Nicole Kidman Lambasted by Bitter Writer in 'Australia' Review

A Times Online writer rips Nicole Kidman a new one in the epic, Australia. (20th Century Fox Image)"]

I think we can all agree that actress Nicole Kidman can be hit and miss. There were the tragedies like Fur, Birth and The Invasion - but there were also successes like To Die For, The Others, Moulin Rouge and The Hours. However, perhaps for Kidman, starring in Baz Luhrmann's epic was an attempt to breathe positive life into a career that has seen, most recently, more valleys than peaks. However, a Times Online columnist Melanie Reid doesn't let Kidman off that easy - holding no punches when it comes to the actress. With an obvious loathing for Kidman, Reid provides what could go down as the most scathing critique of an actor's performance ever published.

Reid writes, "Australia the movie, however, has one huge problem. It stars Nicole Kidman. Big mistake. Big, big mistake. At a stroke, the world's female cinemagoers will say as one: 'I'm not going to see it if she's in it.'

"Kidman is one of those women who turns other women off. And no, not just because she's pretty and we're jealous. It is because we perceive, and men don't, that she's one of the most overrated actors in the world, a woman who has been the kiss of death in practically every movie she has starred in.

"Kidman is exquisitely accomplished at being awful. Did anyone see Cold Mountain? The sweeping American epic (note: another epic) foundered on the rocks of her gormless mirror-gaze. She can't act. Instead, she drifts around films like a lost porcelain doll, looking frozen, brittle and vapid, staring at the camera with her oh-golly-look-how-I'm-looking-interesting blue eyes. "

Now we'll admit that Kidman's excessive addiction Botox isn't exactly helping her acting career, and that yeah - she's made a stinker or two - but for Reid to be so bold as to state that "the world's female cinemagoers" will balk when they find out Kidman is in a movie - well, the sweeping generalizations are probably not good for Reid's writing career.