David Thomson taught film studies at Dartmouth College and served on the selection committee for the New York Film Festival. He is a regular contributor to the Independent, the New York Times, Film Comment, Movieline, the New Republic, and Salon, and was the screenwriter on the award-winning documentary The Making of a Legend: Gone With the Wind. His other books include The New Biographical Dictionary of Film, The Whole Equation: A History of Hollywood, Showman: The Life of David O. Selznick, Beneath Mulholland: Thoughts on Hollywood and Its Ghosts, and three works of fiction. Born in London, he lives in San Francisco with his wife and their two sons.

Nicole Kidman, Oscar winner, is more than a movie star. She is the leading female celebrity icon of our age, her face and body appear in the media the world over, and she often commands a salary of over 10 million dollars a picture. However there is something mysterious and not quite settled about her, which is why David Thomson, one of the world's greatest film critics, knew he had to write about her. Whilst there may (just) be more attractive women on the screen, none has such a talent for transforming herself. This is a biography of a curly-red-haired girl from Australia who has become a world-famous actress. It is a searching treatment of her acting and business career, and a tribute by an admirer to a woman who has it in her to move millions of strangers.