Nicole Kidman Says Despite Producing Success, She Doesn’t Want to Direct: “I Would Be a Terrible Director”

When Nicole Kidman was honored with the AFI Life Achievement Award, she spent a large portion of her speech thanking the directors whom she’s worked with throughout the years. The respect for the job, though, doesn’t she mean has any desire to step behind the camera herself.

“I feel like I would be a terrible director because I always have so many ideas. A director has to make choices, and that’s not my strong suit,” Kidman told The Hollywood Reporter on Saturday night on the AFI red carpet, noting that a producer’s duties much more align with her interests. “I’m very good at being passionate and supporting the voices and reading a script and going ‘I love this script,’ or seeing somebody and going, ‘I love this actor, I love this director, how do I support them?’ And they maybe have done nothing [before], but I want to get behind them. That’s what I love doing; it excites me, and it really makes me happy. I love shining the light on other people or helping to do that.”

Via her Blossom Films, Kidman has produced projects including Big Little Lies, Nine Perfect Strangers, The Undoing, Love & Death, Special Ops: Lioness and Expats.

Inside the tribute event, the star elaborated on that desire to shine a light on others, telling the crowd inside the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood: “There’s so many more exciting young directors and voices that are completely original and need to be heard, and they have a lot to say. We need to give them a chance to say it and to hear them, and I am here, I am ready to roll up my sleeves. I am here always to support those voices.” Kidman also listed off the names of all of her previous directors and thanked them individually during her acceptance speech.

Meryl Streep, Reese Witherspoon, Morgan Freeman, Naomi Watts, Zoe Saldaña, Aaron Sorkin, Zac Efron, Miles Teller, Joey King, Mike Myers and husband Keith Urban were all on hand to honor Kidman at the event, as she weighed in on receiving a life achievement award at just 56.  

“When they told me that Meryl got it at around the same time I was like, ‘OK, that’s OK, that’s cool,’” Kidman told THR. “But at the same time you just go, I’ll take whatever you give me because in terms of the work, I just love doing the work.”