Nicole Kidman: A Kind of Life Read Online Free PDF

everything I’ve done I’ve learnt something or I’ve met someone who’s been quite instrumental in molding my career. On Windrider , I met someone that  . . . was really important to me and helped me to grow. So you’ve got to look at things positively. I did do some thing that weren’t of really high quality, but I learnt a lot.”
     The relationship with Burlinson ended in 1988 when he asked her to marry him and she said no. Shortly after her breakup with Burlinson, she began dating actor Marcus Graham. Four years older than Nicole, the Perth-born actor had made only one film at that point, Dangerous Game, but he would go on to make numerous movies, including 2001’s Mulholland Dr. and 2002’s Horseplay. For Nicole, the relationship was different from the one she enjoyed with Burlinson. Although she had lived with Burlinson and set up housekeeping, she chose to live separately from Graham during their romance, citing career needs and a wish for more personal space.
    In addition to all the career and relationship issues swirling about Nicole in 1985, she experienced her first real family emergency. She was on the set of Windrider when she received an urgent telephone call from her mother. Janelle told her that she had some bad news. She was in the hospital, where she had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Nicole was devastated. She dropped the telephone and found the producers and pleaded with them to allow her to return home. They rejected her request on the grounds that they could not afford a break in production.
    Nicole stuck it out until production was completed, then hurried home to be with her mother. “Suddenly the person that you love most in the world is losing her hair and sobbing every night,” Nicole told Premiere magazine. “It was very hard on me and it still remains a big thing in my life.”
    Janelle underwent a lumpectomy, a new procedure at that time in Australia, then followed up with chemotherapy and radiation, convinced that she was going to die. How ironic it was that Antony’s early research had been on the effects of anxiety and stress on breast cancer. Perhaps fearing that her decision to drop out of school had somehow created the anxiety that triggered the disease, Nicole nursed and took care of her mother with uncompromised compassion, even going to the trouble of qualifying as a masseuse so that she could massage her mother’s aching muscles every day.
    “It was very hard to see your mother going through such pain,” Nicole told Good Weekend magazine. “It opened my eyes to mortality, and to pain and suffering, and from that point on I was determined to support and be a part of and in some way help. Janelle’s cancer changed the family in profound and lasting ways.”
    One result of Janelle’s illness was that Antony resumed his research on breast cancer in order to find out if cognitive behavior therapy could be effective on women with advanced stages of the disease. Like most psychologists, Antony was much better at intellectualizing the problem and looking for solutions outside the family than he was in providing one-on-one support (it is a drawback of the profession). Another outgrowth was Antony’s decision to embrace “psychoncology,” a new field in which therapists work with cancer patients and their families in an effort to help them better cope with the disease. The best way to help Janelle, Antony concluded, was to find new approaches to treating the disease. As it happened, Janelle’s cancer did not recur and today, more than two decades later, she is still cancer free. 
    By this point in their marriage, it had become obvious that Janelle had affected Antony’s professional life in a variety of ways. His new focus on breast cancer was an obvious example. Not so obvious was the influence she had on his viewpoints about the changing dynamics of family life in general. He began to see the anxieties and conflicts experienced by women in a more personal