Nicole Kidman kicked off 2018 with a big Golden Globe win as Best Actress for her role in Big Little Lies, amid the many accolades the series took home that night. As we enter the last months of the year, it doesn't look like Kidman is ready to come down from this high considering what roles she has in store for audiences. One of the Australian beauty's upcoming projects is the crime-drama Destroyer, out on Christmas Day. The official first look at Nicole Kidman's new role in Destroyer, has just been released, and it has the actress looking like a completely different person. Take a look.
In Destroyer, Nicole Kidman will play LAPD detective Erin Bell, who is troubled with what she experienced while she was placed undercover with a gang as a young cop. When the leader of the gang comes out of the shadows, Detective Bell must delve back into her past in order to contend with her past demons. Kidman's transformation teases a completely different role for the usually blonde-haired beauty. In this first look for Kidman in Destroyer, the role seems to have pushed the actress to tell an especially dark story. Kidman's character has her sporting a short, choppy cut, evident tiredness in her eyes and a look of bitterness in her expression.
Director Karyn Kusama explained to Vanity Fair that she wanted the character to look like a "real middle-aged woman" who doesn't hide her experiences from her face. Kusama also described the character as "sort of tragic" and "ultimately heroic". Kusama directed another female badass in 2005 with Aeon Flux, starring Charlize Theron. Kusama has primarily worked on television in recent years, but she did make a good impression on critics with her low-budget horror flick The Invitation in 2016, bringing her to direct this project. Her frequent collaborators Matt Manfredi and Phil Hay (who is also her husband) wrote the screenplay for Destroyer. The upcoming film also stars Sebastian Stan, Toby Kebbell, and Tatiana Maslany. The MCU's Winter Soldier, Stan posted on Instagram back in February of his own transformation for his role in Destroyer, where he sported shorter hair, beard and an arm tattoo.
With Nicole Kidman's award-winning role as the beautiful-but-troubled Celeste Wright in Big Little Lies fresh in our minds, Destroyer looks like it will mark another memorable role for the actress. Audiences will learn of her new and intriguing character when the film is released December 25. Kidman's other appearances later this year include starring in the biopic Boy Erased as the mother of a gay teen who is forced into a gay conversion program come November 2, as well as joining the DCEU as Queen Atlanna in Aquaman on December 21,
