Greatest Nicole Kidman performance ever (until now)???

Kidman is for me, comfortably the greatest actress of her generation, and also probably the best English language actress currently working. Astonishing range and flexibility as a performer, who though prolific, never appears to coast or rest on her laurels. A mercurial and consistently challenging performer.

It's tough to pick with her. She has so many great performances that are also very, very different from each other. How does one compare a transformative, grittty character study like Destroyer (where she was brilliant) to her giving classic Hollywood musical movie star pizzazz in Moulin Rouge?

She gave arguably the greatest female television performance of the decade in the first season of Big Little Lies (maybe the greatest even if you include movies), but the OP gave their reasoning for excluding television. Were it on the poll, it might well win.

To Die For is probably her most influential performance (everyone from Emma Watson in The Bling Ring to Charlize Theron in Young Adult have taken cues from Kidman's startlingly orginal work), but I'm going to pick Birth, where Kidman displays her full mastery in front of the camera in a performance of astonishing precision and nuance. 

But you could pick 5-6 different performances for her as her "best", and you wouldn't neccesarily be wrong. She still feels like someone capable of surprising and setting new career bests though.

Edit: I think I may change my pick to Dogville. She is insanely good in that. Damn, it's hard to pick just one.  Especially when she's so great in things like The Hours, Rabbit Hole and The Killing Of A Sacred Deer as well.

I like her but do not hold her anywhere near what some people do on MAR tbh and irl I think the way her publicists shill for her is kind of gross (there's a thread on it ).......she finished 8th in our GOAT MAR poll - which I love to bring up ........ to me she's maybe not even top 5 in of her generation of English speaking actresses much less ever (!), much less all countries/languages ever (!).

I do like her though and in terms of her best performances I think it was in Birth and To Die For (And that includes TV).....both turns that focused in some ways on her sexuality and her ability to turn on that which she did to great effect. I'd pick Birth if forced to choose.....

At the moment I think she's struggling - I absolutely loathed her BS performance in Destroyer in particular - a real piece of dishonest acting (in a dishonest film) not just "a bad film she was in".........and think in many ways she's in a pretty deep repetitive rut.......on the other hand she has an Eggers film coming up so that's a big upside potentially.

I am practically salivating at what MsMovieStar will say in this thread

Also, a useful tweet/article for a thread like this:

Oh honey, I think her earlier work is stronger... and then there are so many shit performances where she just falls back on her tired technique of a trip to Waynes wig world and whispering her dialogue and wobbly accents. Very hit and miss as an actress, but much better as movie star and fame whore than most...

For me, probably, The Others, which I think was one of her biggest commercial hits... so many flops after that. The problem with Kidman is that she's miscast in so many roles where you watch and think actress X would have been more suited to the role and could have done it much better (whispered less and without the obvious and awful looking wig). She can't carry a movie and is generally better as an ensemble actress or in supporting. People are not rushing out to theatres to see her lead in one of her famous flops, that's for sure...