Hollywood Can Be Tough for Women Over 50. No One Told Nicole Kidman.

Early on in "Babygirl," there's a scene in which Nicole Kidman, playing a high-powered tech CEO, comes into possession of a tie belonging to her young intern. In the script, what happens next is a single sentence: "She picks up the tie and she goes into her office and smells it."

Kidman takes this directive from Halina Reijn's screenplay to its extreme. Locked in her character's office, she reclines on a couch, seemingly possessed by the tie. She pushes it against her nose, inhaling deeply;rubs it against her face and neck; and, finally, puts it into her mouth, leaning back, eyes closed, in rapture.

It's a wild and vulnerable moment for Kidman in a film full of them. At one point, she laps up milk from a saucer on all fours, like a cat.

On its own, the role would have placed Kidman squarely in the zeitgeist. But the 57-year-old actress has taken on a range of projects this year-from a Taylor Sheridan streaming thriller about the CIA to Netflix's adaptation of an Elin Hilderbrand beach read-that add up to total cultural domination. Acting across genres and formats, high and low, she's become a model for an exceptional and highly lucrative definition of actorly range.

Fans and fellow actors have taken note. Presenting at the Emmys, Steve Martin joked about his trick for talking to actors he doesn't know: "I just say, 'I love your scene with Nicole Kidman.' Nine times out of 10, I'm right!" In an interview, Kidman seemed almost unaware of her ubiquity.

There was no master plan to win the year in culture. She said she navigated her career on intuition alone.

"I have this very strange way of choosing projects," she said, "this very spontaneous gut reaction. I mean, with 'Babygirl,' I was just so drawn to the title alone." Other A-listers might wait for the right project to come to them, or live in agent-stoked fear of overexposure.

But Kidman, who has an Oscar, two Emmys and six Golden Globes, has taken an openly exploratory approach. In 2017, she pledged to work with a female director every 18 months, a goal she's exceeded by seeking out new talent herself.

Reijn, who wrote and directed A24's "Babygirl," said she nearly fainted when Kidman called her after watching Reijn's Dutch indie thriller "Instinct" to say she wanted to work together.

"She finds women all over the planet and connects to them and works with them," said Reijn. "She attaches herself to so many different things and gets scrutiny for it, 'Why do you work so much?"

" Reijn says that because of Kidman's involvement, the movie is reaching a wider audience.

"It's just good for business," said Lulu Wang, who directed Kidman in the Amazon series "Expats," of the actor's production choices. "To look where other people maybe aren't looking, to not go to the same list that everybody's going to, giving people a chance, discovering them." Kidman frequently produces her own projects and has run her production company Blossom Films with Per Saari since 2010.

She's also not afraid to go mass.

In the Netflix rom-com "A Family Affair," which debuted at No. 1 on Netflix's global Top 10 list, she plays a widow who falls for her daughter's 30-something boss (Zac Efron).

Directors say that Kidman's fearlessness and lack of inhibition have given her staying power as a leading lady. In Wang's "Expats," there is a somber scene where Kidman's character, a wealthy mother whose youngest son has gone missing, goes to a morgue with her husband to view a body. Yet Wang said that in the middle of filming, Kidman had pulled her aside to suggest that when her character first sees the body, she should start laughing.

"I never would have thought of that, yet it fits so perfectly with the type of choices I like to make," said Wang, "She told me that's what she did when she saw her father at the morgue-it was a physical reaction that she couldn't stop." Kidman and Wang didn't tell Brian Tee, the actor playing Kidman's husband, about the change, capturing his real response on camera. "She is always looking for the most intense choice," said Wang.

Susanne Bier, who directed the Hilderbrand adaptation, "The Perfect Couple," appreciates that Kidman goes for "the most extreme takes." "You don't necessarily use them," she said, "but they catapult everything into a different space. She might do a take which is so extreme, you kind of go, 'Whoa, what was that?"

In "The Perfect Couple," Kidman has a monologue in which she blows up at her husband and shatters a lie the couple had long told their children: They didn't meet at an art gallery opening, as they'd always said, but when Kidman's character was working as an escort. The two-minute meltdown made rounds on TikTok and X as a new Kidman classic.

"She's searching for artistic truth," says Bier. "That is why she does what she does." "What happens is I become freer and freer and freer," says Kidman.

"When a director really gets me is when I'm able to be far more fully realized in a performance." Her cultural ubiquity extends to internet memes and viral video clips.

Since last year, the actor's mentions on social media increased by 88%, according to analytics company Sprout Social. Part of this may be the long digital tail of an advertisement she filmed for AMC movie theaters.

Before she says the opening line"We come to this place for magic"audiences sometimes clap and cheer.

Her friend, the screenwriter Billy Ray, wrote the script at Kidman's request, which also includes the line, "Somehow, heartbreak feels good in a place like this." Kidman didn't expect the spot-ad to land so strongly.

"It was very pure, and I think that's what people probably feel," she said, adding that she'll do "whatever it takes to get people to come and sit in a movie theater and have that experience together." Off-camera, her co-stars and directors describe Kidman as warm, funny and empathetic. "There was one day that was a little shaky for me dealing with outside forces," said Richard LaGravenese, who directed "A Family Affair." "She knew without me saying anything and pulled me aside and gave me a great talk."

Dakota Fanning, who plays Kidman's daughter-in-law in "The Perfect Couple," pegs Kidman as downright inspiring. "Her advice to other actors and younger people is keep going, do everything, try everything and really not to be afraid," said Fanning. "Is this going to work? Are people going to like it?" Who cares?"