Australian icon Nicole Kidman lamented Sunday the “incredibly low” number of blockbuster films directed by women, revealing she often wakes at 3 a.m. to focus on her own writing.
Speaking at the Cannes Film Festival while accepting the Kering Women In Motion award, Kidman highlighted the persistent gender gap in Hollywood’s top-grossing movies despite her ongoing efforts to support and mentor women-led projects.
Since 2017, Kidman has committed to collaborating with a female director at least once every 18 months, citing the “huge disparity” in opportunities and choices for women behind the camera.
“You would go, ‘OK, could a woman direct this?’ There just wasn’t a number of names that you could consider,” she said.
The Oscar-winning actress confirmed she has worked with 27 female directors since making the pledge eight years ago.
Only seven of the 22 films in the main competition at Cannes this year are directed by women.
But Kidman heaped praise on an early critics’ favorite, Mascha Schilinski’s “The Sound of Falling,” a German-language drama about multigenerational trauma among women on a farm.
“To have ‘Sound of Falling’ heard on the world stage, that’s fantastic,” she said.
Although she ruled out writing her own script, she revealed she frequently wakes during the night to write.
“It’s a very ripe time for things to happen because you’re in that slightly removed state from reality,” she said.
“I wake up and I’ll write something, be it a dream, be it something that’s circulating in my mind.”
