Hello! Magazine has a new exclusive interview with Nicole Kidman, and she comes across as saccharine sweet as she usually does. It’s all roses and classical music in Kidman’s world, and while I find her as fake as her inflated lips, it’s hard to separate out her personality from her public persona. There’s something real in her fakeness, as if she’s not herself without the carefully constructed mask she presents to the world. Anyway Kidman is starring in a new comedy with Adam Sandler and Jennifer Aniston, filming now. She spoke with Hello! about her experiences working in comedy and with her co-stars. She also talked about her home life, with husband Keith Urban and their daughter, Sunday Rose, who turns two in July.

On her fame
“It still blows my mind that I can go to places in the world that I’ve never been and people know who I am. It makes the world feel smaller; it’s a very warm feeling. People love Moulin Rogue! – that always seems to be the movie they mention.”

On her role in UNIFEM
“UNIFEM is my passion in terms of women’s rights and gender equality. They work tirelessly to eradicate violence against women, to make sure laws are either implemented or upheld to protect women and to help every girl in the world to receive an education.

“I was raised by a feminist mother. I want to give back and protect women because if you do that you protect families – most times, women are the heartbeat of the family.”

On her relationship with Keith
“We are making enormous efforts to never be separated for more than three days, and even that is too long. Life’s short…

On her work schedule
“My priority is keeping my family together and not being away from them. We’ve just gone on the road with Keith, and I do a film maybe once a year or once every two years. Before, I used to work non-stop, but I was younger and in a different place.”

On living in Nashville
“I love living there. We’re all about keeping life simple and keeping it simple for our daughter. She just goes to the local kindy [kindergarten]. We don’t buy her a lot of stuff and we donate on her behalf to things.”

On Sunday Rose’s birthday plans for July
“We’re not into big parties. And Mum here will make a birthday cake, ’cause I don’t think you should buy a birthday cake. Birthday cakes are meant to be handmade.”

On her children with Tom, Isabella, 17, and Connor, 15.
“They’ve blossomed into adults now. It is a beautiful thing as a parent to see your children walk elegantly into their adult years.

“To have been given the chance to raise a child again at this age is such a gift. I’m just incredibly grateful.” And more children? “Yes, but it just depends on God.”

On working with Jennifer Aniston
“I’ve been friends with Jen for a while and she’s divine. And Adam and I worked on Saturday Night Live when I was 22 or 23. He just called me up and said ‘Would you do this?’ and I said, ‘Yeah, I would love to come to Maui.'”

[From Hello! Magazine, print edition, June 7, 2010]

I guess Nicole’s interview wasn’t what annoyed me about this piece. It was the way that Hello! crawled up her ass with compliments and endless insignificant details of an event she attended. I didn’t include that part in the quoted text above, but here’s a relevant segment. “Nicole fixes you with her cornflower blue eyes, exuding warmth and good humour with no trace of the ice maiden she is sometimes portrayed as. Her hair, far too blonde for the film Australia, is back to its burnt-copper best and she is a study in elegance for the Omega opening and media interviews.”

In October, 2008, Hello! published segments of Nicole’s “personal” diary, written on the set of Australia when she was pregnant with Sunday. It came across as incredibly maudlin and corny, and ever since I read that I’ve thought of Nicole as this big phony who believed her own hype. Maybe she’s just one of those people who feels things deeply and feels that everything is significant. She does seem happy and in love with life. In terms of how much she’s been working lately, and how she only works once or twice a year, that could be more due to the fact that she’s less in demand than her commitment to her family. I do admire her commitment to UNIFEM and she earned praise from their public affairs director, who explained “We didn’t call [Nicole], she called us. And she said ‘I’m in this for the long haul. There’s a level of passion that shows.”