Nicole Kidman tried to withdraw from Hollywood around 2001, following her highly publicised separation and divorce from Tom Cruise. She was contractually required to remain in The Hours, despite not wanting to make films at the time, but later said she was glad she completed it.

Kidman played writer Virginia Woolf using a prosthetic nose, focusing largely on Woolf’s life in 1923 as she wrote Mrs Dalloway. Drawing on her own feelings of loneliness and personal difficulty, Kidman found the role deeply resonant and won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance.