Nicole Kidman: Portrait of a Lady

Talk about landing on your feet: Nicole Kidman is so spot-on her thespian toes these days one could almost say it's a shame Tom didn't cruise long ago. Summoning the raw emotion laid bare by the upheaval of her high-profile marriage to the box-office big wheel, Kidman has since shone in challenging roles with rave reviews -- and her public sincerity about the pain of her personal heartbreak shows that the still-tender Australian actress saves her cunning for the cameras.

This year she follows the success of The Others and her Oscar-nominated performance in Moulin Rouge with three films adapted from Pulitzer Prize-winning novels -- as Virginia Woolf in Michael Cunningham's The Hours (costarring Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore), and in Cold Mountain (by Charles Fraser) and The Human Stain (by Philip Roth).

Kidman, who was born in Hawaii, was raised with her younger sister, Antonia, in Sydney by mom Janelle (a nursing instructor) and dad Anthony (a biochemist and psychologist). A high school dropout, she says her love of literature led her to be an actor.