Nicole Kidman opens up about emotional toll of 'Big Little Lies'

Nicole Kidman has been contemplating the emotional strain of tackling intense roles including starring as Celeste Wright on ‘Big Little Lies.’

During a roundtable conversation hosted by The Hollywood Reporter, which included Kidman alongside Jodie Foster, Brie Larson, Naomi Watts, Jennifer Aniston, Ana Sawai, and Sofía Vergara, the actress recalled throwing a rock through a door after shooting ‘Big Little Lies’.

“I threw a rock because [the door] was locked and I couldn’t get in,” she explained. “I’d never done that in my life,” Kidman said. 

“I obviously [had a lot] pent up. I broke the whole thing. It cost a fortune,”  added the Oscar winner. 

Kidman also recalled telling her ‘Big Little Lies’ costar Alexander Skarsgard and season 1 director Jean-Marc Vallee, about the incident.

“And then I went back the next day and I said to Alexander [Skarsgard] and Jean-Marc [Vallée], ‘I threw a rock through the window,’ and they were like, ‘Whoa …’ I said, 'I was kind of pissed off,’” she said.

“But there’s a way in which we operate where the show must go on, and so you just keep going — you show up and you do it and do it and do it and do it,” she added. “And a lot of times, it’s six months of 12-, 14-hour days and there really isn’t the time to go, ‘I need to take care of myself.’”

Kidman acknowledged that the impact on her mental well-being was not exclusive to the HBO drama series, ‘Big Little Lies.’

“After Expats, I went and did a comedy because I went crazy with my own psychology. I was like, ‘This is unhealthy,’” she said. “And it’s something that I think we need to talk about as actors — protecting your body so that you can live for as long as you are given on this earth. Because it’s very tough on the psyche.”

‘Big Little Lies’ premiered in 2017 and was based on Liane Moriarty’s book of the same name. It starred Kidman, Reese Witherspoon, Shailene Woodley, Laura Dern, and Zoe Kravitz in the lead.