Nicole's West End ambitions

by BAZ BAMIGBOYE, Daily Mail

Oscar-winner Nicole Kidman can command $15million a movie these days. But instead, she's itching to return to the London stage . . . for £500 a week.

'I'm going to get too scared to do theatre if I don't return soon,' Nicole told me in Los Angeles before she flew back to New York to continue filming Birth, opposite Danny Huston, for director Jonathan Glazer.

'It doesn't matter if the play doesn't do well, or if I'm not very good in it,' she said.

'My agents will go mad, because there's no money in it and you certainly don't go to the Donmar or the Almeida for the money,' she added. 'What is it, £50 a performance or something?'

She shivered as she told me of her fear of first-night jitters. 'As soon as you think of the first night you start to think: "I can't go through that again!", but you have to learn to conquer it.'

Then she threw her head back and laughed. 'Look at me, I haven't even been asked to do anything yet! If Sam (Mendes, who directed her in The Blue Room) offered something, or Stephen (Daldry, who helped her win an Oscar in The Hours) or Katie Mitchell at the National Theatre, then I'd consider doing it,' she told me.

Nicole instructed me to call her once a month to nudge her. 'You've got to push me into doing it, Baz,' she declared.

In the meantime, she will soon start filming The Stepford Wives for producer Scott

Rudin, who also worked on The Hours with Robert Fox. (Rudin and Fox fell out last year big time over some project, but the pair are now back on speaking terms.)

At the end of the year, Nicole is set to make a film with Brad Pitt. In between all this she'll meet up with her sister Antonia, for the birth of her baby.

And let's not forget Cannes. Nicole stars in Lars Van Trier's film Dogville, which premieres at the Cannes Film Festival in May. The actress calls the film 'very strange'. That may be so, but I hear she gives a scorching performance as a woman who looks for help in a mountain village.

Harvey Weinstein's Miramax Film company will also release two movies starring Nicole for 2004 Oscar contention - The Human Stain and Anthony Minghella's Cold Mountain.

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