At 57, Nicole Kidman is now such a fixture in Hollywood—an Academy Award-winning actor who is constantly on screens big and small, from the addictive The Perfect Couple to the Oscar buzz-generating Babygirl, not to mention the forthcoming second season of Nine Perfect Strangers, a Practical Magic sequel, a new Amazon mystery, et al—that it’s difficult to remember a time when she wasn’t.
But that was certainly not the case in the early ’80s, when the then relatively unknown Australian teenager, fresh-faced and with a halo of bouncy curls, made her screen debut in the small-town drama Bush Christmas. A flurry of minor roles followed over the next six years, though it took the splashy thriller Dead Calm to launch her into the stratosphere. From there, she raced into Days of Thunder, the NASCAR movie through which she was introduced to Tom Cruise. They married soon after, Kidman entered the A-list, and she went on to conquer the industry with her performances in the likes of To Die For, The Portrait of a Lady, Eyes Wide Shut, Moulin Rouge!, The Others, and The Hours.
Ahead of the release of Babygirl—and as Kidman’s awards campaign begins gearing up—we present 26 jaw-dropping throwback photos of the actor from this early phase of her more-than-four-decade-long career.