Nicole Kidman wins first Oscar

Nicole Kidman won the best actress Oscar for her searing performance as the suicidal English writer Virginia Woolf in The Hours today.

The Hawaiian-born, Australian-raised redhead was a hugely popular, and many felt overdue, winner of the best actress award that crowned her emergence from the other half of actor Tom Cruise to a major Hollywood player in her own right.

Kidman, 35, transformed herself from the elegant, glamorous movie star who graces the world's magazine covers to a virtually unrecognizable 1930s English woman fighting life-long depression. A false nose completed the disguise.

However, her poise almost deserted her as she fought back tears on stage, telling the audience; "Russell Crowe said, 'Don't cry if you get up there', and now I'm crying."

"I am absolutely thrilled to be standing here," she added, thanking her mother and her daughter.

Kidman shot The Hours in the months following her agonizing miscarriage and divorce from Cruise in 2001, and has acknowledged putting her personal turmoil into the role.

"I was raw enough and open enough to play it...It wasn't a therapy, but I think things come along at times in your life for a reason. Roles fall into your lap at certain times when it's meant to happen," she told reporters last month.

Kidman's attendance at the Oscars had reportedly been in doubt because of the war with Iraq but she took time in her acceptance speech to explain why she had come.

"Because art is important, and because we believe in what we do and because it is a tradition that needs to be upheld.

"At the same time you say there is a lot of problems in the world and since September 11 there's been a lot of pain in terms of families losing people, and now with the war families losing people ... God bless them," she said.

The tall, elegant actress won a Golden Globe and a British BAFTA award earlier this year for her performance in The Hours. She missed out on winning an Oscar last year for her role as the singing, dancing courtesan in the musical Moulin Rouge.

Her director on The Hours, Stephen Daldry, told Reuters in a recent interview, "Nicole was going through something so difficult (her breakup with Cruise before filming) that she was incredibly emotionally available."

He said that he became "seriously worried about her health because she stayed in that space for two or three days."

Kidman's first love was ballet but she dropped out of high school as a teenager to pursue acting full-time. She broke into movies at the age of 16, making a handful of films and a television series in Australia before moving to Los Angeles in the late 1980s.

She met Tom Cruise on the set of Days of Thunder and the couple married in 1990 after a whirlwind courtship. Kidman was determined not to let her superstar marriage overshadow her career, showing her versatility in movies ranging from a gangster's moll in Billy Bathgate to a fame-crazed housewife in To Die For.

Her dignity after the split with Cruise won her public sympathy and coincided with two stellar performances in the thriller The Others and in Moulin Rouge, where Kidman showed her talents for singing and dancing.

Despite her success, Kidman has little self-confidence. "Every time I star in a film, I think I cannot act. I've tried to pull out of almost every one I've done because of sheer terror," she said recently.

- REUTERS