The Others (2001) - Why didn’t Nicole Kidman get a Best Actress Oscar Nod for this?

Personally I think this was her best performance ever. She is totally unhinged at the end with that gun and is fucking fabulous. Ha.

Didn't Moulin Rouge come out the same year?

Yeah she got nominated for moulin Rouge

She was great in this, and might have won if she'd been nominated for it up against Halle & Sissy.

She didn't even get a nomination and she was much better in this than that crapfest, "Moulin Rouge."

2001 was a very tough year for actresses. There isn't one nomination I'd take away, including Julia Roberts. You can hate her but she was great in Erin Brockovich.

She should have gotten nominated for The Others instead but Moulin Rouge was such a big spectacle she got in there instead.

R5 Julia in Erin was 2000.

r5, you're getting your years mixed up.

The Others was released in 2001; the Best Actress nominees for 2001 were:

Halle Berry in Monster's Ball (winner)

Judi Dench in Iris

Nicole Kidman in Moulin Rouge!

Sissy Spacek in In The Bedroom

Renée Zellweger in Bridget Jones' Diary

Erin Brokovich came out in 2000, so Julia won in 2001.

The Others and Moulin Rouge came out in 2001, so she was up for the award in 2002, when Halle won.

Nicole's ice cold demeanor in real life, was perfect for this role.

I'm not a big NK fan because she always seems to stuck up and aloof. But it plays very well in this movie.

And this turned out to be one of my favorite horror movies. It's genuinely scary and creepy, in such a subtle way.

But there's also a real story there, which makes the movie even better.

I think that Finnoughla Hughes should have been nominated for Best Supporting, and the movie for Best Picture, as well.

I stand corrected. Her nomination should have been for The Others, then. I love this movie and own the DVD.

Is a minor film so the leading role is a minor role.

I remember seeing this in the theater and whole audience shrieking in terror at one point. And it wasn't the usual jump scare that's so prevalent now. Sign of a really good movie.

I also remember being flummoxed that Kidman got her Oscar nomination for Moulin Rouge! and not for The Others, considering the latter received more uniformly positive reviews and was a considerably bigger hit at the box office.

Everyone was great in The Others, even the kids.

A very enjoyable film!

Horror films and the people who perform in them generally don't get nominated for Oscars unless it's for something like makeup and special effects.

Well that's just dumb, R15.

Another reason The Academy is out of touch with viewers.

Because the horror genre is HUGE nowdays.

And people would love to see their favorite horror movies nominated for an Oscar.

Which clearly, "The Others" should have been.

She was a talented and expressive actress in those days before Botox ruined her. Also, what happened to her voice over the years? It used to be fuller and simpler, but now it sounds more cracked and hoarse. Did she have work done inside her throat, too?

Oddly enough, she could play a Stepford Wife much more convincingly today, with that robotic stare and immovable plastic mug.

This is a great movie. Too good to be a fun rewatch.

Another vital role in this movie was played by Irish great Fionnula Flanagan. She played the ghostly housekeeper.

She also played Valerie Bertinelli's weeping slut of a mother in one of my first TV movies, back in '79. Women's lib took a wrong turn with that old flooze.

BAFTA nominated Kidman for Best Actress for The Others over Moulin Rouge. She lost to Judi Dench for Iris.

SAG didn't nominate either performance but Golden Globes nominated both, winning musical/comedy for Moulin Rouge.

And yes, Fionnula Flanagan was amazing, She could easily have been nominated that year, along with her performance in TransAmerica.

Tilda Swinton was so good that year in The Deep End, a role Kidman could have played a bit later in her career.

R20 she didn’t get SAG nominations because she canceled herself out. She was expected to be nominated for BOTH but then was nominated for neither.

This type of horror flick DOES get award recognition. We aren’t speaking about Scream. This is more in line with Silence of the Lambs.

Dear lord, I messed up her name at R10.

As R19 mentioned, her name is Finnoula Flanahan. Not Hughes.

[quote][R20] she didn’t get SAG nominations because she canceled herself out. She was expected to be nominated for BOTH but then was nominated for neither.

SAG put Jennifer Connelly in leading, not supporting, She took Kidman's place.

Helen Mirren won best supporting actress at SAG and none of the other nominees including Dakota Fanning and Cameron Diaz made it to the Oscar noms. Oscar went with Maggie Smith over Judi Dench, Kate Winslet over Cate Blanchett and Marisa Tomei.

[quote] Too good to be a fun rewatch.

What should it be then? A sluggish rewatch?

She wasn’t getting nominated at SAG either way because she had two big performances in the same category. SAG has a history with shit like this.

You don’t see sleeper hits like The Others anymore.

Week 1- $14 million

Week 2- $10.9 million

Week 3- $8.5 million

Week 4- $8.1 million

Week 5- $10.1 million

Week 6- $6 million

Week 7- $4.5 million

Week 8- $5 million

Week 9- $4.7 million

Week 10- $2.8 million

Week 11- $1.7 million

And then the rest was in the 6 figures until it left theaters.

The Others creeped me out like no other movie since then.

Madonna's signed for the remake titled "The Udders".

You could have seen the ending of that movie from a mile away. Entirely predictable and formulaic.

[quote]You could have seen the ending of that movie from a mile away. Entirely predictable and formulaic.

Bullshit. You may have suspected they were dead but almost no one saw they were haunting the house. What other films had then formula?

The Sixth Sense

[quote]She was all over the media at this point because her and Tom broke up.

Oh, dear.

"had then formula"

What grade school did you attend?

[quote]This type of horror flick DOES get award recognition. We aren’t speaking about Scream. This is more in line with Silence of the Lambs.

Horror?

Silence of the Lambs?!

What the hell are you on about?

The Others is not horror film.

Suspense, yes. Thriller, yes, but horror??

And you think this film is like SofL?

There are different kinds of horror movies. It doesn't have to be blood and guts to be horror.

R36 is correct. Psychological horror is still horror.

Nicole was lovely in Moulin Rouge but she was outstanding in The Others.

And Fionnula Flanagan was brilliant, absolutely terrifying without resorting to needing CGI to make her scary. Much like Billie Whitelaw in The Omen. That mix of smiles and sinister = classic performance.

I didn't see the ending from a mile away at all. I liked this movie.

[quote] And Fionnula Flanagan was brilliant, absolutely terrifying without resorting to needing CGI to make her scary. Much like Billie Whitelaw in The Omen. That mix of smiles and sinister = classic performance.

Even the accent was creepy!

"Mr. Tuttle, I've just about reached my tether."

"Aye."

Lol.

Nicole wasn't considered a serious actress until she broke up with Tom Thumb

And Kidman in To Die For was worthy of an Oscar nomination as well. It's up there with her best performances.

Finally, a DL Oscar discussion worth having!

I think this is her most “Oscar-worthy” performance.

Probably my favourite Kidman film and possibly my favourite Kidman performance.

I can't believe there are others who feel this way. I have found my people.

I rewatched it a few months ago, after not having seen it since it’s original release. It holds up. It’s a great movie, and I remembered how I also thought she should have been nominated for this instead of Moulin Rouge. I still like Nicole as an actress even with the plastic surgery. And yes, she should have also been nominated for To Die For.

[quote]I also remember being flummoxed that Kidman got her Oscar nomination for Moulin Rouge! and not for The Others, considering the latter received more uniformly positive reviews and was a considerably bigger hit at the box office.

I feel the same way. They were both Summer films, so both were wildcards come award season. Moulin Rouge! had the advantage being a musical, as it was likelier to win Globes for Film/Actress vs. The Others which faced more competition in Drama. SAG likes musicals as well. The direction and cinematography for Rouge! were both very showy. We have to remember that this was 2001, and the success of Moulin Rouge! reinvigorated (and reinvented) the Hollywood musical and paved the way for Chicago, etc, which the industry would have been keen to reward.

I prefer the original henry james version

Her wig wasn't up to snuff.

Rouge! Was just a bigger and flashier film. The film was getting tons of other nominations, she was getting nominated for that.

R47 no. You don’t. I doubt you’ve ever seen that.

I agree totally. It's a quiet, understated movie with understated performances all around.

Interesting that it came out at the same time as the over-the-top showy Moulin Rouge! I remember that Entertainment Weekly basically panned the musical when it came out, and then after a bunch of strong reviews and nominations that followed, they gave it an A for the DVD release with no acknowledgment of having been critical originally. It showed me the power of critical peer pressure. It's basically a long karaoke music video that could have been received as terrible or as fun, and the public settled on fun because of the familiar music and the spectacle.

The Others, by contrast, is just a great quiet story that's well acted and directed. It's the only haunted house movie I've ever enjoyed. I don't understand th fear factor of the genre at all since I always think "these ghosts are annoying but they're never dangerous" while watching them, and the squeaky, creaky sound effects, sounds of kids laughing, slamming doors etc. don't faze me at all. But The Others is disturbing because the mother is clearly disturbed throughout, she's traumatizing her kids throughout, something is clearly off kilter about the servants, and then in the end it is suddenly an existential horror, which is the true sense of 'haunting.' Being haunted isn't about a ghost taking your keys and knocking pictures off the wall. It's about thoughts and memories holding you hostage, and The Others got that right in multiple ways.

I’m about to watch To Die For on Hulu right now.

I love Illeana Douglas in this too. And hot Matt Dillon. And baby Joaquin and Casey!

WHET Allison Folland?

R51 or people just enjoyed Moulin Rouge!…

Kidman should definitely have been nominated for her excellent work in The Others rather than her messy all over the place performance (including a variety of accents - WTF and barely adequate sining) in Moulin Rouge.

There are aspects of Moulin Rouge I like but Kidman isn't one of them.

I can get into spectacle but Romeo + Juliet and Moulin Rouge! are sensory overload in all ways for me. Too garish, too frenetic, too gimmicky. I appreciate Baz Luhrman as a stylist in theory, but I don't connect with his style.

I did enjoy Gatsby, though. It's basically a similar premise as the two movies above, resetting an old story in a contemporary world to make it more immediately relatable, but it worked a lot better for me than the prior two.

R30 is CORRECT! 👨‍⚖️

It’s interesting—I totally guessed the ending to The Sixth Sense but the ending of The Others shocked me. I agree with others here, that movie affected me (and my sister and brother-in-law, with whom I saw the movie) in ways we still talk about today. I think no movie utterly creeped me out (including Silence of the Lambs) more than this one.

I don't think it matters much if you saw the ending coming. I've rewatched it a half dozen times and obviously knew the ending the last five times. The movie is still a great dramatization of psychological trauma and denial, and Nicole Kidman and the child actors are brilliant.

And The Others is genuinely emotionally engaging to me. Moulin Rouge! is not. It's 'fun' in its garish way but the story is secondary to all the spectacle.

I agree, r58. And I also remember it got tremendous buzz when it was released, including for Nicole Kidman’s performance, which was I think the first time she truly showed she could give a tremendous performance. Didn’t Tom Cruise produce the movie? And didn’t they break up shortly after?

Why are we comparing a bright and colorful light musical to The Others? They’re literally opposites. I’m not understanding why they’re being compared as if they’re same genre films

R59 post made my hear hurt.

Tom produced The Others. They broke up shortly after filming was done.

R61 They're being compared because they both star Kidman, they were released the same year, and Kidman's performance in The Others is award worthy and she won awards instead for a less impressive film.

This concludes "Why We Compare The Others with Moulin Rouge."

R63 yes, but anyone with half a brain knows a big showy film like Moulin Rouge getting nominated for Best Picture and Director is going to get her nominated, not The Others. We know how it works.

R64 That's not entirely true. The Academy also loves to nominate actors for playing mentally disturbed characters, addicts and whores, as well as snooty period films, and The Others checks two of those boxes. But it's a ghost movie and the Academy rejects most paranormal and horror stuff, so yeah, it wasn't going to happen, unfortunately. Maybe if Kidman had worn a fat suit and a fake nose she would have gotten even more critical acclaim with feature articles praising her courage for covering her natural beauty in the sins of blubber and homeliness. That really helps with Oscars.

R65 again, if The Others came out a different year than Moulin Rouge! she could have easily gotten in for it. But the Academy was going to nominate her for the film getting tons of other noms. Not The Others.

I never liked her when she was starring in those Tom Cruise contract movies. Then I saw To Die For because I loved Gus Van Sant. There was a scene where the family was gathered in the house and the press was outside yelling. Nicole started walking towards the door and someone told her that she didn't have to talk to them. She turned her head in slow motion and looked at the person like she was an idiot before continuing on to the door. That's when I fell in love with her. Then she followed that up with Moulin Rouge! and The Others.

She's one of my favorite actors of all time. I just looked up her best performances and The Independent lists the movie Birth as number one. I don't think I have ever even heard of it.

[quote] There is a two-minute, unbroken close-up of Kidman’s face in Birth, one that takes place shortly after her character learns that her dead husband has been reincarnated in the body of a 10-year-old boy. She cycles through horror, devastation, slight joy, and then confused resolve. It is breathtaking. Birth is the trickiest film in Kidman’s filmography, a beguiling and hypnotic psychological drama that is both incredibly provocative and deeply uncomfortable. It also contains her finest performance, one that should rank up there among the greatest in film. She delivers something akin to a slow-motion breakdown here, her timid grace leading to a well of unfiltered grief. Brave, experimental and transformative, Kidman’s work here proves why she has long been one of Hollywood’s most exciting actors.

Nicole's award worthy performances.

Flirting (supporting)

To Die For (lead)

Moulin Rouge (lead)

The Others (lead)

The Hours (supporting)

Dogville (lead)

Birth (lead)

The Golden Compass (supporting)

Australia (lead)

Rabbit Hole (lead)

Lion (supporting)

Jesus, people. I loved Moulin Rouge (have the DVD and enjoy re-watching) and The Others equally. Didn't connect that they came out the same year. To Die For was a stellar film. Birth was really...out there and quite something.

Until this thread, I didn't realize how much I've loved her filmography. I've kind of sidelined her as of late because of her intense plastic surgery/enhancements she's undergone. That said, she's quite a versatile actress.

Nicole is amazing!

I loved Grace Jones in the sequel to Birth, Afterbirth!

Birth was a very strange and haunting film. It even had a bit of humor. The scene where Danny Huston flips out and just starts attacking the kid made me laugh.