The Australian actress is in two in the running for its top prize, the Palme d´Or, and plays a fashion and music maven in "How to Talk to Girls at Parties" in the official selection.
Kidman also shows her trademark mix of hauteur and vulnerability as a pent-up governess of a Mississippi girls school in Sofia Coppola´s highly touted remake of "The Beguiled".
The film, set against the backdrop of the American Civil War, has Colin Farrell as an injured Union soldier who seduces Kidman´s charges and drives her wild with desire.
She teams up with the Irish actor again in Greek maestro Yorgos Lanthimos´s "The Killing of a Sacred Deer", this time as his wife in the story of a surgeon who gets disastrously drawn into the life of a dysfunctional family.
she has long been a festival favourite, taking a string of arthouse roles even after becoming one of Hollywood´s most bankable stars after her split from her first husband Tom Cruise.It was one of many reinventions that have taken the high-school dropout from Australian teen movies like "BMX Bandits" to the top of her profession.
Kidman has never lacked daring, risking working with the notorious Danish auteur Lars Von Trier, who was later banned from Cannes after saying he was a Nazi.
"One day it would be a fairy tale, the next it a nightmare," she said of working with him on "Dogville". Others told how she had to grin and bear humiliations and mind games on the set.To Die For", which confirmed her as a major talent.
But she had to wait until 2003 for a best actress Oscar for her depiction of tortured novelist Virginia Woolf in Stephen Daldry´s "The Hours".Two more nominations have followed, the latest for "Lion" last year.Its storyline, of a young man from India adopted by an Australian family who searches for his long-lost relatives on Google Earth, resonated with Kidman.She first caught the eye as a 14-year-old in the 1983 Australian television film "Bush Christmas" and won plaudits internationally for the thriller "Dead Calm" in 1989.Her life was transformed the following year when she met "Top Gun" star Cruise on the set of the racetrack romance "Days of Thunder".
The two married in 1991 only to split a decade later in one of Hollywood´s most famous divorces.Once one of the highest-paid stars in Hollywood, she took a step back from acting after falling for Urban.
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