Chanel
News Articles -
The Production
Latin hunk makes debut
By Sophie Tedmanson, The Australian
23 December 2003
IMAGINE if you could go for a surf before work, then spend the day kissing Nicole Kidman. Then you'd be imagining you are Brazilian actor Rodrigo Santoro.
The Latino heart-throb, who is mobbed when he appears in public in Rio de Janiero but is virtually unknown outside his home country, is in Sydney to star alongside Kidman in an advertising campaign for the Chanel No 5 perfume.
But Santoro, who has won numerous top Brazilian film awards, is more interested in talking about wanting to go surfing at Bells Beach than his Oscar-winning co-star.
"I love it here, it reminds me a lot of Rio - the people, the heat. When I stepped off the plane I felt totally at home," Santoro told The Australian while on a break from filming at Fox Studios yesterday.
"And I love the beaches, it's so beautiful. I like that Australians are so easygoing. They like to enjoy the day, that's just like my life in Brazil. I do a lot of sports, go to the beach, do a bit of surfing. I like to enjoy life."
And what a life it is.
Today, the 28-year-old will finish work on the theatrical commercial, which is being filmed at the studios by Australian director Baz Luhrmann, who is also a good mate of Kidman's.
The actors have worked more than 12 hours a day for the past four days to complete the Chanel campaign, reported to have a budget of more than $14 million and including a Moulin
Rouge-esque scene where Kidman and Santoro kiss passionately.
Santoro, who was hand-picked by Luhrmann to play Kidman's leading man, said it was "a dream come true" to work with the Australian director.
"I'm just his biggest fan," Santoro said.
"I've been the biggest fan of him since (Luhrmann's 1992 breakthrough film) Strictly Ballroom. I think he's a genius. I love the way he tells a story; it's really unique."
He described Kidman as "a very talented actress. She's lovely, so down to earth".
And what of stealing balcony kisses with her in front of the camera for the romantic commercials?
Santoro remained silent, but, with a sly smile, agreed: "Yes, the film is romantic."
He said he hoped the Chanel campaign would help boost his international profile.
While he has appeared in countless Brazilian films, TV shows and theatre productions over the past decade, his latest parts in the British romantic comedy Love Actually, where he plays the love interest of Laura
Linney, and Charlie's Angels 2: Full Throttle, where he shares a beach scene alongside a bikini-clad Cameron Diaz, have helped people outside Brazil take notice.
But for now Santoro is savouring the chance to surf between takes.
"I just take the experience I'm having right now as it is, and this," he said, gesturing to the Sydney skyline, "has been really awesome."
________________________________
Operation Chanel No. 5
By Christine Sams, The Sun-Herald
22 December 2003
Nicole Kidman has posed among fake paparazzi for her glamorous advertisements for Chanel No. 5, filmed in Sydney yesterday and Friday.
But even as Kidman was posing for the "fake" photographers, two of them were kicked off set for trying to take real photos of the Oscar-winning star.
The Sun-Herald has obtained the first details about Kidman's Chanel commercial being filmed by director Baz Luhrmann in Sydney, despite intense security surrounding the set.
Insiders have revealed first details of the shoot, including Kidman's stunning outfits, the grand sets used by Luhrmann and the intrigue surrounding two extras kicked off set. They have also revealed the actor may have been expecting regular phone calls on set from singer Lenny
Kravitz.
"Crew members have openly discussed the possibility that Lenny would call during the shoot," said one insider. She hinted that crew members believed Kidman would remain in good spirits during the shoot if she received a call from
Kravitz.
Scenes shot by Luhrmann on Friday included Kidman walking down a grand staircase, mobbed by paparazzi.
Luhrmann's set recreated the red staircase scene from the movie Gentlemen Prefer Blondes. But instead of Marilyn Monroe's pink satin dress, Kidman appears clad in a black evening gown designed by Karl Lagerfield - surrounded by lunging male photographers.
"It looks like she is being stalked by the paparazzi," an insider on the set said.
As part of the advertisement, Kidman stares directly into the camera as the paparazzi flashes ignite around her. Luhrmann also used strobe lighting along the staircase to add to the effects.
It was one of two scenes revealed by set insiders yesterday.
The other set recreates the look and feel of a Parisian apartment balcony with a giant Chanel billboard in the background. Yesterday Kidman posed on the balcony and passionately kissed Brazilian star Rodrigo Santoro , who also stars in the campaign. "It is very Moulin Rouge, very Baz Luhrmann," the source said.
Kidman was filmed posing in front of the billboard yesterday, wearing a black Chanel suit jacket, a white shirt and black shorts. Her trademark curls were tied in a loose ponytail.
The shoot has been surrounded in secrecy, with Chanel executives keen to keep details and even the location a secret. But details have quickly emerged of the superstar's $12 million campaign.
Even amid her top-secret poses, it seems Kidman could not escape the prying lenses which characterise much of her everyday life.
Two people were thrown off the set on Friday after being caught trying to take photographs of Kidman.
Both were paid extras in the paparazzi scene, who were found to have substituted their prop cameras for real ones to try to get pictures of the actor.
The shoot was temporarily stopped by Luhrmann while one extra was escorted from the studio. The circumstances surrounding the second person evicted from the set remain a mystery, but they were also trying to photograph Kidman.
Luhrmann, who calls Kidman "NK", has directed the shoot dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and a peaked cap sitting backward. The director, who worked with Kidman for Moulin Rouge in 2001, is said to be relishing the opportunity to work with his friend again.
"He works really well with Nicole and is very relaxed about the whole thing," the insider said.
"She [Kidman] is really nice and is so switched on."
The shoot is expected to continue at Fox Studios in Moore Park today.
________________________________
(This article does not mention the Chanel ad, but gives an insight into the life of Kidman at the end of 2003)
Nicole Kidman bounces back
By Terry Lawson, The Sun Herald
22 December 2003
LOS ANGELES - This is hard to imagine. Twenty years of Nicole Kidman.
"I know, I know, they'll soon be calling me 'veteran actor Nicole Kidman,'" said the woman who first went public at age 16 in 1983, playing a checkout girl in an Australian teen movie called
"BMX Bandits."
"Some days I really feel like one, too," Kidman said, "but these past couple of years, there has been this feeling, I'm not sure exactly how to describe it . . . a freshness, I suppose. Whatever it is, I don't want it to disappear."
Two years ago, Kidman said, she was in severe pain, emotionally -- following her divorce from Tom Cruise -- and physically, a consequence of a knee injury she called debilitating.
"Without sounding too dramatic about it, I really did think there was a possibility I would never act again," Kidman said.
She credited her mother and father, as well as her children, with her recovery. "Among the many blessings of motherhood is the one that refuses to allow you to worry only about yourself," she said.
With heart and knee on the mend, Kidman threw herself into work, earning her first Academy Award nomination for "Moulin Rouge," making a surprise box office hit out of the thriller "The Others" and then taking the role of Virginia Woolf in "The Hours," a decision that resulted in a best actress Oscar.
It now seems likely Kidman will be nominated for another, for playing Ada, a pampered minister's daughter forced to learn to survive in the Civil War drama "Cold Mountain," opening Thursday.
How Kidman got to "Cold Mountain" is a story in itself. The short version is that when Charles Frazier's novel was published, she found herself lost in the tale of a wounded Confederate deserter who walks away from a hospital to return to Cold Mountain, N.C., where
Ada, whom he barely knows but loves intensely, is, he hopes, waiting.
"I would read passages from the book to Tom," she said, "and then I gave it to him and said, 'You really should consider doing this. This is a great story, and a great role.' "
Cruise took Kidman's advice and was expected to make the movie with Anthony
Minghella, director of "The English Patient" and "The Talented Mr. Ripley." But after a year of developing the project, Cruise walked away.
Cruise's departure meant Minghella could offer the role of Ada to Kidman, while hiring his leading man from "Ripley," Jude Law, for the part of the war-haunted soldier Inman. He also recruited Renee Zellweger to play Ruby, a poor, spunky drifter who helps turn Ada from a sad case into a survivor.
"I had probably envisioned Julianne Moore as Ada when I was reading the book," says Kidman, "But I admit that I had given thought to how I would play her if I had the opportunity. And as it happened, my ideas and Anthony's were pretty much in sync."
Kidman's sole concern, she says, was the length of time she would have to spend in Romania, where much of the movie was shot in an attempt to keep the budget down.
"Tom and I have joint custody, so I was able to have the kids (Isabella, who turns 11 this week, and 8-year-old Connor) with me for part of the 6 1/2 months we were shooting. And it turned out Romania was very beautiful, as you see from the film, although the work was so intense we didn't have time to explore. Renee and I spent a lot of time cooking and getting to know each other."
Power player
If you trust Entertainment Weekly's annual "Power List," Kidman is now the most powerful female actor in Hollywood, above even Julia Roberts. "She's an excellent actor who also opens movies," says producer Sydney Pollack. "There aren't that many of those, so she's in a pretty great position right now."
Kidman laughs off the power ranking, but says she does finally feel the freedom to do "the parts I gravitate to naturally, which usually tend towards literary adaptations" like "Cold Mountain" and "The Human Stain."
"It means that I can do something like 'Dogville' if I want without worrying it could kill my career."
"Dogville" is an experimental drama from director Lars von Trier in which Kidman plays a woman on the run from the mob who is harbored by the citizens of a small town in Colorado in the 1930s. When it premiered this spring at Cannes, some thought it brilliant, others taxing.
Kidman had originally agreed to play the same character in two subsequent films, but later decided she couldn't commit that long. "I have too many other things I want to do," she said.
"She's making excellent choices," says her "Moulin Rouge" director, Baz Luhrmann, who wants her to play
Olympias, the mother of Alexander the Great, in his biography that would star Leonardo
DiCaprio. "And she's not being timid, either. She's being smart."
Kidman decided against playing the starring role in "Catwoman," leaving that job to another Oscar winner, Halle Berry. She says she knew it was risky accepting the part of an uneducated cleaning woman who becomes the lover of erudite Anthony Hopkins in "The Human Stain" but that she loved Philip Roth's book and the character.
"I obviously wish the film had found a larger audience, but I don't regret taking the chance," Kidman says.
What's to come
Aside from "Dogville," Kidman has two more films in the can, awaiting release next year: What she describes as a more antic take on the feminist parable "The Stepford Wives" and "Birth," a thriller in which she plays a woman convinced that her dead husband's soul now resides in a 10-year-old boy.
Although she has resisted getting involved in lightweight romantic comedy, Kidman finally agreed to play happily married-and-mischievous witch Samantha in a feature version of the old television series "Bewitched."
"I'm going to do it with Will Ferrell," she says happily. "Have you seen 'Elf?' He's so good. I knew he was funny, but I didn't know he could be so sweet.
"And, he's tall," says Kidman, who is officially 5-foot-10 but who stands nose-to-nose with her interviewer, who is more than 6 feet tall.
"I just don't think most romantic comedies are very romantic, and I'm the biggest sap I know," says Kidman. "I am ridiculously romantic, and while I don't consider it a character flaw, it's something I have to always keep in account. It may have something to do with my parents, who will be celebrating their 40th anniversary over the holidays."
It also accounts, she says, for the veil of secrecy she has attempted to draw around her current love life, one which precludes her from commenting on reports that she and singer Lenny Kravitz are dating or even engaged.
On this day, she is wearing nothing resembling an engagement ring and says while she understands the interest in who's doing what with whom, she is determined to keep what private life she may have just that.
"This is the God's honest truth," says Kidman. "I could not survive again what I did before, I know I couldn't. I cannot have another relationship that becomes public property. I'm not a controlling person, but this is something I have to try to control for my own health and well-being and for my family.
"I love them, and at the moment, I'm loving me. That's all anybody needs to see."
________________________________
Kidman new face of Chanel No 5
The Age.com.au
24 October 2003
Oscar-winning Australian actress Nicole Kidman will be the new face of the iconic fragrance Chanel No 5 in an advertising campaign created by her Moulin Rouge director Baz Luhrmann, Chanel announced.
Kidman was chosen "because she represents a unique standard of elegance and embodies the spirit and modernity of
Chanel," the venerable French fashion house said in a statement.
The television commercials and print ads featuring the 36-year-old actress and produced by Luhrmann will be launched worldwide in the northern autumn next year.
The terms and length of Kidman's contract with Chanel were not revealed.
Chanel No 5, created in 1921, remains the best-selling perfume in the world, according to the label.
Coco Chanel herself was the first spokesmodel for the fragrance, followed by actresses like Catherine
Deneuve, Ali MacGraw, Candice Bergen and Carole Bouquet.
Marilyn Monroe became perhaps the best ambassador for the perfume, albeit without a contract, when she told journalists that she slept in nothing more than a few drops of Chanel No 5.
Kidman's name has been circulated for months as the likely new face of Chanel.
When asked about the prospect following his couture presentation for the house in July, designer Karl Lagerfeld admitted he would love to have Kidman on board, noting: "She's the best of the best."
Kidman won the best actress Oscar in March for her portrayal of British author Virginia Woolf in The Hours, a role for which she donned a prosthetic nose and dyed her hair, making the glamorous star barely recognisable.
________________________________
