ITALY: Hollywood star Nicole Kidman, attending the Rome Film Festival, says she is very happy with her new Tennessee home

Hollywood actress Nicole Kidman opened Rome's first ever international film festival on Friday (October 13) with her intense portrayal of photographer Diane Arbus, who shocked America in the 1960s with her disturbing pictures of people on the fringes of society. Director Steven Shainberg's "Fur" mixes reality with fantasy to explore Arbus' transformation from the posh, uptight housewife of a fashion photographer into one of the most daring artists of her time. That metamorphosis is seen through Arbus' intimate friendship with her bizarre neighbour Lionel, played by Robert Downey Jr. Like most of the events and characters in the film, loosely based on Patricia Bosworth's biography of the photographer, their relationship is invented. Kidman insists the film is not a bio-pic but rather her interpretation of Arbus' character. "It's a small, small portion of her life and it's called "An Imaginary Portrait" because its all about walking into your creativity, discovering what you are inside and what you want to say to the world," Kidman said during a news conference ahead of the premiere later on Friday. Shanberg, whose uncle was a close friend of Arbus, grew up with her pictures hanging on the walls of his home at a time when the photographer was struggling to make a living from her unconventional art. As an adult, Shainberg collected her photographs and long nurtured the idea of making a film about her. "One of the beauties of the film and from my point of view one of the beauties of Nicole's performance is that you really feel that deep necessity to open the door and go out into the world. And once that happened, this profound intelligence in all sorts of areas - photographic, writing, but from my point of view , an incredible intelligence for life -and for how to go out and live the way she wanted to live - suddenly came into being and really that's a very very moving, beautiful gesture that she made," said Shainberg, whose previous works include the critically acclaimed "The Secretary". Arbus became an icon of modern photography for her ground-breaking portraits of a world of outcasts -- among her favourite subjects were dwarves, giants, prostitutes, transvestites, homeless and mentally ill people. Kidman said it had been a "deep spiritual experience" to interpret a real character, particularly someone as talented and tormented as Arbus, who committed suicide in 1971 at age of 48. The red-headed Australian star, who won an Oscar for her role as writer Virginia Woolf in the 2002 film "The Hours", noted that both had taken their own lives. "It's an incredibly deep, spiritual connection that occurs. It happened to me when I played Virginia, it happened to me when I played Arbus, particularly both those women ultimately committed suicide. And there's a very strange, I suppose, relationship that starts to happen and they don't leave you. They imprint on you in a particular way and it's hard to talk about it because it's quite mysterious and quite beautiful," Kidman said. Kidman, who married country music singer Keith Urban this year after divorcing actor Tom Cruise in 2001, also spoke about her new home in Nashville, Tennessee. "How is Nashville? It's good. I mean it's actually a wonderful place for me to live because I feel very protected there and I like living somewhere that isn't a big city. Very drawn to the rural aspect of Tennessee and I love to ride horses and stuff so it's good," Kidman said, playing with her wedding ring. She added she had no plans to work with Urban.

ITN Source | October 19, 2006

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