What a time to be alive, folks, for we are in the midst of a full-blown Kidmanaissance. Which is not to say that she ever took a break from delivering extraordinary performances. To the contrary, Nicole Kidman has been consistent throughout her career in selecting challenging, subversive roles, it's just that people seem to forget how excellent she is once every few years. Fortunately, on the heels of her Academy Award-nominated turn in Lion, the wildfire success of her highpoint turn on HBO's Big Little Lies combined with a robust -- not double, not triple, but quadruple whammy at this year's Cannes Film Festival (Top of the Lake, The Beguiled, How to Talk to Girls at Parties, and The Killing of a Sacred Deer), Kidman is firmly back in the spotlight where she belongs.

It's not entirely surprising that folks have a hard time knowing how to categorize Kidman -- she's an actress who resists it at every turn. Despite the magnetism and classic movie star looks that earned her plenty of early career roles as love interests and leading ladies, Kidman has demonstrated a defiant career path over the last two decades. Sure, there have been some missteps along the way (though I still contend she would have made a fantastic Samantha in a better Bewitched movie), but that's to be expected when a performer is constantly taking risks. She veers left at every moment the industry would expect her to go right, opting for oddball films over popcorn paychecks and prestige pictures and consistently finding compelling, complex female characters whether she's taking on top-billing or a sight supporting role.

In fact, if you take the time to go back and rewatch her resume, it's immediately obvious just how many outstanding performance Kidman has turned out over the years, which is exactly how you end up with a Top 10 list of her performances that doesn't have Eyes Wide Shut, Dogville, or The Others on it. To see what did make the cut, check out the list below.

The Hours

Anyone who says Kidman won her Oscar for a fake nose clearly never actually watched The Hours. While the nose may help blur the edges a bit between Kidman and Virginia Woolf, prosthetics or no, Kidman's performance in Stephen Daldry's gorgeous, meditative film is an act of transfiguration. Her voice, her accent, and her carriage are all expertly recalibrated, but most impressive is the way she captures that elusive essence of a character, as if her entire being is vibrating on another frequency. The Hours is anchored by three key performances, each from an extraordinary actress, but even amongst peers like Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore, Kidman shines, fully melting into her character. It's no small challenge to bring any iconic figure to life, especially when you don't have video footage to inspire you and especially someone as complicated as Virginia Woolf, but Kidman rises to the challenge with a heartbreaking portrait of genius, mental illness, and most importantly, the human being who too often gets lost in the legacy of those traits.

Paddington

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Image via Studio Canal

Over the decades of her career, Kidman hasn't been afforded many opportunities to be silly, which is a shame because it's damn delightful. In Paddington, Paul King's whimsical live-action incarnation of the beloved children's lit figure Paddington Bear, Kidman plays a wholly despicable woman -- a scheming taxidermist who considers it her life's mission to stuff Paddington and secure her family legacy -- but she does so with a wry, winking self-awareness that keeps her delicious wickedness kid-friendly. No doubt, if Kidman played Millicent straight, she'd be a monstrous villain for the ages, but the veteran screen actress has such a confident command of tone and detail, she walks that razor wire with ease. Kidman is usually an incredibly subtle actress who makes great work of close-ups, but in Paddington she lets her micro-expressions go macro, chewing the scenery with a cocked eyebrow and prissy smirk. It's one of the few times she's been given the opportunity to be genuinely funny, and while it certainly isn't the most demanding of her roles, it's absolutely one of the most entertaining.

Rabbit Hole

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Image via Lionsgate

Kidman earned an Oscar nomination for her turn as a grieving mother in Rabbit Hole, but it's far from the waterworks Awards-bait film you might expect given the premise. Directed by John Cameron Mitchell from a screenplay by playwright David Lindsay-Abaire (based on his own play of the same name), the film stars Kidman and Aaron Eckhart as a married couple struggling to cope with the death of their young son and save their marriage, despite their drastically different grieving styles. Where Eckhart's character is open and ready to talk, Kidman's is in full lock-down mode -- applying rigid strictures emotional suppression on herself until her grief is tamped down and locked up tight. But Kidman shows us that the hinges are always threatening to rupture, her anguish spilling out in bitter hostility toward her family, and her warmth only surfacing in her secret conversations with the teenage boy who accidentally killed her son (Miles Teller). There, Kidman opens up her performance and seems to glow, her ever-watery eyes threatening to finally overflow and consume her. It's a poignant understanding of grief, which is so often not sloppy and loud and wet as the tear-jerkers would have you believe, but quiet and furious and sharp as needles. Kidman carries it to the finish line, allowing herself to be unlikeable without becoming unsympathetic, showing us the shield that hides her wounds, but glimpsing the reflection of what's underneath.

Lion

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Image via The Weinstein Company

Kidman's work in Lion is a prime example of doing a lot with a little. Gareth Davis' lovely film, inspired by the genuinely amazing true story of Saroo Brierley, stars Dev Patel as Saroo, an Australian-raised Indian man who got lost on a Calcutta train as a five-year-old and found his way back home decades later through the help of Google Earth. Kidman has a key, but fairly minor role as his adoptive mother Sue Brierley, the Australian woman who took him in as a child and provided him with a loving home. She has only a handful of scenes, but each one makes a weighty impact as we chart the years of their life together, their intimate bond, and the emotional weight of being an adoptive family. An adoptive mother herself, Kidman was vocally passionate about this role, and she brings such warmth and affection to the character, she'll break your heart in a second. Whether it's the young Sue, falling in love as she watches Saroo flit through their home for the first time, or the older version, her heart broken by the strained relationship between her and her sons, Kidman ensures that see the love and strength of Sue Brierley always shine through.

Stoker

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Chan-Wook Park's 2013 thriller somehow both sumptuous and rigid; chastely erotic. If that doesn't fit the bill for a fine Nicole Kidman joint, I don't know what does. In Park's first English language film, Kidman takes on the role of Evelyn, a grieving widow on the brink of breakdown, desperate for affection, and thoroughly resentful of the attention conjured by her off-kilter daughter (Mia Wasikowska). When a handsome relative (Matthew Goode) returns for the funeral and stays a bit too long, those resentments brew and boil over as Evelyn radiates a bizarre anguish through her carefully groomed visage, bloodshot eyes punctuating her just-so curled hair and overly elegant gestures. Kidman makes a meal of it all, and a wholesome one at that, revealing the nuances of Evelyn's mental decay through the slightest movements and bodily ticks, until she's unleashes full force in a blistering monologue that fulfills every teased moment of despair and disgust. Watch her deliver the line, "Personally speaking, I can't wait to watch life tear you apart," and Marvel at her diction, her ferocious expression, and her capacity to turn words on the page into venomous weaponry. Stoker is Kidman's most vicious performance since To Die For, and it was a welcome return.

The Paperboy

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If you ever need evidence of how thoroughly Kidman gives herself over to her characters, you need look no further than The Paperboy, Lee Daniels' pulpy pastel noir set in the swamps of Florida. As Charlotte Bless, Kidman is a sun-soaked "oversexed Barbie doll" who has a lurid obsession with a seedy death row inmate (John Cusack). She's never gone more full-tilt or been more unbridled than she is in The Paperboy (yep, this is the one where she pees on Zac Efron), transforming her consummate air of elegance into the frayed, unstable charisma of her hyper-erotic hopeless romantic. In a career full of bold choices, Charlotte is her most image-shattering performance to date, a complete 180 from that current of Grace de Monaco composure that underscores most of her characters. In contrast, Charlotte is always in a new state of undress and disarray, alternately crumbling in the thick, sweaty heat of the debauchery and being forged in it anew. With a shellacked tan, frizzle-fried hair and Blanche DuBois lilt of desperation, Kidman abandons vanity in every moment in the pursuit of pure performance.

To Die For

Image via Columbia Pictures

Gus Van Sant's 1995 thriller-meets-satire To Die For was the first film to show audiences just how talented and wickedly funny Kidman can be, and more than twenty years later, it remains one of her finest performances to date. Kidman stars as Suzanne Stone, an aspiring newscaster who fancies herself the next Barbara Walters and will stop at nothing to achieve the fame she knows she deserves. When she decides that plan includes getting rid of her domestically-inclined, Suzanne seduces a pair of high school boys (Joaquin Phoenix and Casey Affleck) to help her literally get away with murder. This was Kidman's revelation moment where she first displayed the breath of her talent and prowess, turning Suzanne into an alluring, but deadly dangerous menace, like a sacrificial dagger tucked away in pretty pretty pink satin and lace. Kidman enthralling and vibrant, unleashing a purely charismatic side of herself she rarely sets loose, and just barely letting us see the Machiavellian wheels constantly spinning in Suzanne's perfectly coiffed head.

Birth

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Birth hands Kidman an impossible challenge, and in return, she delivers an impossibly good piece of acting. Had Johnathan Glazer's twisted little thriller not been so inherently offputting in concept alone, there's not a doubt in my mind this would have earned Kidman a fifth Oscar nomination (she did earn a Golden Globe nom, at least). The film stars Kidman as Anna, a somewhat lost woman engaged to a milquetoast man (Danny Huston) a decade after the death of her first husband. At their engagement party, a ten-year-old boy (Cameron Bright) shows up insisting he's the reincarnation of her dead husband, and from the moment he utters the words, "It's me," Kidman's face becomes a kaleidoscope of emotion and grief that never stops swirling until the end credits role. The film is... creepy. It's creepy a lot, especially when Anna's initial disbelief begins to give way to acceptance and gulp, love. But Kidman acts of the center of gravity to the insanity and constant discomfort, carrying the film on her back -- or on her wildly expressive eyes, more accurately.

It's a cliche to say the eyes are the window to the soul, but it's true as it's ever been in Birth, where Kidman renders every moment of hope and its matching moment of self-doubt with minimal aide from the dialogue. She lets us know a woman intimately simply by looking at her. The film's crowning achievement, and a moment that certifies Kidman as an expert in the craft of screen acting, Glazer lets the camera linger on her face in an uncut close-up as Anna watches the Opera and finally fully processes the possibility of the impossible. Kidman seems to sit perfectly still, and yet through that intangible alchemy of filmmaking, she communicates everything, every whirlwind emotion flying through her head with the subtlest of ticks and expressions. It's an honest-to-god bravura performance, and while it's is buried in a film many critics found contemptible, it's proof that Kidman is the type of actor who can elevate material rather than the other way around.

Moulin Rouge

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Image via 20th Century Fox

Kidman may look like a classic leading lady, but by and large, she's made a career dodging that typecasting in pursuit of darker, more challenging fare. With Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rogue, she got the best of both worlds. As Satine, the crown jewel performer at the infamous Paris Burlesque venue, Kidman takes on the role of a classic tragic ingenue, but through Luhrman's frantic, hyper-modernized lens she's allowed to be much quirkier and playful than the standard archetype from which she's carved. As a film, Moulin Rouge is consummate showmanship, a dazzling spectacle from top to tail, and in turn, as Satine, Kidman is the consummate showman. As an actress playing an actress (how very showbusiness), Kidman has to layer her performances, sometimes in a paste and sometimes with the slightest hand. She dances, and sings, and steals the show at every turn -- both in-picture and on-screen -- navigating through moments of heightened performance and confessional intimacy. She shares an electric chemistry with Ewan McGregor, who is also at the top of his game in the film, and the two play off each other like a pair of movie magicians, giving us an emotional arc to follow through the whiplash rapidfire of Luhrman's spectacle. Kidman earned her first Oscar nomination for the film, and you only have to see the way she commands the frenzied action of the Elephant scenes to understand why.

Big Little Lies

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Image via HBO

It's no secret that the so-called Golden Age of TV has offered film actresses, especially those over 30, an opportunity to find meaty roles that put their recent film offers to shame. All the same, no one could have predicted that Kidman's first television gig in three decades would give her the role of her career. In Big Little Lies, HBO's compulsive soap opera by way of prestige drama, Kidman stars as Celeste Wright an elegant career woman turned house wife embroiled in a passionate but horrifically abusive relationship with her bread-winning, matinee idolesque husband Perry (Alexander Skarsgard). A picture perfect couple on the surface, Celeste and Perry seem to have it all, but Big Little Lies offers a thoroughly heartbreaking exploration of the desperation, loneliness, and shocking violence behind their shiny veneer. Credit is due to some fantastic writing and directing, as well as a courageous performance from Skarsgard, but Kidman is fearless -- she goes all in and proves to be both the MVP and the beating heart of the series, completely disappearing into the character. There are no moments where you see Kidman poking through Celeste, they simply fuse together the moment she walks on screen. This is a part she was born to play; warm but reserved, painfully gorgeous, and zipped up tight with a dangerous frenzy just beneath her air of serenity (not to mention a kickass pair of bangs so people can focus on something other than their ridiculous obsession with her botox), and Kidman had seven hours to dig into the nuance and reveal every facet.