I had such a huge lady crush on Nicole Kidman ten years ago, circa Moulin Rouge. Unlike my lady crush on Lucy Liu, though, the crush on Kidman did not survive the ensuing years and her increasingly frozen face. She made me too sad to crush on her. But maybe Pre-Frozen Nicole is making a comeback. As Entertainment Weekly noted in 2010, she was looking less frozen than normal in Rabbit Hole. And her last several red carpet appearances have shown a receding third lip. I support this whole-heartedly. I wouldn’t mind lady-crushing on her again.

That opportunity might be here, as Kidman is in talks to portray Grace Kelly in the movie Grace of Monaco that details a six-month period in Princess Grace’s life when she engaged in some behind-the-scenes politics to save Monaco from being absorbed into France in 1962. Grace of Monaco is being set up as a prestige pic, with the director of Marion Cotillard’s Oscar movie La Vie en Rose and a Kings Speech-esque angle on the traditional biopic. Remember when Nicole Kidman was a proper actress whose beauty was secondary to the fact that she made good movies? I want to get back to that. This is a huge step in the right direction.

And it’s a pretty good fit, beyond the ability to play the role. Kidman has the same refined beauty as Princess Grace, and I’ve always thought she bore a resemblance to Grace. The elegance, the poise, the regal bearing—yes, yes and yes. My concern? That Kidman won’t be able to resist freezing her face into oblivion to look like Grace. At the time the movie is set, Grace was 33. Kidman is, today, 44 and could be 45 by the time they get rolling; she’s still a beautiful woman, but she’s demonstrated an insecurity about aging and her face. Will the pressure of portraying one of the most beautiful women in film, who at the time was 11-12 years younger than she is, be too much for Kidman to handle? Will she run for the Botox at the first suggestion that people think she’s too old?

I hope not. A year from now, I want to be celebrating the return of my lady crush on an unfrozen Nicole Kidman.

(Lainey: what’s interesting to me here is whether or not they ask her NOT TO. Like, is that part of the negotiation? “Hey Nic, we really want you for this part. But we need you real. So… we’ll give it to you, but you have to not f-ck around with your head.” The crazy thing about Hollywood is that that’s a message that gets sent…to the AGENT. And then the agent has to relay it to the client. Don’t you wish those conversations could be recorded?)

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