Industrious movie star Nicole Kidman was all over the news Sunday for her appearance at the Cannes Film Festival, but not because she looked amazing as usual on the red carpet, or because she turned into another daring, Oscar-worthy screen performance.
No, Kidman was scrutinized for another reason for which she has become famous. As Vulture once said, she is a “Wig Actress,” a performer who is absolutely “committed to wearing every manner of wigs at any chance she gets,” whether it’s for an acting role or for a public appearance.
CANNES, FRANCE – MAY 18: Nicole Kidman attends the 2025 Kering Women In Motion Awards and Cannes Film Festival Presidential Dinner at the 78th annual Cannes Film Festival at the Place de la Castre on May 18, 2025 in Cannes, France. (Photo by Monica Schipper/Getty Images)
Unfortunately, Kidman also has become known for wearing wigs that call attention to themselves, and not always in a good way. Kidman wears wigs so much that it’s become hard to remember when fans last saw her without a wig and caught a glimpse of her natural hair.
Kidman’s latest wig definitely called attention to itself on Sunday, while she walked the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival’s 2025 Kering Women In Motion Awards. Page Six reported that her strawberry blond hairpiece, possibly blended into her natural hair, stood out because it was a decidedly different color than strands of her real hair. The lace front of the wig cap also was clearly visible in close-up photos of her, otherwise looking glamorous in a red Balenciaga gown.
NEW YORK, NEW YORK – MAY 05: Nicole Kidman attends the 2025 Met Gala Celebrating “Superfine: Tailoring Black Style” at Metropolitan Museum of Art on May 05, 2025 in New York City. (Photo by Dia Dipasupil/Getty Images)
Earlier this month, “The Perfect Couple” star sparked speculation that she also was wearing a wig at the Met Gala when she turned up in a two-toned pixie hairstyle with long side bangs framing one side of her face.
Of course, it’s par for the course for actors to don wigs and hairpieces for different roles. It’s often part of the costume. Historically, balding male stars, from Humphrey Bogart to Frank Sinatra, felt they needed to cover up hair loss, while female stars might not have time to grow out their hair for a role, or they wanted to minimize the hair damage that can come from dyes or permanents.
WESTWOOD, CA – DECEMBER 18: (L to R) Actresses Julianne Moore, Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman pose for a photograph at the world premiere of Paramount Pictures’ “The Hours” at Mann’s National Theater on December 18, 2002 in Westwood, California. The film opens in limited release on December 27, 2002. (Photo by Robert Mora/Getty Images)
Both female and male actors talk about how wearing a wig helps them slip into their characters, though some female stars have tried to prove their commitment to their art by going to the extreme of shaving their hair off. That includes Florence Pugh for “We Live in Time,” Charlize Theron for “Mad Max: Fury Road,” Anne Hathaway for “Les Miserables” and Demi Moore, going back to “GI Jane” in 1997.
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No one can say that Kidman has never been committed to her roles, but she seems to go for wigs even when it doesn’t necessary to use a particular hairstyle for a character. In 2022, Vulture documented 42 roles in which clearly wore wigs, going back to 1995, when she played a blonde femme fatale weather girl in the acclaimed dark comedy “To Die For.”
But 42 is nearly half of her 102 acting roles in film and TV series, and the Vulture list doesn’t include the obvious wigs and hairpieces she wore in the more recent “”The Perfect Couple,” “A Family Affair” and “Babygirl.”
The Vulture list actually said there were only a few “shining lights” in Kidman’s “wig collection,” with “the lackluster quality” of many of her hairpieces becoming memes of both fans and critics, added Women.com. But those “shining lights” include the brunette hair pulled back into a bun — along with the prosthetic nose — that she used to hide her beauty while playing Virginia Woolf in “The Hours,” for which she won her best actress Oscar. There’s also the thick, wavy scarlet wig she wore in “Moulin Rouge,” which approximates what fans remember of her natural hair.
FILE – In this July 30, 1992 file photo, Britain’s Princess Diana, the Princess of Wales, right, meets actor Tom Cruise and his co-star wife actress Nicole Kidman at the Charity Premiere of the film Far and Away in London’s West End. It has been 20 years since the death of Princess Diana in a car crash in Paris and the outpouring of grief that followed the death of the “people’s princess.” (AP Photo/Martin Cleaver, File)
Fans very likely saw Kidman’s own strawberry blonde hair with corkscrew curls in “Days of Thunder,” the 1990 movie about NASCAR drivers that she made with her future first husband, Tom Cruise. It also doesn’t look like she was wearing a wig in selected other 1990s movies, such as “Malice” and “My Life,” or in the two other films she made with Cruise — “Far and Away” and “Eyes Wide Shut” — before they divorced in 2001.
Allure described the 1990s as “a glorious time in hair history,” including for Kidman’s “voluminous, strawberry blonde curls.” But Allure speculated that Kidman began to increasingly opt to for wigs in the new millennium, with “the advent of blowouts and flatirons.”
By the time Kidman met husband no. 2, Keith Urban, her go-to look was “heat-styled” and straightened,” Allure said. It’s safe to say that, more often than not in the last 20 years, Kidman has preferred to be seen in non-curly hairstyles, Allure added.
Kidman admitted in a 2017 interview with The Sydney Morning Herald that she had damaged her hair by straightening it all the time. “Do I wish that I hadn’t screwed up my hair by straightening it all the time? Sure,” she said.
Given such a statement, it’s possible that Kidman has used wigs so much to maintain the health of her natural hair, Women.com said. However, she also suggested in a 2019 podcast interview that wearing a wig is “necessary for the character to be authentic” when she as asked about being willing to sometimes look less than beautiful for a role.