Counting every music video, TV show, and movie, Nicole Kidman has amassed somewhere in the region of 100 credits over the course of her incomparable career. It’s a body of work that now spans over four decades—not that anyone could tell. She is, in many ways, the reigning queen of cinema. When Kidman says that “heartbreak feels good in a place like this,” we listen.
With five more projects scheduled for release in 2026, there’s no sign of the actor slowing down. But for now, we’ve whittled that daunting back catalogue down to some of her best role. Here are the 10 best Nicole Kidman movies, ranked in ascending order, and where to watch them online.
The Hours (2002)
With its Pulitzer Prize winning source material, literary themes, Miramax backing, and relentless Philip Glass score, The Hours might be the most egregious example of Oscar bait this side of the millennium. Still, despite some stronger nominations over the years, it remains Kidman’s only win at the Academy Awards. The film focuses on three different women (Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore round out a formidable cast) in three different eras, but Kidman’s performance as Virginia Woolf stands out—even in spite of the infamous prosthetic nose.
The Killing of a Sacred Deer (2017)
After a bold turn in Park Chan-wook’s Stoker in 2013, Kidman spent a few years making middlebrow fare before a string of interesting choices in the later part of the decade. This began in 2017, a year in which the actor appeared in Jane Campion’s Top of The Lake and Sofia Coppola’s The Beguiled. Best of all was her incredible turn opposite a young Barry Keoghan—including one hair-raising sequence in which she kisses the young actor’s feet—in Greek weird-waver Yorgos Lanthimos’s The Killing of a Sacred Deer that left the most indelible mark. As Anna, the increasingly desperate matriarch of a family terrorized by Keoghan’s possibly telekinetic sociopath, Kidman gives a performance of daring commitment.
Margot at the Wedding (2007)
The late ‘00s was not a golden era for Nicole Kidman, with extravagant productions like Nine, Australia and The Golden Compass failing to connect with audiences. One movie that stands out from that unusual period is Margot at The Wedding, in which Kidman played the title role. A writer returning home for her sister’s nuptials, Margot is self-involved to the point of being cruel, but Kidman, in a wonderfully against-type performance, treats her as a human being and makes her almost empathetic. Noah Baumbach’s follow-up to The Squid and the Whale is still his most challenging film, but it’s a challenge that the actor rises to.
The Paperboy (2012)
Say what you want about Keoghan’s feet or Harris Dickinson’s glass of milk, The Paperboy still feels like Kidman’s most notorious role. The plot follows a reporter (Matthew McConaughey) covering a story about an alligator hunter who finds himself on death row for killing a corrupt cop. Kidman plays a woman hoping to marry the doomed man once he’s been exonerated. Along the way, she catches the eye of the reporter’s brother, played by Zac Efron. The film has attained cult status, but audiences at the time didn’t quite know what to make of the age gap between Kidman and Efron, not least the moment when her character urinated on his jellyfish sting. Were it released today, the memes would be unavoidable.
The Others (2001)
Kidman’s admirable sense of adventure over the course of her career has led to her working not only in a wide variety of genres but also with an enviable range of filmmakers. It’s especially endearing how often she’s lent that star power to international directors looking to make the jump to English language filmmaking. We’ve already mentioned Lanthimos and Chan-wook on this list, but Alejandro Amenábar deserves credit for giving Kidman a lead role and letting her run with it. In his mid-century gothic horror The Others, Kidman plays a mother of two photosensitive kids who start to believe their house is haunted. Kidman’s committed performance would earn her one of two Golden Globe nominations the following year. More on the other one very shortly.
Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
Even without knowledge of her highly publicized divorce from Tom Cruise, there would still be so much to unpack about Kidman’s wonderfully strange performance in Eyes Wide Shut. As the wife of Cruise’s libidinally entranced New York doctor, Kidman is at her most alluring and elusive. The movie was Stanley Kubrick’s last as director (he died a few weeks before the premier) and took a record 100 days to film, a detail that makes Kidman and Cruise’s unusually stilted line readings all the more interesting to examine. The sequence in which Kidman dances to “Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing” in front of a mirror remains one of her most iconic.
Moulin Rouge! (2001)
Newly single and sitting atop the UK charts (for a duet with Robbie Williams), Kidman ended 2001 on a song, but the best was still to come. A few months earlier, she enjoyed her first of many red carpet premieres at the Cannes Film Festival as the star of Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge!, in which she dazzled as Satine, a singer at the famous Parisian nightclub who catches the eye of Ewan McGregor’s broke poet. The role earned Kidman her first nomination for Best Actress at the 2002 Academy Awards, where she eventually lost to Halle Berry. Monster’s Ball might have won that battle, but Luhrmann’s musical undoubtedly won the war.
To Die For (1995)
How’s this for a sliding doors moment: The first great film in the Kidman-verse was originally offered to Meg Ryan, but, for some reason, the When Harry Met Sally actor turned it down. What luck. By 1995, Kidman had achieved fame with roles in Days of Thunder and Far and Away, playing opposite her future husband Tom Cruise, but it was Gus Van Sant’s To Die For that took her career to the next level. Working on a script from Hollywood heavyweight Buck Henry, who had been inspired by the then budding concept of televised courtroom trials, Kidman steals the show as a woman who is willing to do whatever it takes to become famous.
Dogville (2003)
Few actors have enjoyed the kind of run that Nicole Kidman went on at the beginning of the century. Two years on from the success of Moulin Rouge!, and just months after winning Best Actress at the Oscars, Kidman returned to Cannes, in competition for the first time, with Lars von Trier’s Dogville: a Brechtian production with barely any sets that left the actors with everything to do. The cast contained Lauren Bacall, James Caan, Stellan Skarsgård, Ben Gazzara, and Patricia Clarkson, but Kidman more than held her own. For further confirmation of her 2003 aura, check out the footage of her sparking up a cig with Skarsgård during the film’s press conference in Cannes, a moment of pure, messy, ‘00s swag.
Birth (2004)
It feels kind of strange putting Birth on the top of this list given how much it borrows from Eyes Wide Shut, but then again, so much of Jonathan Glazer’s early work owes a debt to Stanley Kubrick. Regardless, more than 20 years since its release, Birth remains a uniquely beguiling film. Kidman plays a wealthy New York widow who is visited on her birthday by a 10-year-old boy who claims to be her dead husband. (Can you imagine how jealous M. Night Shyamalan must have been of that idea?) Kidman, resplendent in a pixie cut, carries the film’s provocative sense of wonder in her fleeting expressions. The slow zoom shot at the opera, during which the actor’s face does an agonized dance between fear, panic, and ecstatic acceptance, is the best moment so far in her storied career.
Where To Watch The 10 Best Nicole Kidman Movies
To discover more about TV shows and movies currently streaming in the UK, check out the JustWatch streaming guide! You can filter your search by streaming service, genre, price, age rating, and score. Be sure to build your watchlist and receive helpful notifications on what to watch next based on your preferences!
