THE ACTRESSES

NICOLE KIDMAN (Virginia Woolf) starred in two of 2001’s box-office smashes, “The Others” and “Moulin Rouge,” and received an Oscar‚ nomination and a London Film Critics Circle “Best Actress” Award for her performance in the latter, as well as dual Golden Globe nominations for both films. “The Other” also earned her a BAFTA nomination. Following “The Hours,” Kidman starred in Lars Von Trier’s “Dogville” and Robert Benton’s “The Human Stain.” She is currently filming Anthony Minghella’s “Cold Mountain.” Born in Honolulu, Kidman was raised in Sydney, Australia, where both her parents were born. She began acting during her teens and made her cinematic debut in an Australian film, “Bush Christmas,” at fourteen. She then began to mix her schoolwork with her acting, appearing in projects such as “Winners” and the miniseries “Five-Mile Creek.” Between films, Kidman studied at the Australian Theater for Young People in Sydney and the Philip Street Theater. The much-lauded 1985 Kennedy-Miller miniseries “Vietnam,” made her a virtual overnight star in Australia. Only 17 at the time, she was voted Best Actress of the Year by the Australian public and the Australian Film Institute. In addition to public and critical acclaim, her performance in the series also attracted the attention of filmmakers throughout Australia. Kidman’s other notable Australian films since then include “Emerald City” (for which she received a Best Supporting Actress nomination from the Australian Film Institute), “Flirting” and the miniseries “Bangkok Hilton.” For the latter, Kidman once again received rave reviews, and was voted Best Actress of 1989 by the Variety Awards and the Australian public. She also appeared on stage playing lead roles in “Steel Magnolias” at the Sydney Seymour Center, for which she was nominated Best Newcomer by the Sydney Theater Critics and “Spring Awakening” at the Australian Theater for Young People. Kidman first came to the attention of international audiences with her critically acclaimed performance in the 1989 thriller “Dead Calm,” directed by Philip Noyce. Since then, she has become one of the most sought-after actresses in film. Her 1995 appearance in Gus Van Sant’s “To Die For” brought her a Golden Globe as well as Best Actress Awards from the Boston Film Critics, the National Broadcast Film Critics, London Film Critics and the Seattle Film Festival. She also received a BAFTA nomination. Kidman made her highly-lauded London stage debut in the fall of 1998, starring with Iain Glen in “The Blue Room,” David Hare’s modern adaptation of Schnitzler’s “La Ronde,” for director Sam Mendes and the Donmar Warehouse. The production in which Kidman and Glen each took on five different roles, was the hit of the London theater season, and for her performance, Kidman won London’s Evening Standard Award “for special and significant contribution to the London Theater.” She was also nominated in the Best Actress category for a Laurence Olivier Award. “The Blue Room” moved to Broadway for a smash limited run from November of 1998 through March of 1999. In 1999, Kidman starred in Stanley Ku b r i c k ’s last film, “Eyes Wide Shut.” In 1998, she appeared in Griffin Dunne’s romantic comedy “Practical Magic” and in 1997, Mimi L e d e r’s international thriller “The Pe a c e m a ke r.” The year before, Kidman starred in Jane Campion’s screen adaptation of Henry James’ “Po r t rait of a Lady.” Her other films include “Billy Bathgate,” for which she received a Golden Globe nomination, “ M a l i c e ,” “My Life” “Far and Away,” “Batman Fo r e ve r” and “Birthday Girl.”

In the hours, Nicole Kidman takes on the role of Virginia Woolf, the groundbreaking feminist writer whose emotionally searing novels and taboo-defying life continue to influence the view of women’s daily lives some 75 years later. It is Woolf’s novel Mrs. Dalloway – and those rare, precious moments Woolf writes about when life reveals its full potential – that ties the elements of THE HOURS together. The film follows Woolf on a singular June day during th writing of Mrs. Dalloway, a da that reveals the poignant truth of a line from the book: “it was very, very dangerous to live even a single day.”Kidman had an immediate, vesceral reaction to David Hare’s script for the Hours. “He’d written the most extraordinary female character,” she said, “ each of whom resonated for me. But Virginia Woolf seemed to come to me at a time when I really needed her – the role was cathartic for me in a wonderful way. She gave me a gift, in a certain sense, because I was very much needed to play her.” Kidman delved into intensive researh, reading biographies, Wool’s letters and everything she could find about the Bloomsbury Group, which provided the creative hot-house setting in which Woolf blossomed. What she discovered was a woman of many layers, a creative whirlwind of tremendous force who nevertheless danced on the edge of madness as the price for her literary sensitivity. “Part of playing someone who really existed is finding her essence,” says Kidman. “David Hare gave me a lot of insight into her, and of course, Micheal Cunningham did as well. Through this period I just fell in love with her. She was a woman who grappled with death and madness and love. The profundity with which she managed to capture the pathos of life has always been incredibly interesting for me. Yet there was also a mischievousness to her, a playfulness and joie de vivre that made people want to be in her orbit. People were so attracted to her.” Kidman was particularly drawn to the relationship between Woolf and her husband Leonard. “I was fascinated by her love for Leonard and his love for her and what they gave to one another,” she comments. “I think she felt tremendous gratitude to her husband for being so tolerant of her. So much of what she was fighting for was just being able to breathe; being able to live in London if she wanted to live in London, and not be trapped, as she saw it, out in Richmond. I think that your creativity sterns from our environment a lot of the time. That reall resonated with me.” Despite Kidman’s deep affinity for Virginia Woolf’s inner world there was no denying that she would have to make physical transformation to take on the role. “I was looking for was to capture the essence of Virginia,” she says. “I experimented with changing my face, the way I walk, the way I talk, all of those things. Physically and emotionally it came together at the same time for me. It was all about finding her aura. For example. I learned that she liked to roll her own cigarettes and that immediately gave me a mannerism that is distinctly Virginia Woolf. So every time I wanted to do her voice, I would just get out a cigarette, and m voice would drop an octave and off I would go.” Kidman even studied Woolf’s handwriting, switching from her own left-handed style to writing with her roght hand to embody Woolf more closely. Helping Kidman complete the transformation were Ann Roth’s custom-designed costumes based on Woolf’s notably aristocratic manner of dressing. “There was something about those clothes- the shoes, the fabric of the dress, even a little handkerchief that I used- as soon as I put that outfit on, it was like I was able to move in a different way,” she says. But for Kidman, the biggest inspiration of all was the writing contained both in M.Cunningham’s novel and in David Hare’s screenplay. “As an example , I was utterly moved my the scene on the train where Virginia talks about the choices in life, and about knowing what ou want, and getting the chance to make the decisions about what’s best for you,” she says. “I thought that scene was just so beautifully realized in all its complexity and beauty. I just felt: how magnificent as an actor to get the chance to say these words, and to put across these ideas.”

JULIANNE MOORE (Laura Brown), an actress of exceptional range, has delivered outstanding work in major studio films as well as independent features. She was most recently seen in Bart Fruendlich’s “World Traveler,” with Billy Crudup, Todd Haynes’ “Far from Heaven,” with Dennis Quaid, Lasse Hallstrom’s “The Shipping News,” with Kevin Spacey, Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett and as Clarice Starling in Ridley Scott’s “Hannibal,” opposite Anthony Hopkins, Gary Oldman and Ray Liotta. The daughter of a military judge and a Scottish social worker, Moore was born in Fayetteville, N.C. and spent the early years of her life in over two dozen locations around the world with her parents before finally attending Boston University, where she earned her Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. She then moved to New York where she worked extensively in theater, including major roles in Caryl Churchill’s “Serious Money” and “Ice Cream/Hot Fudge” at the Public Theater. She appeared in Minneapolis in the Guthrie Theater’s “Hamlet” and participated in workshop productions of Strindberg’s “The Father,” with Al Pacino and in Wendy Wasserstein’s “An American Daughter,” with Meryl Streep. During the 1980s, she made many appearances in TV movies and was a regular on such soap operas as “The Edge of Night” and “As the World Turns.” Moore made her film debut in 1990 in “Tales from the Darkside: The Movie,” and moved on to key supporting roles in “The Hand that Rocks the Cradle,” “The Gun in Betty Lou’s Handbag” and “The Fugitive.” Her breakthrough film was Robert Altman’s “Short Cuts.” Since then, her work has brought her consistent acclaim and numerous honors. For her performance in “Boogie Nights,” she received an Academy Award‚ nomination for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. She was also nominated for Independent Spirit Awards for both “Short Cuts” and “Safe.” In 1999, Moore received Oscar‚, Golden Globe and Screen Actors Guild award nominations in addition to several critics’ awards for her performance in Neil Jordan’s “The End of the Affair” opposite Ralph Fiennes. She also received a Golden Globe nomination for her work in “An Ideal Husband.” For her role in Paul Thomas Anderson’s “Magnolia,” Moore garnered a SAG Award nomination for Best Supporting Actress. Moore’s other films include “The Big Lebowski,” “The Myth of Fingerprints,” “Jurassic Park: The Lost World,” “Cookie’s Fortune,” “Vanya on 42nd St.,” “Surviving Picasso” (as Dora Maar), “Benny and Joon,” “Nine Months,” “Assassins,” “A Map of the World,” “Evolution” and the remake of “Psycho” directed by Gus Van Sant.

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Julianne Moore plays the fictional Laura Brown in THE HOURS, a suburban housewife suffocating in the summer sun of 1951 Los Angeles, a woman who feels helplessly trapped in the confines of her ordinary life and is fighting against a deepsense of despair that has overtaken her life with her husband and young son. On this June day, she seeks out an escape – one that might be final. Says Moore of her character’s poignant journey: “What I love about both the novel and the movie is that this is just another day, another morass of a day, another set of hours Laura has to get through. What she doesn’t expect is to have a cataclysmic event in it. It shouldn’t be a day that leads to any other, but it is actually her penultimate day in this particular life.” It was Moore’s very personal and strong reaction to David Hare’s screenplay that compelled her to take on the role of Laura Brown. “What David Hare managed to do,” she says, “was to translate both the emotional reality and the structural reality of the novel. I honestly didn’t think it could be done, but he did it beautifully.” Moore had long been a fan of Michael Cunningham’s novel. She notes: “I’m a big reader of fiction, and I’m rarely surprised by it. When you read a lot of literature, you learn to look for clues, and you see what’s coming. But as a book, “The Hours” completely stunned me. I was really surprised by it, and so thrilled. When someone manages to do that, you feel like you’re twelve again. Michael is able to be so incredibly truthful about the things that are painful and difficult in the human condition, yet he’s tremendously hopeful and inspiring, too. His concept of getting through ‘the hours’ of our day and of our lives, and what that means reflects what is both painful and valuable about life, all at once. I was so moved by it.” Moore sees her character as having much in common with Virginia Woolf, whose spirit inspires the entire tapestry of THE HOURS, and yet also views Laura as having her own unique tale to tell. “What Laura shares with Virginia Woolf is her depression,” she notes. “But whereas Virginia Woolf is aware of it as an illness, something she struggles with, I think Laura is almost underwater. She’s not a person who’s even present in her life. Her deep unhappiness is the state of her being. If Laura defines herself in any way, she’s a passionate reader. That’s something that I used for myself: the underlying idea that she shares a sense of literary-ness with Virginia Woolf.” One of the most moving aspects of Laura’s story for Moore is her complicated relationship with her son, one that had an affecting resonance for the actress because she herself has two young children. “When I made the movie, my son was three and a half, and during the shoot I was pregnant with my daughter, so I understand what the connection is between a child and his mother. The fact that this boy was so connected to his mother, and could feel her depression, and was so lost – this was absolutely heartbreaking to me. I’m not certain I would have understood this had I not been a mother myself. But what’s agonizing is that you realize Laura makes the only choice she can at the end of her story. In effect, she’s choosing to live rather than die. This is a woman who is confused by issues in a marriage shedoesn’t want to be in; she doesn’t have any idea about her sexuality; she’s desperately unhappy; she doesn’t even know whether she wants to be in this life – she’s a reader, not a participator. And she’s just lost. She has no options. Nothing. Today, it’s a different world, and you see a different world in Clarissa’s life. Here’s a woman who had a child because she wanted a child; is with the lover she wants to be with; has made choices about her life. Laura has made almost no choices; she’s retreated into books.” Ultimately, Moore began to look at her character not just as a single individual but as part of the pantheon of women’s lives. “The beauty of the story and the script is that these women’s lives echo one another in such interesting ways, that same way that all of us, in each of our lives, echo one another,” Moore observes. “This goes back to the novel, which depicts such universality in the human condition. There is a sense that as much as one person like Laura might suffer, might think she’s alone, these are feelings that are repeated year after year, century after century, in a great chain. What was exciting for me as an actress, was getting to play a certain moment, and seeing that echoed, backward and forwards, in Meryl’s and Nicole’s stories.”

MERYL STREEP (Clarissa), a two-time Academy Award® winner and a recipient of twelve Oscar® nominations, recently completed filming “Adaptation” starring opposite Nicolas Cage. Spike Jonze directed this much-anticipated follow up to “Being John Malkovich.” Born and raised in New Jersey, Streep began acting at Vassar, where she won the title role in the first college production for which she auditioned. An honors exchange program also allowed her to study in the drama department at Dartmouth. After graduating from Vassar, she attended the renowned Yale Drama School. She appeared in six of the seven plays presented annually by the Yale Repertory Company, earning a Masters of Fine Arts degree in 1975. After a summer with the O’Neill Playwrights Conference in Connecticut, Streep moved to New York City and landed the ingenue lead in Joseph Papp’s Lincoln Center production of “Trelawney of the Wells,” delivering a powerful performance that stunned the critics. Before long, she received an Outer Critics’ Circle Award, a Theater World Award and a Tony nomination for playing two different characters in a Phoenix Theater double bill of Arthur Miller’s “A Memory of Two Mondays” and Tennessee Williams’ “27 Wagons Full of Cotton.” Streep performed in no less than seven plays during her first season in New York, including the New York Shakespeare Festival productions of “Henry V” as Catherine and “Measure for Measure” as Isabella. She then starred on Broadway in Kurt Weill’s “Happy End” and won an Obie for her performance in the off-Broadway production “Alice at the Palace.” During this period, Streep also won an Emmy for her portrayal of a devastated German wife in the miniseries “Holocaust,” and made her feature film debut as Jane Fonda’s snooty society friend in Fred Zinneman’s “Julia.” In her second screen role, Streep appeared opposite Robert De Niro in Michael Cimino’s “The Deer Hunter,” receiving her first Oscar‚ nomination for her portrayal of a working-class Pennsylvania girl whose lonely, small town life is irrevocably altered by the Vietnam war. Streep returned to the stage to play Katherine in “The Taming of the Shrew” opposite Raul Julia for Joseph Papp’s Public Theater. After appearing in Woody Allen’s “Manhattan” and Jerry Schatzberg’s “The Seduction of Joe Tynan,” Streep rounded out the year as Dustin Hoffman’s troubled former wife in Robert Benton’s acclaimed “Kramer vs. Kramer,” for which she won an Academy Award‚ as Best Supporting Actress. Since that time, Streep has worked with most of the film industry’s top directors, including Karel Reisz (“The French Lieutenant’s Woman”), Mike Nichols (“Silkwood,” “Heartburn” and “Postcards from the Edge”), Alan J. Pakula (“Sophie’s Choice”), Fred Schepisi (“A Cry in the Dark” and “Plenty”), Robert Zemeckis (“Death Becomes Her”), Curtis Hanson (“The River Wild”), Hector Babenco (“Ironweed”), Sydney Pollack (“Out of Africa”), Albert Brooks (“Defending Your Life”) and Bille August (“The House of the Spirits”). In recent years, Streep has played such diverse characters as the tough mother of a tougher adolescent (“Marvin’s Room”), a woman whose fatal illness draws her closer to her adult daughter (“One True Thing”), an Italian immigrant in the Midwest who strikes up a romance with an itinerant photographer (“The Bridges of Madison County”), an Irish spinster in the 1930s (“Dancing at Lughnasa”), and reallife Harlem high-school music teacher Roberta Guaspari (“Music of the Heart”). In 1997, Streep was nominated for an Emmy for “First, Do No Harm,” a television drama she co-produced and starred in. She recently completed filming the HBO miniseries of Tony Kushner’s acclaimed play “Angels in America” under the direction of Mike Nichols. Last year Streep made a much-awaited return to the stage as Mme. Arkadina in Chekov’s “The Seagull.” Mike Nichols directed the all-star cast, including Kevin Kline, Natalie Portman, and John Goodman, for this New York Shakespeare Festival production in Central Park. Married to artist/sculptor Don Gummer, Streep has four children.

In THE HOURS, the stories of Virginia Woolf in 1920s England, and Laura Brown in 1949 suburban Los Angeles, culminate in the contemporary urban tale of Clarissa Vaughan in 1990s Greenwich Village, New York. Meryl Streep plays Clarissa, a literary editor who is followed for one climactic day during which she plans a party for her long-time friend and one-time lover, a prominent writer dying of AIDS. In the midst of her preparations, Clarissa finds herself facing issues of time, freedom, love and letting go of the past. Modeled in part on Virginia Woolf’s character Clarissa Dalloway from the novel “Mrs. Dalloway”, this contemporary Clarissa makes an impassioned examination of the choices she’s made in life. Streep originally received Michael Cunningham’s novel as a gift. “I read the book when it first came out because Natasha Richardson sent it to me as a present and I thought it was beautiful,” she recalls. And yet this was one novel Streep never imagined would become a motion picture. “When my agent called me about the film, I couldn’t imagine how they were going to make it into a movie, how so much of an interior world could be translated into a film,” she explains. “But when the script came to me, I thought it was really wonderful. David Hare has such a compassionate nature and he’s a consummate wordsmith. He is able to express things that are inside people. He puts them in the situation and makes it actable. I realized that this was going to be a very unusual movie. There’s just nothing else like it out there in terms of how it enters a world that is entirely undiscovered and un-traveled. It’s a fascinating and deeply felt journey. And I think that was what convinced me it would be an interesting project to work on.” The character of Clarissa is the only one of the main heroines in THE HOURS who lives in our current times, in an unconventional family structure, with a very contemporary lifestyle, something that also interested Streep. “Clarissa has very complicated relationships. She has her lover, Sally, but she’s also involved emotionally with an old lover of hers, a man who is dying of AIDS, and to whom she still feels strongly connected. I think she is like many women today who feel like their life took a turn at some point and they don’t exactly understand how or why. To me, that’s what the story is very much about: the expectations people have in life, and the longing for life to live up to its fullest.” And unlike Virginia Woolf and Laura Brown, Streep’s Clarissa lives in a time that encourages greater freedom of expression and desire, especially for women. “My character gets to be so much more emotional,” she observes. “The other two women in the story are so contained, they’re suppressing so much, but I’m the one who really explodes in the end.” Another aspect of THE HOURS that appealed strongly to Streep was the chance to work with directory Stephen Daldry. “He has a real understanding for how to physicalize the interior world. I mean, he ran the Royal Court Theatre for years and he made “Billy Elliot” so he has this very exuberant physicality. And this works for THE HOURS because what could have been a very small, contained story has been completely opened up by him.”