Nicole Kidman

A bleating sheep in a Christmas pageant was her first stage role, which tells you nothing about what she'd become. Dead Calm (1989) was the Australian breakthrough, Days of Thunder got her to Hollywood, and To Die For (1995) turned her from a movie star into an actress. Gus Van Sant's dark comedy about a fame-obsessed aspiring TV personality had real teeth. The Oscar came seven years later for The Hours, where she played Virginia Woolf under a prosthetic nose and a layer of misery that made critics forget they were watching Nicole Kidman.

In 2024, she was the highest-paid actress in the world according to Forbes, pulling in an estimated $31 million. Babygirl, an erotic thriller she led, grossed over $60 million on a $20 million budget and won her Best Actress from the National Board of Review. The Perfect Couple became one of Netflix's most-streamed series that same year. She also became the first Australian to receive the AFI Life Achievement Award. The volume and range of what she's putting out suggests she's competing with herself, not the industry.

She has a phobia of butterflies but not cockroaches, which is the wrong way round for someone who does press tours. Born in Hawaii to Australian parents (her mother was a nursing instructor and feminist activist), she grew up in Sydney handing out political pamphlets. For The Hours, she taught herself to write right-handed to match Virginia Woolf's handwriting. She then wore the film's prosthetic nose out in public during her divorce, and the paparazzi walked past her without recognizing her. That's either method acting or just good problem-solving.