Nicole Kidman has spoken about the day she learned of her mother’s death.
The 58-year-old actress spoke Saturday on the History Channel’s live speaker series HISTORYTalks 2026 about a variety of things, including learning of her mother’s death just before she won the best actress award for “Baby Girl” at the Venice Film Festival in September 2024.
“I won Best Actress at the Venice Film Festival, and this seems to be a very common theme throughout my life,” she said, according to The Hollywood Reporter.
“As I was about to go on stage, I learned that my mother had passed away. I immediately went back to my room in Venice and went to bed, completely devastated.”
She recalled feeling like she didn’t know how she would survive without her mother, saying, “My mother was a part of my being. It was devastating to think of her being there at that moment.”
The Big Little Lies star went on to say that it was “horrendous to be there at that moment” and began taking steps to leave Venice as soon as possible.
“I remember boarding a boat on the canal and literally trying to find my way to the airport at night and then turning around and leaving. I can’t even do that,” she said.
“And I went back to bed and I was alone. My husband wasn’t there. My kids weren’t there. I went to get the award. What was supposed to be beautiful ended up being that. But there are contrasts in life.”
Kidman, who went through this tragic experience alone, says she now tells people that “that’s when you know you’re resilient” and “you can overcome most things.”
Kidman’s mother, Janelle, passed away in September 2024 at the age of 84.
Two years after her mother’s death, the Academy Award-winning actress revealed her plans to become a death doula to investigative journalist Vicki Nguyen as part of the private school’s Silk Speaker Series.
“My mother was lonely when she passed away. There was only so much a family could do,” Kidman said, according to the San Francisco Chronicle.
“My sister and I had a lot of kids, careers, jobs, and I wanted to take care of my sister because my dad was no longer in this world. That’s when I thought, ‘I wish there were people in the world who would sit there fairly and just give me comfort and care.'”
Kidman has two daughters, Sunday Rose, 17, and Faith Margaret, 15, with ex-husband Keith Urban, and her sister Antonia has six children.
The actress has spoken out many times over the years about her close bond with her mother, telling the Sydney Morning Herald how her mother always pushed her to pursue her dreams, saying: “She carved her own path and wanted her daughters to have the same opportunity to carve their own path.”
“Although her mother didn’t always have the career path she wanted, she was determined that her daughters would have equal opportunities,” Kidman added.
“It gave me life, and she gave me life, and so did my father.”
Kidman is following in her mother’s footsteps as a supportive mother while supporting her daughter Sunday Rose’s modeling career.
She made her runway debut walking for Miu Miu at Paris Fashion Week in 2025.
