Nicole Kidman ‘really wanted’ Julia Roberts’ part in Notting Hill: ‘But I wasn’t well known enough’

Oscar winner Nicole Kidman revealed on Tuesday that she coveted the part of hot-tempered American movie star Anna Scott in Roger Michell’s 1999 rom-com Notting Hill.

‘I really wanted the role that Julia Roberts played in Notting Hill,’ the 51-year-old Hawaiian-born Australian confessed to Hugh Grant via Zoom on September 22 for Marie Claire.

‘Yeah, I did. But I wasn’t well known enough, and I wasn’t talented enough.’   

Both the 60-year-old Englishman and the 52-year-old Oscar winner scored Golden Globe nominations for their performances as bookstore owner William Thacker and his famous girlfriend Anna.

But Hugh and Julia were ultimately upstaged by Rhys Ifans as William’s wild and eccentric housemate Spike.

Regardless, Nicole was technically busy shooting the late great Stanley Kubrick’s final film Eyes Wide Shut with her then husband Tom Cruise between 1996-1998.

21 years later, Kidman and Grant teamed up for the first time ever to portray married couple Jonathan & Grace Fraser in the six-episode miniseries The Undoing, which premieres October 25 on HBO.  

The Big Little Lies producer-star and The Gentlemen actor originally met ‘in their 20s’ over dinner at The Ivy in London while she was still married to Cruise and he was dating Elizabeth Hurley.

Now the acting pair – who have four children from two spouses, respectively – marveled over how much his wife Anna Eberstein and her second husband Keith Urban enjoyed The Undoing.

‘She loved the whole series. And she hates everything I’ve ever been in,’ Hugh noted.

‘Do you know what my wife said? What she noticed is, “Oh, they [cast] are all so hot!” I think that’s either a [director Susanne Bier] thing, or maybe it’s you as a [executive] producer. She fancies every man and every woman in it.’  

The David E. Kelley penned-drama – based on Jean Hanff Korelitz’s 2014 novel You Should Have Known – features Matilda De Angelis, Édgar Ramírez, Lily Rabe, and Donald Sutherland.

‘Keith loved the whole series, and he is brutally honest,’ Nicole said.

‘He didn’t fall asleep. He just kept saying, “When can I watch the next one?” And I kept saying, “Well, not tonight, not tonight,” and [he] kept begging for another one, which was kind of nice.’

After Grant threatened to quit acting, Kidman had to convince him to be her onscreen leading man in the upcoming drama, which currently holds an 83% critic approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes.    

‘I mean, you’ve done a lot of very serious acting in your life. I haven’t. I was more worried about making silly little jokes work,’ the Golden Globe winner explained.

‘And I don’t know which is worse, more stressful: to try and keep something light when you’re, you know, in the 14th hour of filming in some location where you’re losing the light and everyone’s in a panic, or whether it’s trying to summon up emotions.

‘It was watching Meryl Streep, when I did that [film] Florence Foster Jenkins, and she said, “I made a promise to myself. I’ll never do an emotional scene where I haven’t actually gotten myself into the emotion first.” I thought, Christ, that’s a big ask. (laughs) But I did try. And you definitely do it.’