Nicole Kidman Takes On The Hours Prosthetic Critics: ‘Whatever’

Nicole Kidman is shrugging off the debate around whether or not she deserved the Oscar she won more than two decades ago.

In 2003, the Australian star picked up the Best Actress prize at the Academy Awards for her performance as Virginia Wolf in the star-studded movie The Hours.

Ever since, there’s been a lot of debate about this win, with some claiming much of the acclaim for Nicole’s role in The Hours centred around the transformative prosthetic she wore, rather than her actual acting performance.

During a recent interview with Variety, Nicole was asked about the suggestion that the Oscar win was her “being rewarded for being a beautiful woman who made herself less so for her art”.

“Whatever,” Nicole responded. “People are always going to say whatever.”

She insisted: “The performance was there. [Costume designer] Ann Roth, [director] Stephen Daldry and [screenwriter] David Hare all agreed they wanted Virginia to have a different profile than mine.

“My profile is very distinct, and it needed to be different. I have a very particular nose. I like when I’m able to change up my appearance, as someone trained to be a character actor.

“Some people are employed to look and be exactly themselves. I’ve been trained as a character actor, so therefore when I’m working, I’m not here to be Nicole. On a talk show, I am, but not in a film or play or TV show. If that means changing my physical appearance? Of course. You have to walk differently, breathe differently, talk differently. The timbre of your voice has to change. All of the internal mechanisms affect the external.”

Nicole has five Oscar nominations to her name, three of which came after her win for The Hours.

In 2011, she was nominated for her work in John Cameron Mitchell’s Rabbit Hole, followed by nods for her performances in Lion and Being The Ricardos in 2017 and 2022, respectively.