Nicole Kidman, who ‘makes movies better,’ gets AFI Life Achievement Award

Nicole Kidman receives AFI Life Achievement Award with heartfelt tributes from Hollywood stars and colleagues

Morgan Freeman spoke the words, but pretty much everyone who took the stage at the presentation of the AFI Life Achievement Award agreed: Nicole Kidman. She makes movies better.

The line came in a video parody of Kidman’s AMC Theatres “We Make Movies Better” ad that opened the Saturday night ceremony at the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood. It got huge laughs from the crowd of multigenerational A-listers there to honor the 40-year career of the 56-year-old Australian that has included roles in Moulin Rouge, Eyes Wide Shut, and an Oscar-winning turn in The Hours.

Meryl Streep, Kidman’s The Hours co-star who presented to Streep the Life Achievement Award that she won herself in 2004, got laughs nearly as big when, in a mock-boastful voice, described the hardest part of being “incessantly called the greatest actress of my generation.”

It’s when you come up against someone else who is “really, really, really, really, really, really great” and you realize they did things you couldn’t do, as happened with Kidman the first day they worked together on the HBO series Big Little Lies, Streep said.

Streep and their Big Little Lies co-star Reese Witherspoon both did spot-on, Australian-accented impressions of Kidman that had the audience in stitches.

Streep also drew tears from Kidman when describing what she believed motivated her. “People call it bravery when an actress bares all and leaps off into the unknown and she dives deep into the darker parts of what it is to be a human being,” Streep said. “But I don’t think it’s bravery. I think it’s love. I think she just loves it.”

Kidman teared up for the first time in the evening when her husband and fellow Australian, singer Keith Urban, said she showed him “what love in action really looks like” when his substance abuse problems emerged almost immediately after they wed in 2006. “Four months into our marriage, I’m in rehab for three months,” Urban said, looking at Kidman where she sat on a dais with their two daughters and other family. “Nic pushed through every negative voice, I’m sure even some of her own, and she chose love. And here we are 18 years later.”