By Woodrow J. Hinton

Nicole Kidman

Ask the superstar·s best friend about life under constant chaos and you stand a better chance of hearing an honest answer.

Actress Naomi Watts currently shares the same Toronto hotel with her longtime intimate Nicole Kidman, but they live in different worlds. Watts might be on the rise thanks to the critical acclaim around director David Lynch·s 2001 Hollywood drama Mulholland Drive and her commercial success in the recent horror movie The Ring. Yet she fulfills her publicity obligations with endless interviews on behalf of her new movie, 21 Grams, which screened a couple of days earlier at the Toronto International Film Festival.

Inevitably and consistently, Watts answers questions about her famous mate.

"What impresses me about Nicole is that she still lives a normal life," Watts says earnestly. "She leaves her house to do errands. She goes places with her kids. She refuses to let fame take over her life."

Watts looks as glamorous as a rising actress should, worlds apart from her 21 Grams character, a depressed wife and mother struggling to cope with a tragic accident. In movie lingo, the phrase "dress up" -- at least with regards to creating the type of dramatic character that attracts praise -- really means dressing down.

Here is a career-making lesson only a best friend could convince you to accept: If you want to be respected as a serious actress, show people how homely you can be.

Case in point is Kidman, who made a lovely lover in the period musical Moulin Rouge! partly due to the beautiful costumes but mostly thanks to her wet lips, flowing hair and form-fitting dress. She was sexy and funny, but the arbiters of quality movie acting seldom take seriously someone who plays the vamp.

Kidman later practiced her dour expressions playing a flustered mother alone with her children in a large English manor in The Others, a gothic ghost story that wowed audiences and critics. Then she was rewarded with a Best Actress Oscar for playing dress up with such verve in The Hours, director Stephen Daldry·s literary-minded, era-jumping melodrama.

The Hours showed a different side of Kidman, who plays iconic novelist Virginia Woolf in 1923 England. She conceals her pretty face and lithe figure under formless smocks and pouting expressions. She looks plain, which is an achievement in itself.

A putty nose and stringy hair qualified Kidman as a highbrow Oscar hopeful, and the play-acting paid off handsomely. How grand it is for a famous beauty to show the world she can be a regular, unattractive woman.

Girl-talk for Watts and Kidman probably follows along these lines: Can you be an emotionally rich, complex actress and still be beautiful? In order to ensure what the public knows is less than what they don·t know, deception and distance is essential.

Kidman, an actress who clearly calls the shots, can make as much distance as she desires and wear a putty nose and stringy hair as often as she wants.

While her friend Watts takes on enormous publicity duties in support of 21 Grams, Kidman comes to the Toronto Festival to back her two films -- The Human Stain, director Robert Benton·s adaptation of the Philip Roth novel, and Dogville, maverick filmmaker Lars von Trier·s eclectic story about a young woman seeking peace in a small Colorado town during the Depression.

A private press conference is set up for Kidman at one of Toronto·s luxury hotels away from the maddening mob of ordinary festival press conferences. The event, an invitation-only affair, is unorthodox enough to warrant a critical column in a local daily newspaper.

No photographers are allowed in the room with Kidman. Journalists are forbidden from approaching her table. Tape recorders are to be turned on before Kidman enters the room. Everyone is to remain seated until she exits when the conference is over.

Control on the part of Kidman·s publicists calms the expected chaos, and the delicate handling leaves the press feeling cheated.

Film festival press conferences by design are chaotic affairs. Crowds of journalists and photographers squeeze into a room two sizes too small for the mob. There·s never enough time to cover all the important topics.

Press conferences begin when photographers rush to the front of the room for pictures of the star·s arrival. This onslaught repeats itself at the end with added turmoil. Journalists join the pack of photographers in begging the star actor or director to stay in the room one minute more in order to ask an all-important question. It·s a sloppy procedure, yet in perfect step with the mile-a-minute spirit of celebrities.

Kidman·s private press conference is something entirely out of the festival norm. It·s an impressive attempt by the people working for her to create distance and perhaps a jolt of additional mystery for an actress whose every action makes news.

The evening event lacks excitement, but Kidman aims to compensate with lengthy responses to the ordered questions. She wears glasses instead of contacts for the press conference, a gesture perhaps meant to show that she·ll answer questions seriously.

Asked if she considers herself the hardest-working actress in the movie business, Kidman sums up her career like this: "Everyone seems to talk about filmmaking as work, and I don·t see it as work. It·s something I have to do and I love to do. It·s artistic expression. Š Acting for me is not a business."

Kidman continues to answer questions about her performances in Dogville and The Human Stain. She speaks about her upcoming film, the Civil War drama Cold Mountain, about switching roles to producer on the Jane Campion film In the Cut and about her feelings about winning an Oscar for The Hours.

"Last year was amazing for me," she says. "And the fact that I won it (Oscar) for playing Virginia Woolf, that really pleases me. She gave me so much, and on top of it she gave me an Oscar."

Kidman leaves the room as smoothly as she entered, and I have to say that her new order press conference is something of a success. The distance between Kidman and the roomful of journalists remains intact. No new insights are learned from her answers. She retains whatever mystery she had at the start of the press conference.

Her only misstep is leaving the Woolf-inspired putty nose and stringy hair at home. Journalists angry over the unorthodox rules of the press conference would appreciate the outrageous gesture of an actress focused on play-acting and concealing her natural beauty. At they very least, it would make for a newsworthy story.

One thing is worth mentioning. Hotel staff remove a large number of chairs prior to the press conference to make the room look full in the face of smaller-than-expected attendance.

Maybe some people take issue when celebrities try to distance themselves during those few moments a celebrity is expected to fake accessibility.©