Nicole Kidman shows her silly side in 'Paddington'

Nicole Kidman knows most people don?t consider her a comedic actress. In her 31-year-career, her roles have ranged from the morose to the deliciously sadistic. There are a few straight comedies in her resume, but Kidman is the first to admit that she just does not get many offers to do that type of work.

She has won an Oscar. She has worked with Stanley Kubrick, Jane Campion and Lars Von Trier. So how did she end up in a modest role as a delightfully villainous taxidermist in the children?s film ?Paddington? with a relatively unknown director at the helm? The answer is simple: She was asked.

?The desire to run the gamut and be diverse is something you?re taught at drama school,? said Kidman recently at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel. ?We?re trained in Shakespeare and then we?re trained in Nokl Coward and we?re trained in mime classes. But a lot of times you?re not given the opportunity to explore the things that you?ve cultivated.?

For director Paul King, it was a no-brainer. But it wasn?t Kidman?s 1996 romantic fantasy romp ?Practical Magic? that he was thinking of. He?d seen Gus Van Sant?s ?To Die For? and knew Kidman had to be his Millicent.

In the film, Millicent is a leather-clad, stiletto-wearing femme fatale who will stop at nothing to stuff the iconic talking bear from Darkest Peru and put him in a museum. ?He wrote it for me. I?m not sure if that?s a flattering thing or not,? Kidman laughed.

King, who had mostly worked in British television, knew it was a long shot. ?You should never write for an actor because they?ll just say no. But I did have her in mind,? he said.

The hard part was convincing everyone to actually put the script in front of Kidman. As King describes it, it?s a process of being politely...