BABYGIRL Star Nicole Kidman for British GQ Magazine

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BABYGIRL star Nicole Kidman covers the latest issue of British GQ magazine photographed by Felix Cooper and styled by Katie Eleanor Grand.

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Four decades into her career, the Oscar-winning actress has become prestige TV’s most reliable hitmaker. So why did she fight to make a hot, sweaty indie movie about BDSM and the liberation of female pleasure? She felt like she didn’t have a choice.

BABYGIRL explores the inner musings of a 50-something tech CEO in the midst of a BDSM-tinged affair with a 20-something intern. The movie opens with a fake orgasm. In the first of many close-ups of Kidman’s face, as happily married but sexually unfulfilled Romy, she is breathing heavily, letting out soft moans. And then Romy dismounts her husband, walks into another room, lies flat on her stomach, plays some “Daddy” porn, sticks her hands down her pants and bites her jumper to muffle her moans as she takes herself to an actual orgasm. In Kidman’s words, the depth of the sex scenes feels like the stuff of “home videos”.

She doesn’t like to analyse her work too much (“The dissecting becomes icky. It feels a bit up yourself or something… Do you have that term here, ‘up yourself’?”). But while she feels a little queasy about labelling her process as “method”, she agrees that is probably the most accurate word for it. “I’m willing to go to whatever place to make it real and deep,” she says, “and certain things just click and it’s cellular.”

“I made it because in my body of work, I needed to do this,” she says. “It’s part of what I do. I’ve never shied away from sexuality on screen, ever… [Reijn] wanted to make a film about liberation, female pleasure. And I wanted to do that! I wanted to do that. ’Cause I’ve done a lot of films where I’ve been punished. I’ve done those films where you really don’t get the pleasure from it. Where you don’t get to see the woman actually go…” She exhales deeply here, a sigh signifying a release of tension. “A lot of times these films are very punishing. The woman gets discarded in the end or she gets turned around and she has to beg on her knees.”

[Photo Credit: Felix Cooper/GQ UK Magazine]

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