Nicole Kidman

Born: 20 June 1967
Where: Honolulu, Hawaii

Now firmly established as Hollywood aristocracy, the Oscar-winning actress still shows an unnerving ability to pick roles that attract both critical and public acclaim.

A versatile performer, she is equally at home working with the erratic Lars Von Tier on Dogville as she is with Anthony Minghella on Cold Mountain.

Career highs include her Academy Award-winning turn as Virginia Woolf in The Hours and the Oscar-nominated role of Satine in Moulin Rouge!.

She also attracted plaudits for the chilling ghost story The Others and the black comedy To Die For.

Kidman spent her first years living in the Washington DC area and, by the time she was three, her family had moved to Australia and settled in Sydney.

By 10, she was enrolled in drama school and, four years later, made her first real impression in Aussie movie BMX Bandits.

Her profile rose even higher after an award-winning performance in the mini-series Vietnam, after which Kidman appeared alongside Sam Neill and Billy Zane in the thriller Dead Calm.

She became known as the actress who snared superstar Tom Cruise after co-starring with him in the race-car drama Days Of Thunder.

Their whirlwind courtship and subsequent marriage proved fodder for the gossip columns and surprised many.

A re-teaming with her husband in Ron Howard's Far And Away was not a great success.

It was her 1995 performance as an ambitious weather girl who'll do anything to succeed in To Die For that marked a positive change in her career.

After The Peacemaker and Practical Magic, Kidman turned to the London stage in The Blue Room, in an effort to improve her standing in the entertainment business.

It worked - rave reviews followed, including one dubbing her "theatrical Viagra".

Before she undertook the role, Kidman signed on with Cruise to play a couple facing difficulties in their marriage in Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut.

The couple sued the Daily Star for alleging they had to be taught how to make their love scenes look realistic.

She went to work on back-to-back projects... first in Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge!, for which she received a best actress Oscar nomination, and then in The Others.

Kidman also had two hit songs, Come What May, a duet with Ewan McGregor, and Somethin' Stupid with Robbie Williams, which went to No.1 in the UK chart.

But as she was ascending professional heights, her personal life appeared to be falling apart. Cruise and Kidman finalised their divorce, after a 10-year marriage, in 2001.

Professionally, Kidman continued on a roll with Birthday Girl before striking gold with The Hours, for which she won her very first Oscar, for best actress, as well as a Golden Globe.

She played Faunia Farley in Robert Benton's The Human Stain and Ada Monroe opposite Jude Law's Inman in Anthony Minghella's Cold Mountain.

In 2004, she starred in Frank Oz's remake of The Stepford Wives with Bette Midler and Glenn Close and the supernatural thriller Birth.

Recent work includes the part of a UN translator in the Sydney Pollack thriller The Interpreter opposite Sean Penn and Samantha in the big screen adaptation of the 1960s TV comedy Bewitched.