Million dollar smile ... Kidman. Photograph: Gareth Cattermole
Judged on the size of her bank balance, Nicole Kidman is the most popular movie actress in the world. The 39-year-old tops this year's annual power list in the Hollywood Reporter thanks to a current "asking price" of $17m (£8.6m) a picture. Now admittedly, any idiot off the street can have an asking price of $17m a picture; the difference with Nicole is that she actually gets it.
So Kidman wafts to the throne, all those noughts trailing behind her like a train. And yet there are a few niggling questions snapping, metaphorically, at her heels. Such as: why is she worth so much after a recent run of box office duds (Stepford Wives, Birth, The Interpreter, Bewitched)?
And: does the fact that she now commands $17m a movie mean that she is actually only two-thirds as popular as Chris Tucker, who pocketed a reported $25m for merely agreeing to sign on for Rush Hour 3?
And: seeing as she presumably doesn't need the money, why did she persist in making that stupid advert about the perfume?
Kidman confuses me. Each time I think I have her safely filed as a simpering irritant (usually after seeing something like Moulin Rouge or The Human Stain), she'll come up with a truly first rate performance in a film like Birth, Dogville or The Others and I'll worry that she actually might be really good after all.
One could argue that it is these inconsistencies that make her so interesting; an unreliable, mercurial presence in a gallery of Teflon megastars. But the one thing she isn't is a safe bet, a guaranteed return on her $17m. I fear that the Hollywood money men may have crucially misread her.
