Nicole Kidman?s Unexpected Apprenticeship as a Death Doula Started in Movies
When Nicole Kidman recently said she’s interested in becoming a death doula, it might have sounded like an unexpected career pivot. But if you’ve been watching her films closely, it’s not a pivot at all. It’s a continuation. Long before she ever spoke about end-of-life care, Kidman has been exploring death, grief, and what it means to keep living in the face of loss. Again and again, she’s taken on roles that sit right at the emotional edge where love, mortality, and meaning collide. In other words, she’s been doing a kind of cinematic death work for years. Two films in particular offer a fascinating window into this: The Hours (2002), which is featured in my new book 98.6 Mortality Movies to See Before You Die , and Birth (2004), which, in a bit of poetic timing, I recently found on DVD in a thrift store. Yes, a secondhand copy of a film about reincarnation and unresolved grief. You can’t make this stuff up. Sitting With Death in The Hours In The Hours , Kidman portrays Virg...
