Nicole Kidman Put Herself "Through Trauma" While Filming 'Babygirl'

Nicole Kidman says she gives her all to a role—often at the expense of her own mental health. And her latest film took a serious toll. While speaking with Zendaya for Variety's Actors on Actors series, Kidman opened up about how she put her body through 'trauma" for the upcoming psychosexual thriller, Babygirl.

While talking about Zendaya's performance as Rue in Euphoria, Kidman said empathetically, "It’s really taxing going through all of those emotions. Your [body] doesn’t..."

"…know that it’s fake," Zendaya chimed in, completing the thought.

"No," agreed Kidman, adding, "So you’re putting yourself through the trauma."

Kidman then turned the conversation to Babygirl, the upcoming film in which she plays a high-powered CEO who begins a sub-dom affair with her young intern (played by Harris Dickinson).

"On Babygirl, there were parts that are now not in the film that we shot that gave me..." she said, trailing off. "It was exhausting, but it was also just emotionally disturbing."

She then recalled going through similar emotional and even physical trauma while filming Big Little Lies. "That was disturbing to my body and my psyche, because I couldn’t tell what was real and what wasn’t. I would have real bruises all over my back and body," she said.

This is not the first time Kidman has spoken about her feeling of emotional "burnout" on the set of Babygirl. After a screening of the film, she revealed that the rest of the cast and crew couldn't have been more supportive whenever she felt she needed a break. "There was an enormous amount of sharing and trust and then frustration," she said. "It's like, 'Don't touch me.' There were times when we were shooting where I was like, ‘I don’t want to [simulate] orgasm any more. Don’t come near me. I hate doing this. I don’t care if I am never touched again in my life! I’m over it.’"

In another interview with Vanity Fair, she revealed, "At some point I was like, I don’t want to be touched. I don’t want to do this anymore, but at the same time I was compelled to do it. [Director] Halina [Reijn] would hold me and I would hold her, because it was just very confronting to me.”

Over the years, Kidman has learned the importance of giving her mind and body time to heal after an emotionally taxing role. "I’ve done things where they clean my chakras and pray and get out the sage," she said to Zendaya for Variety. "Honestly, I’ll take whatever so I can step into the next place free, and not scarred or damaged or wounded. Which sounds like I’m batshit crazy, but I’m not. Even just a massage, where suddenly you get a beautiful touch. That’s healing, and we have to heal."

She concluded, "I’m still learning not to sacrifice my body for the sake of the art, because part of me wants to. Having to value who I am, it’s a journey."

Although Kidman may have put herself through some trauma for Babygirl, she couldn't be prouder of the final product. "It's hopefully pioneering in a sense that it's a female protagonist in this genre that has primarily been a male protagonist-dominated genre," she said of the project during a recent appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. "And it's told through the eyes of a female writer-director."

Read the original article on InStyle