Nicole Kidman to Receive AFI Life Achievement Award

She’s American.

[quote] Life Achievement Award

Are you sure this creature is alive?

I think it's a corpse of silicon, plastic and monkey glands.

I am fine with her winning it. I am a little surprised she is receiving it before Jodie Foster or Julia Roberts.

she's a good actress

she looks plastic now but who fucken cares

R2.

Is she receiving this before Tom Cruise?

Past winners

I like NK and have enjoyed many performances, but are they starting to run low on honorees? Seriously, once they tagged Roberts, Foster, Cruise, and McDormand, they're not really going to have many left. When the award started the recipients had long and storied careers. Recent recipients are still working so it seems premature. I would not put NK's career alongside John Ford or Orson Welles. And no one will match the monumental lunacy of Lillian Gish's acceptance speech.

R7 Most of the people in that link already had one foot in the grave.

Agree. It’s not like they will ever reward a Chris Pratt or Ryan Reynolds.

Even a Sandra Bullock would be questionable.

We only have 9 years to save the planet so maybe it’s for the best.

At least big stars like Meryl and others will show up. Nicole is a good choice.

[...]

Sure, why not?

And yet Faye Dunaway will never receive the AFI, despite having a string of classics from the 70s that most actresses would KILL to have in their filmography.

She’s a risk taker! She married Tammy and Katrina Urban.

Faye went haywire after her run of great films. It’s too late for her to win anything now.

[quote] She’s a risk taker!

She appears in TOO many movies and she doesn't improve.

I wonder if she will get a new face for the ceremony.

She is probably getting it for this lovely commercial that is shown every fucking time I see a movie in the AMC theater, excuse me... theatre. You know, the one where she is all dressed to the nines, all by herself in the theater, watching a movie.

She wrote a BIG check.

A big driver for the AFI is that it is a fundraiser. Older stars like Faye, Sally, Jessica, Sissy … they won’t bring in any money. Nicole is still very connected to all the CAA superstars.

Thanks for explaining the fundraising angle. The choices make more sense now. Spielberg was picked in 1995 when he was 49!

Whose cock this pathetic cunt suck to get this award. Last one was given to Julie Fucking Andrews an indisputable Hollywood icon of epic proportions and then they degrade the award by giving it to this right wing plastic piece of shit ?

Did Sally Field die ? Did Faye Dunaway die ? Why not Cher or Glenn Close ? What warrants this flop B-list actress this award ?

[quote] Whose cock this pathetic cunt suck to get this award.

The same one I did.

Even Robert Redford is yet to get one.

Or Sylvester Stallone

Or Mel Brooks

Or Gene Hackman

or Liza Minnelli

or Jeff Bridges

Or John Travolta

Or Bette Midler

Or Bill Murray

Or Richard Gere

Or Eddie Murphy

Or Michael Douglas

To be honest the one for Julie Andrews was a huge disappointment. They really waited too long to give her the award. Most of her costars were dead and AnnE didn’t bother to show up. Steve Carell was there because they had both done voice work in the same animated film. Bo Derek and Jane Fucking Seymour paid tribute.

R26 That sounds so tawdry.

Why can't Julie retire with dignity?

Does this mean she's retired?

The next ones will be

Foster, Roberts, Cruise

I can’t imagine any others unless they go for an over age 60 person.

Also, Leonardo DiCaprio. Maybe Brad Pitt (if they are desperate) and maybe Quentin Tarantino.

I think Glenn might never win

Also rans include Sean Penn and Susan Sarandon and a host of other actors who are not as popular now.

Kidman deserves this. She has the most impressive resume of ANY film actress. Ever. Directors, films and DARING challenges. She's an uptight celebrity but a fearless talent. And she's a star. She doesn't always impress but she is a REAL actress. Not resting on Oscar bait and or glamor parts. She's done her share of those - but she's always mixed it up. Nicole should have won for Moulin Rouge and Rabbit Hole. To Die For. Lion. She's amazing.

Nobody knows who Julie Andrews is. She had two hit movies - 60 years ago?!? Why was she honored? She's not a working actress for decades and was never a good one. Yuck.

The AFI is not the Kennedy Center Awards. You must have a body of work, take risks - possess artistic merit and lasting relevance. NOT Julie Andrews.

Michael Douglass deserves the AFI. Mel Brooks has already been honored.

But Liza, Redford, Cher, Stallone or the others listed - Hell no. Talent should be a requirement - no?

Jessica Chastain should win. She’s really talented and deserves it.

Give it to Daniel Day Lewis.

Poor Viola

Agree with R31. She's a big risk taker and I respect that. Worked with most of the major auteurs, a few classics under her belt, major stardom, great actress, intelligent, and a great beauty. Gene Hackman absolutely deserves the same, but she's a good choice as well. Wait until they sink to Marky Mark levels and this is going to look dignified.

Maybe in twenty years, I can understand this, but there are so many more people who are far more deserving. And on death's door. How the fuck does Gene Hackman not have one?

Hackman probably doesn’t have one because he doesn’t want one. He retired and never really looked back.

He didn’t become a recluse (he occasionally narrates, and does interviews about other people he worked with), but there hasn’t been a moment since he stopped acting that he regaled in his former glories.

Gene Hackman is my favorite film actor of all time. And he deserves it. But he's not well and notoriously shy/difficult. He's propbably turned the award and its ceremony down a few times.

Katharine Hepburn was asked to be the first woman honoree. BEFORE the AFI honored Bette Davis. Hepburn of course said, oh NO. Bette Davis was the right choice as it turns out.

Meryl Streep was awarded the AFI in her early fifties - maybe she was the first one who was given it too young. She didn't say no, did she?

Kidman is in her mid fifites now too. It' will be a good show. Because as closed and protective as her public persona is - she is much appreciated and loved by costars and directors. Nicole is a secretly radical chick. Fun and a loyal friend. She has some wild, devastating and beautiful screen moments. Great personas and performances. On screen - where it matters.

She's most deserving. She has been a constantly working and rewarded screen actress for 30 years. With no end in sight.

AFI had to trend younger to stay relevant. They awarded Tom Hanks before Meryl Streep, or at least in close proximity, because they had to stay relevant.

Julie Andrews was awarded for her past musicals. They unfortunately waited too long and as someone above noted, no one showed up.

Nicole - and I hate to say it - probably agreed to write a big check. She can afford it.

What are they awarding her for. Promotion of plastic surgery and botox use because it sure as hell isn't her bad acting.

You only have to write a big check you say?????

I think you need to be an Australian to receive an Australian Film Institute Lifetime Achievement Award, OP.

The need for ratings to sell the show to a cable network is all that counts. That's why you'll never see Robert Duvall, Anthony Hopkins, Vanessa Redgrave, or the Coen Brothers get this award.

No doubt, the producers are trying to find a way to get Tom Cruise to present the award to NK.

R43 well maybe to some extent but last year Julie Andrew’s got it - and she’s not exactly some ratings getter. And yeah I know they did Clooney recently but most of those I recall from the past several years have been 70s/80s era type actors.

I would have thought AFI would go through a few more of that era (similar to what the rock and roll HOF does) before moving on to the next group, but they still might circle back next year and/or the year after.

Tom Cruise probably asked to be their 50th honorary.

Or Julia. They have the two biggest egos.

G

The RHOF is a piece of shit organization that doesn’t even award rock music anymore, just whoever is a recognizable name from before 1995 (MADONNA???), but at least they try to look out for impact rather than whatever the hell this Kidman move is.

This is a new low for this once-prestigious award.

"Nicole Kidman? She's not a legend...she's just a beginner!"

Who will be the one to present the award to Nicole at the end of the evening? Naomi? Reese? M?

WoW. Old gay men are out of touch with art and film and TV actresses. Nicole Kidman is a GREAT and worthy choice for AFI LIFETIME achievement. Do you think that Clooney deserved it? Who remembers one performance by George Clooney, ever.

You hate Annette and Blanchette and Amy Adams and Anne Hathaway, Michelle Williams and Kiki Dunst too?

Nicole's 7 hour turn in Pretty Little Lies is probably the best performance given by anyone in the last ten years.

Kidman has 5 Oscar nominations and a win. More than most of the honorees of late.

R52 it was such a great performance you can't even remember the actual title of the show?

I would've perferred they give it to the ghost of Joan Crawford than Nicole Kidman.

[quote]Kidman has 5 Oscar nominations and a win. More than most of the honorees of late.

Whatever. Nominations and awards have to be viewed in context of the other performances in that particular year, and the main reason she won her Oscar was for the makeup. In my opinion, her body of work does not justify the award.

[quote]and the main reason she won her Oscar was for the makeup.

Nah. It was because she had given two Oscar caliber performances the year before in Moulin Rouge and The Others. It wasn't a makeup award but a make up award.

This song.....Big Little Lies.....mesmerized. That series delivered. It's not desperate housewives. Nicole Kidman gave one of the all time great performances. So complex and sublte and raw and devastating. She already deserved the Oscar for Moulin Rouge and Lion and Rabbit Hole and To Die For and maybe not so much the others. Meryl and Julianne Moore and Olivia Coleman won recent undererved Oscars too.

You're a bit of a moron R54. As your other posts prove.

I have seen every Kidman performance. You have seen every Joan Crawford movie. I am 39 and you are 80 years old.

Take a seat and let men talk now.

Nicole was good in BLL but come on. It was a TV show. It didn’t do anything extraordinary.

R59 Reese was better, even if she was just playing a variation of herself.

I see that the AWF troll has entered this thread at R58.

And he’s still lying about being a 39 year old Black Canadian. Get some help, psycho.

This is an award for contributions to movies? Tom Cruise deserves one. Nicole is too young. Anthony Hopkins should be honored next

Nicole Kidman has done some great work, most notably TO DIE FOR, but the fact that some people here are arguing that she deserved as Oscar for MOULIN ROUGE is kind of incredible. The only people who conceivably deserved Oscars for that movie were maybe some of the designers.

Laura Dern blew NK out of the water on Big Little Lies. Kidman couldn't even maintain a consistent accent across the series in what somene is now saying is the best performance ever. When Meryl showed up on Season 2, NK looked like a deer in headlights playing against her.

Nicole commonly buys attention

[quote]She's most deserving. She has been a constantly working and rewarded screen actress for 30 years. With no end in sight.

Then it's too soon to give her a life achievement award. They haven't given it to a director who isn't also a performer/star for over a decade.

Deserved an Oscar for "The Others"

After the Saturday evening performance of "The Music Man", they did an auction of Hugh Jackman's hat for Broadway Cares Equity Fights AIDS. Nicole made a surprise appearance.

Nicole gave a huge amount of money to a worthy charity. Let’s focus on that. She and Hugh are buddies and it was a very generous gesture.

Is she giving $1M to AFI in exchange for the award?

Prepare for the worldwide Botox shortage.

Next Year: Garcelle Beauvais

What about ME????

Is she dying?

^ you, what about me???

[quote]Nicole Kidman to Get AFI-LAA.

You mean she wasn't vaccinated for that, with HER history?

The hate and disrespect for Kidman must be coming from one or two trolls? She's a good and sometimes great actress. With the most impressive screen resume of any actress in terms of directors and roles and adventures taken - ever.

Nicole is 55 years old. The same age that Merly Streep was when she was honored with the AFI. Except that Nicole has done more than 85 films and Streep started was discovered late and finished being any good early. She was far from prolific and already a ham.

Tom Hanks was 46 when he received his AFI and Clooney was 56. Clooney has never given a good performance OR directed a great movie in his life! WTF.

Harrison Ford also has a BOX OFFICE AFI award.

Julie Andrews had no important career in film beyond two saccharine movies in the 1960s. She is barely an actress and a very dull woman.

Denzel deserved his honour and so did Michael Douglass and Streisand.

Elizabeth Taylor - yeah, ok.

Kidman is MONUMENTAL in film achievement. There is no bigger female movie star other than Julia Roberts.

Bravo to Nicole. Gutsy talent and versatility and risk taking win. Her work is sublte and gorgeous. Troubled. Glamourous. Neurotic. EROTIC. Action. Brave. Beauty. Perverse and Experimental. AND she's a movie STAR.

Kidman will have many male and female costars anxious to honour her and some of the finest and most interesting directors in the world. Only on DataLounge is she so disrespected.

Old white gay men hold a grudge. She's not one of your faggy female hags.

Nicole has a TON of bad films. Great actress but an odd choice when so many others are more deserving.

[quote] Kidman is MONUMENTAL in film achievement.

Mary!

Oh please, r77, she's overexposed beyond belief. Does she ever stop working? Both of her marriages have made her tabloid-bait. And how can anyone take her seriously when she's married to the man with the worst hair in the world? Yes, his hair really is that bad. Usually I like long or longish hair on guys but even I'm ready for him to give up on the straightening and the foils and just get a buzzcut. He's a fucking joke.

R77 is in quite a tizzy over ol' Nicole!

She is too young to be receiving this, although she should have it one day. Tammy and Brad are more appropriate choices.

Clooney did not deserve that award at all, what a PR stunt

[quote]The hate and disrespect for Kidman must be coming from one or two trolls?

One could say the same of your bitchy, nasty, disrespectful comments about Julie Andrews.

I *loved* her in To Die For and she's fine in Big Little Lies, but she's pretty bad in most other things. It's actually a frustration for me because she gets all these interesting roles and runs them into the ground with her schtick of whispering all her lines & changing up her wigs in every project. She's always acting like she's in a soap opera. And still can't do a convincing American accent despite living there for 30+ years (or even an Australian one at this point). I'd much rather see Toni Collette, Parker Posey, Catherine Keener, Joan Allen, whoever else play these independent film characters.

I also think the risk-taking thing is hugely overstated. What risks did she take? Dancer in the Dark? The director's previous two lead actresses both got Oscar nominations and are acclaimed as some of the best performances in film history. She'd have been stupid not to take it. The Paperboy? Lee Daniels was just coming off Oscar-winning smash hits Precious and Monster's Ball. Juicy leading role in Margot at the Wedding? Noah Baumbach had just been nominated for Squid and the Whale immediately prior.

I don't really care about the AFI so it doesn't bother me that she's getting this, but I find the obsession some gay men have with her a bit odd when we have so many actual talents out there (is it because both her husbands are kind of gay?). She's done well to keep her name on the A-list, but it's only because she's on the front cover of every single magazine for the past 35 years shilling her personal life - especially here in Australia - and will show up to any red carpet, whether or not she has a reason to be there.

[quote]And still can't do a convincing American accent despite living there for 30+ years

I seem to recall that her American accent was fine in TO DIE FOR and RABBIT HOLE, but there were places in THE PROM where she slipped a little. Also, she was miscast in THE PROM, and it was hard to look at her face in that one due to botox or plastic surgery.

Awful choice but she must have paid a shitload of money for the honour.

Nicole doesn’t have any classic films. No one in the future is going to suffer through and watch Dogville, Stoker, Birth, The Paperboy or Rabbit Hole.

The Others. Moulin Rouge, or To Die For are okay, but the AFI?

She kind of lost me when she lasered off her freckles for Portrait of a Lady. Surely make-up could have covered them. She was good in that film, but the way she's changed her hair from curly red to whatever it is now, combined with the plastic surgery, botox and losing the freckles makes me think she's just trying to look like Barbie. She looked starved when she won her Oscar. There was a rumour at the time that she only ate one boiled egg each day.

And her husband's hair looks really, really stupid. Photos of him taken decades ago show he's had quite a facial overhaul as well. The two of them must keep the LA cosmetic surgeons very rich. I've never even heard one of KU's songs, or watched that show he's on, but I'm sick of the sight of him.

Is Dogville worth watching? I loved Breaking the Waves.

Only if you want to waste a few hours before committing suicide.

It's time to give Faye Dunaway her flowers. Enough of this shit. Suggesting second rate trash like Julia Roberts getting an AFI award for some dumb romcom from thirty years ago, while a bonafide legend who worked with the cream of the crop of the industry and who was in many iconic movies is passed up YEAR after YEAR.

Did Julia ever work with Brando?

Faye doesn't have a Kennedy Center Honor, nor an AFI award, nor a Cecil B Demille award, nor an honorary oscar.

And this is acceptable?

Fix it.

R89 And what about the Kusturica movie that was the hit of all of Europe and Cannes?

Sadly, R89, it's apparent that Faye Dunaway has been mentally ill for quite a few years now, to the point where she can't be counted on to be able to control herself in a public situation. Have you really not heard or read all the stories?

She must be thrilled!

She'll expect a new Life Achievement Award after every facelift because she assumes that no one recognizes her each time.

But we do know that lumpy bony ass and the pickled mound that Tammy allegedly fucked, at least once.

I had a similar thought, R93. Her face looks SO different from the way it used to look, and also, she now bears little resemblance to any human being. So, my question is, how will they know they're giving the award to the right person?

I think people would show up for Sally Field. She's had a very long career arc.

I thought this was an award for people in their 60s or 70s.