Nicole Kidman is known for completely immersing herself in the characters she plays but her most recent project, “The Undoing,” really took a toll on her physical and mental health.
The Oscar-winner, 53, admitted that playing Grace, whose husband is on trial for murder, in the HBO drama created a “disquietness” to her personality.
“Suddenly, I was in this place. There was sort of a disquietness to my personality where I was uneasy, and there was duress on who I was,” Kidman explained on an episode of the “WTF With Marc Maron” podcast.
“I actually got really sick [in the middle of filming],” she revealed. “I think this is a big thing that happens to actors. I went down for a week, because your immune system doesn’t know the difference between acting and truth when you’re doing those [draining roles].”
The “Big Little Lies” star added how she tried to keep her work separate from her family life but couldn’t develop “a technique to tell my brain and my body, ‘Oh, this is just acting.'”
Kidman plays Grace, a wealthy mother and wife living in New York City, whose husband (Hugh Grant) is on trial for murder.
(HBO)
“I haven’t learned to clean that out. It doesn’t really work for me,” she described. “I go home and I don’t sleep well, and I’m not well. … It’s that disturbing for me.”
Kidman previously said her husband, Keith Urban, and daughters, Sunday, 12, and Faith, 9, helped “bring her back to reality” while playing Grace, who was “very taxing.”
NICOLE KIDMAN SAYS KEITH URBAN, KIDS BROUGHT HER ‘BACK TO REALITY’ AFTER ‘TAXING’ ROLE
“You’ve got to have laughs when you’re doing stuff like this. Otherwise, it’s just too harrowing,” the Emmy winner told Australia’s “Sunrise” morning show. “I almost work from a deeper place now and thus it’s very taxing at times.”
Luckily, Kidman said her family was able to live in New York with her while she worked.
“My family was with me, and just to have my little girls, and Keith, and have dinner with them brings immediate reality back. Suddenly the boundaries get set,” she described.
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Kidman called being with family “that place where I can breathe and feel me.”
“Keith provides an enormous amount of that and hopefully we provide that for him when he’s on tour because that’s the benefit of having a family that’s tight,” she gushed.