Interview by: Alysa Salzberg
AlysaSalzberg@TheCinemaSource.com

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A top-billed star who has the adulation of fans and critics alike (not to mention the fashion world), it seems like Nicole Kidman can do no wrong. She's worked with some of the most respected directors in the business, from Stanley Kubrick, to Baz Luhrmann, and has played roles as diverse as a suicidal modernist writer and a stubborn Irish landowner. In her personal life, after a messy divorce from Tom Cruise, Kidman seems to have soared in the self-esteem department, and has been linked to hotties like Lenny Kravitz. She loves her kids and sees them often, and attends parties, premiers, and awards shows, nearly always looking elegant.

Now starring in Frank Oz's remake of The Stepford Wives, Kidman's latest role has her playing a woman who's turned into a 'perfect' domestic goddess, thanks to some radical rewiring.

All this got me thinking. Sure, Nicole seems practically perfect in real life, but how does she hold up to a Stepford Wife'

1. A Stepford Wife keeps to a routine, and maintains calm and balance in her husband's life.

Acting is Nicole's profession, but she has no formula that determines what part she'll play next (incidentally, she's just decided to co-star opposite Stepford's Matthew Broderick once again in another remake ' The Producers.). On choosing roles, the actress explains, 'I say 'yes' to things that come my way that I feel strongly about. I don't know, I read scripts and I respond to them.'

2. A Stepford Wife sees her life as perfect.

Of her own life, Nicole says, 'I suppose what I grapple with is I still haven't learnt how to balance [work with a romantic relationship]....At some stage I would love to have another child, I would love to settle into a relationship that was really important to me.'

3. A Stepford Wife cultivates her home and her property, giving her man a place to rest in peace and cleanliness when he gets home from a hard day at work.

As for Nicole, 'I don't have a place where I live live. I travel around. Which is a strange thing at my age, to be just...a gypsy. It is strange, and it seems to make people a little uncomfortable at times, when you say 'No, I don't really have a home.''

4. A Stepford Wife is flawless.

Says Nicole, 'I'm nowhere near perfect, and am not ever trying to be.' This goes for others, too: 'Actually,' the actress avows, 'the thing that I find most attractive in people is their flaws and their imperfections.'

5. A Stepford Wife is sure to make a family-related event run smoothly.

Recounts Kidman: 'I had a terrible situation, where I had this American Cinemath'que thing, and [my kids] were desperate to come....[so] I took them to this thing, and they showed clips from Eyes Wide Shut. I was like, 'That's it, get under the table!''

6. Maybe most importantly, a Stepford Wife must always look beautiful.

'I don't know if it's about 'perfect,'' Nicole reflects. 'I mean, as an actress, when you go down the red carpet...I think in a way it's honoring the history of that, and you dress for that, and you enjoy it in a way....In a way you're saying, it's nice to put on a beautiful dress and feel good. At the same time, on screen, I don't feel the need to have to always depict perfection.'

It seems that, for better or for worse, Nicole is anything but a robot. So, how does the actress define herself as a person' Compared to her confident, power-hungry character at the start of the Stepford Wives, 'I have a lot more insecurities,' she says.

Maybe this is because of the way she claims to view her position in Hollywood. Though one of the most popular and respected actresses of recent years, Nicole says, 'I don't see myself as terribly powerful or successful, I see myself more as just absolutely loving what I do. And with that has come all of the other things that you sort of deal with in relation to it. I love to act. I love to...have the opportunity to play an array of women who are sort of fascinating, complicated. That's a dream as an actress....It's more about just having the blessings at the moment to do some things creatively, and to express things that I have going on inside my head.'

Okay, so she's not perfect. But what would her perfect man be like' 'I don't want 'perfect,'' Nicole replies. 'I think the discovery of someone is the fun thing, and the discovery of, you know, the things that somebody else might think are appalling [but that] you think are really cute....I don't know what I'm looking for. I suppose it's the mystery, isn't it' I like the mystery.'

Simultaneously loving beauty and appreciating imperfections seems terribly inconsistent. But, then, Kidman is only human.