Nicole Kidman

At Least We Can All Agree On Whether she's confronting the toughest emotions onscreen, raising millions to support women's causes, or putting on a pinstriped suit to help save the movies, the Expats star brings people together.

- Tyler McCall

Bare feet tucked up on the couch, hands burrowed into the sleeves of her Balenciaga suit, multi-award-winning actress Nicole Kidman looks me dead in the eye and, with great relish, delivers one of her most iconic lines: "Heartbreak feels good in a place like this."

In case you've been living under a rock, or haven't been to the movies in the last few years, that quote is from a spot Kidman filmed for AMC Theatres at the height of the pandemic. It's a simple 60-second ad, and yet, from the moment of its release in September 2021, it became the stuff of legend. People stand and salute when it plays in theaters. The internet overflows with homemade "Nicole Kidman for AMC" merch. Sotheby's recently auctioned off the pinstriped Michael Kors Collection suit worn in the campaign for $9,525.

While not every actor enjoys becoming a meme, Kidman has loved every second of it, including the growing trend of drag queens spoofing the AMC ad in their performances. "My dream will be to be onstage doing it with a drag queen," she says. "I've got to be able to do that at some point."

That the campaign went mega-viral, to Kidman, is kismet: She filmed it over one weekend while working on the movie Being the Ricardos, recruiting the film's DP, Jeff Cronenweth, and her friend, Oscar-winning screenwriter Billy Ray, to make it happen. She felt it was her duty to answer AMC Theatres CEO Adam Aron's call to help get people back into movie seats. "It was just the desire to keep cinemas alive," Kidman says. "I've had the best experiences in cinema. I'd pretend I was going to school; I'd forge a note, and I'd go and sit in a movie theater. That's a safe haven for me, so the idea of those not existing-that's just not part of the equation in my lifetime."