The brave ones with Nicole Kidman and Jennifer Jason Leigh

MARGOT AT THE WEDDING--WRITER AND DIRECTOR NOAH DAUMBACH'S FOLLOW-UP TO HIS SENSATIONAL THE SQUID AND THE WHALE OF 2005--PAIRS TWO OF THE MOST GIFTED, FEARLESS ACTORS ALIVE TODAY: NICOLE KIDMAN AND JENNIFER JASON LEIGH. MARGOT IS THE INTENSE--VERY INTENSE--STORY OF HYPERCRITICAL MARGOT (KIDMAN) AND HER SISTER, PAULINE (LEIGH), WHO IS ABOUT TO MARRY MALCOLM (JACK BLACK), A JOBLESS SEMICOMPETENT AT BEST, EAGER FOR NEW ACQUAINTANCES TO UNDERSTAND THAT HIS MUSTACHE IS MEANT IRONICALLY. LET'S JUST SAY THINGS DON'T GO WELL. AND, AFTER ALL, WHO WANTS TO SEE A MOVIE ABOUT THINGS THAT DO? KIDMAN HADN'T WORKED WITH LEIGH OR DAUMBACH BEFORE. LEIGH AND BAUMBACH HAVE BEEN MARRIED SINCE 2005, BUT THIS IS THEIR FIRST FILM TOGETHER. I SPOKE WITH THE TWO STARS INDIVIDUALLY--KIDMAN FROM THE SET OF HER NEW FILM, AUSTRALIA; LEIGH WHILE ON A BREAK BETWEEN PROJECTS IN NEW YORK CITY.

NICOLE KIDMAN

MICHAEL CUNNINGHAM: Where are you? I mean, where in Australia?

NICOLE KIDMAN: I'm back in Sydney now, Until two days ago we were shooting in the outback, where there's no cell-phone service and we had to camp out in tents. [both laugh] I've never done that before.

MC: How's the shoot going?

NK: It's one of the best experiences I've had making a film. It's been such an adventure. Baz [Luhrmann, who's directing the film] is the last of a dying breed. They won't make films like this anymore. It's too expensive.

MC: You were amazing in Margot at the Wedding.

NK: Yeah? It's a tough movie.

MC: Margot, the woman you play, is difficult, to put it mildly. She's horrible to everybody, even her own son. But you made her compelling without softening her up. You make the audience understand why people put up with her. Okay, it's time to reveal the secret. How do you do that?

NK: Well, I kept saying to Noah, "You really have to feel this woman bleeding." And I think that's where it starts. If you don't feel the turmoil and the struggle, then the character doesn't resonate. Margot is just riddled with self-loathing. She attacks because of everything that's going on inside her. There's a lot of pain there. But at the same time, she's funny.

MC: Oh, speaking of difficult women--a couple of years ago in Provincetown I saw a drag queen do you as Virginia Woolf in The Hours [2002].

NK: No! I thought you were going to say Moulin Rouge/[2001]. I'm used to that.

MC: [laughs] His name is RJ. McWhiskers. He had the nose and the outfit and the hat. The show was in a hotel, which still has a pool in the back. RJ. delivered Woolf's suicide note. Then he walked out through the audience, out the back door, and into the pool. Only his hat bobbed to the surface.

NK: That's extraordinary!

MC: I think being done by a drag queen is the ultimate intimation of screen immortality. [laughs] But, okay, back to Margot at the Wedding. It's a horror movie, in a way. Family horror.

NK: It's the way Noah explores families. He looks at what makes up a family and sees that just because we all have the same blood doesn't necessarily mean we're meant to be together or that we can all live in a house together.

MC: And yet we're in some ways stuck together. Enslaved, really.

NK: Yeah, enslaved is the word. I think that's what's going on between Pauline and Margot. The weird thing for me is that, while we may have our emotional ups and downs in my family, we're so close and incredibly loyal to each other that I had to keep picking Noah's brain for this other thing. Having a sisterly relationship that was so destructive was foreign to me.

MC: Most of the great characters in literature are unsympathetic. Madame Bovary, Anna Karenina ...

NK: We're all flawed. That's probably why a lot of people squirm when they watch this movie. Or why they don't like it. Or why they completely relate to it. But I don't mind making movies like that, obviously. [both laugh] I've done a few of them now. I like shaking the basis of what we are. I see Birth [2004] as that kind of role. It's a disturbing movie; the subject matter is disturbing. At the same time, I don't want to always make movies like that, which is why I reached out to somebody like Baz--who is probably my creative soul mate, if it's possible to have such a thing. Working for him somehow satiates my romanticism, because he's a true romantic. And then I can do these other little spiky dramas.

MC: It's becoming a cliché about you that you do such varied roles. Do you know when a role speaks to you, whether it's Virginia Woolf or Margot or Samantha in Bewitched [2005]?

NK: I really am extremely spontaneous. I have diverse taste in movies, art, literature, everything. I'm open to many forms, so I never know where I'm going to go next.

MC: Years ago, when we talked for Interview about your playing Virginia Woolf in The Hours, you told me that they gave you a dress to wear, a simple housedress with a little hanky in the pocket. You were aware of the hanky in your pocket, and you started rolling a cigarette as Woolf used to do, and suddenly you found your way into the character. Does that happen for you with other parts, that moment of transition?