Nicole Kidman feels haunted by the icy specter of mortality, and it fills her with terror. If that sounds relatable to you, carry on…
Late this summer, Nicole Kidman’s mother passed away at 84.
Now, she reveals, the thought of her own finite lifespan occupies her thoughts.
She’s embracing her emotions — including the mortal dread that has her waking up crying at night.
It’s beyond understandable that Nicole Kidman is thinking a lot about death
On Monday, November 18, GQ published a new interview with beloved actress and AMC meme queen Nicole Kidman.
While many feel that their emotional regulation improves after adolescence, she shared that she has begun to embrace her emotional highs and lows now that she’s in her 50s.
According to Kidman, these feelings are “even more” close to the surface now than they have been in the past.
“Mortality. Connection. Life coming and hitting you,” Nicole Kidman listed as emotions that she feels with a keen intensity.
“And [the] loss of parents and raising children and marriage and all of the things that go into making you a fully sentient human,” she continued.
“I’m in all of those places,” Kidman acknowledged. “So life is, whew. It’s definitely a journey.”
Her own mortality wakes Nicole Kidman in the night
“And it hits you as you get older how … it’s a wake up at 3 a.m. crying and gasping kind of thing,” the 57-year-old characterized.
“If you’re in it and not numbing yourself to it,” Nicole Kidman said of her mortality.
“And I’m in it,” she then affirmed. “Fully in it.”
In September, Nicole Kidman’s mother passed away. Janelle was 84 years old.
At the time, Kidman left the Venice International Film Festival early and flew home to Australia.
She won best actress at that festival, but could not accept the award in person. She did, however, dedicate the award to her mother.
Mortal dread is a very common emotion
Though many people spend their youth feeling all but indestructible, humans have a tragically finite lifespan. Experience with losing loved ones, feeling one’s body change over time, and even near-death experiences can help people to understand their own mortality.
Many hope that human immortality is just around the corner through some technological breakthrough. It would be nice, though the tech industry seems more dedicated to churning out AI slop than in digitizing human consciousness.
But for Nicole Kidman, her fixation on mortality may have more to do with processing the grief of losing her mother. Fearing death is sensible. But, sometimes, the palpable dread is more about those we’ve already lost.
