and it was a very welcomed help that she gave with them.”

In IndieWire’s oral history of To Die For in 2020, Van Sant revealed that Meg Ryan was interested in the role of Suzanne Stone (Ellen DeGeneres and Patricia Arquette were also considered). But having recently come to work in the American film industry, Kidman was hungry: “I was like, ‘Where are the art films and idiosyncratic filmmakers like Jane Campion? How do I work with them?’” she recalled. “I knew Gus’ work from seeing Drugstore Cowboy at an art cinema in Sydney. Those kind of films were basically my cinematic pull.” She recalled Van Sant as “unbelievably intuitive and loose” on the set, describing the experience as “all just pure, wonderful Gus.”

Further quoted in the NYT piece are Campion (The Portrait Of A Lady), Baz Luhrmann (Moulin Rouge!, Australia), and Stephen Daldry (The Hours), who called the actor “fearless”: “She’s constantly wanting to push herself to the limit of whatever she does.” Karyn Kusama also commented on the rigor of Kidman’s work ethic, saying, “On the set of Destroyer, Nicole was incredibly prepared and centered, and I could feel the intensity and gravity of purpose vibrating off of her. At the same time, her assistant was often nearby with a Ziploc bag full of apple slices and almond butter, and during breaks she would hustle to her trailer to nap for whatever moments she could.”

“Something about those details of her practice really affected me—to see that she’s this extremely intense, disciplined artist who also needs a snack and a rest every now and then,” Kusama said. “You can feel how important it is to her process that she cares for her mind and body as she works, and how that inner attention allows her psychic access to all kinds of people.” You can read the full piece here.