Karyn Kusama says Nicole Kidman had "no vanity" on set of her upcoming film ‘Destroyer’.
The 50-year-old director watched in awe as the 51-year-old actress transformed into her alter-ego, LAPD detective Erin Bell, in the crime drama, and she admitted Kidman "wasn’t afraid" of what she would look like when it came to portraying her damaged character.
Speaking on Collider’s podcast ‘The Witching Hour’, Karyn said: "She [Nicole] would call herself a director-actor and she really believes in that relationship between the director and the actor, and it’s such an incredible thing to experience for me because she certainly didn’t come to this role with any vanity, in fact really made a lot of her choices as an actor for the role about having no vanity and what can that look like.
"In her case, it looks like a lack of self-care, she’s not somebody who sleeps enough anymore, or eats, or drinks water, or does anything to help herself. She just probably drinks too much and lies in the past too much. It was just so cool to work with somebody who wasn’t afraid of what that would look like."
The US filmmaker also confessed that Kidman approached her 10 years after they first met about starring in one of her films, and so the partnership on ‘Destroyer’ became a no-brainer.
Karyn added: "I have to say with Nicole, what’s so interesting about her, is that she makes relationships with directors before she works with them.
"So I was somebody that, we’d met ages ago for ‘Aeon Flux’, [2005] my second film, and she wasn’t available and we had a nice meeting.
"I’d say 10 years after I’d made the invitation she was like, ‘I like your movies I want to meet with you.’
"So we met to talk and chat about what we were up to, and by the time she got the script for the ‘Destroyer’, it was kind of like we’d been in touch and had a relationship so it was easier to have a creative conversation.
"She’s very open, she needs the directors steering, it makes it easier because it’s a partnership from the beginning."
Karyn Kusama says Nicole Kidman had ‘no vanity’ on Destroyer set
