AUSTRALIA: Stars Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman walk the red carpet for "Australia" premiere

Record ID: 218950

  • Title: AUSTRALIA: Stars Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman walk the red carpet for "Australia" premiere
  • Date: 19th November 2008
  • Summary: SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA (NOVEMBER 18, 2008) (REUTERS) (*** FLASH PHOTOGRAPHY ***) ACTOR BRYAN BROWN WALKING THE RED CARPET FANS TAKING PHOTOS ACTOR JACK THOMPSON TALKING TO REPORTERS (SOUNDBITE) (English) ACTOR HUGH JACKMAN SAYING: "I knew we would, I am not sure if Baz would answer the same way, but I knew we'd get here it has been a long time but you know with Baz it's worth the way." KEITH URBAN APPROACHING TO REPORTER (SOUNDBITE) (English) NICOLE KIDMAN'S HUSBAND, COUNTRY SINGER KEITH URBAN SAYING: "It is a huge honour, I feel very proud of her tonight." VARIOUS OF NICOLE KIDMAN POSING TO PRESS, GREETING FANS
  • Embargoed: 4th December 2008 12:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Australia
  • Country: Australia
  • Reuters ID: LVA1FHG215WI6KN00BPU32XNM07U
  • Story Text: Red carpets were rolled out in Sydney and the dusty outback on Tuesday (November 18) for the world premiere of the epic movie "Australia" which aims to showcase the rugged continent, its history and indigenous people to the world.
    Director Baz Luhrmann's ambitious and grandly named film, the most expensive made in Australia, was released amid a blaze of publicity and a race to finish the movie on time.
    Australian co-stars Nicole Kidman and Hugh Jackman have both carved out lucrative Hollywood careers but wanted to work with Luhrmann, a perfectionist who was so busy editing the film until the last moment that the cast did not see it before the premiere.

    "I knew we would get there but it has been a long time,"
    Jackman told Reuters as he walked the red carpet in Sydney, while screenings were held in three other Australian locations.
    Earlier in the day, Academy Award winner Nicole Kidman said she was unsure about her future in acting.
    Kidman, 41, has three children -- four-month-old daughter Sunday Rose with her country singer husband Keith Urban, with whom she lives with in Nashville, and two children adopted during her first marriage to actor Tom Cruise.

    "In terms of my future as an actor and stuff, I don't know,"
    she told a news conference. "I am in a place in my life where ... I've had some great opportunities and I may just choose to have some more children.
    I've no idea what is in my future but I am very at peace with where I want to be. There are many things I want to do besides act."
    The two-hour 40-minute long Australia, which is reported to have cost News Corp's 20th Century Fox about 130 million U.S. dollars, is a World War Two drama set in stunning Australian landscape.
    An English aristocrat (Kidman) travels to Australia and joins forces with a drover (Jackman) and an Aboriginal child to drive a herd of cattle across Australia, falling in love along the way.
    There are high hopes for the romantic adventure, which Luhrmann said he had filmed in the style of 'Gone With The Wind' hoping to make his mark on Australian film history, but it remained to be seen if it would draw audiences globally.

    "I'd love people to be seeing it in fifty years time rather than just remembering it in a sense and I think if these films if they do work and it is not that they are ever perfect, they are actually the great ones somewhat imperfect. But if they do connect then they move through time and space and you know, let me just be clear, getting an audience in where we have to here, particularly in the United States, I mean it is extraordinarily challenging you know and we should never be complacent about that. And you know, but, if we get an audience in and they do connect with it, then I think like my own experience of those films, you know that a Christmas time Lawrence of Arabia comes on or Gone With the Wind comes on and you know the fact that it brings together all demographics, the fact that they are inclusive films, you know, I love sushi, a rarefied food but a meal that everyone can sit down a big family roast, it is something more than just a meal it is about the effect of the meal on the family and on everyone, and the extended family, so I hope it in a little way it provides that and I hope that's ongoing,"
    said Luhrmann, admitting spending such a large amount on an old-fashioned style movie was a risk.
    Jackman agreed that the making of the movie was epic was as epic as it's story.

    "We started with pretty extensive workshops. Baz and I started talking a year before we actually started filming so the journey of creating the drover and fitting that into the story was definitely for me the greatest role that I've had and I say that with my bosses who were also my bosses for Wolverine so I don't say it lightly it generally was an amazing experience and an amazing opportunity something that I will never forget and something I am forever grateful for and I totally agree with Baz that the hardest thing was finishing it," he told reporters about creating his drover character.
    Early reviews from Australian critics were mixed, with David Stratton in The Australian writing it was not the hoped-for masterpiece while Jim Schembri in The Sydney Morning Herald said it was good but not destined to be a classic -- and way too long.
    Australian filmmakers hope the movie will revive interest in an industry that did well with quirky films like "Crocodile Dundee,"
    "Muriel's Wedding" and "Babe" but has slipped in popularity after a few years of bleak, box-office failures.

    "I felt a bit scared when I first met her but when we started the movie like I done a scene at the mission, but like my first scene I was at the picture show and I was on the top and I was all painted up in charcoal, and yeah..." said young first time actor Brandon Walters before shying away.
    The tourism industry has linked a 50 million dollar (32 million U.S dollar) international tourism campaign to the movie to try to make Australia a coveted destination in tough financial times.
    Kidman, 41, who worked with Luhrmann on his previous and third movie 'Moulin Rouge' in 2001, said making 'Australia' was a "once in a lifetime thing" for her.
    The movie also focuses on "the stolen generation", when tens of thousands of Aboriginal children were taken away from their families between the 1880s and 1960s to be raised by whites.
    Australia's new Labor government this year issued a long-sought formal apology to Aborigines for past injustices, heralding a new era in race relations in the nation.
    Australia has 460,000 indigenous Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders, or 2 percent of a 21 million population, who are the nation's most disadvantaged group with high rates of unemployment, alcohol and drug abuse, and domestic violence.
    Luhrmann said the release of the film in the same year as the national apology was coincidental, but in light of the apology, he felt he had to work the message into the story.

    "Australia" opens in the United States and Australia on Nov.
    26 and in Britain on Dec. 26.
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