“My thing has always been, I’m a working actor and I love that,” she says. “So I was always like, what’s the next opportunity? What’s the next job? I was trained to work and to learn and to keep growing and to keep exploring. And I love being a part of these [film and television] families. They’re my families.”

Kidman was accompanied by her husband Keith Urban and their children, as well as her sister Antonia Hawley, and Antonia’s daughter Lucia Hawley. Kidman’s lifelong best friend, Annette Rechner, the sister of newsreader Peter Overton, was also present. Rechner was accompanied by her son, actor Sam Rechner.

Australia’s consul-general in Los Angeles, Tanya Bennett, described the event as a huge moment for Australia. “The first Australian honoured with this award, I think it’s a huge deal,” she said. “Nicole Kidman is such an ambassador for Australians working in film.”

Bennett said the award also highlighted the power of soft diplomacy, as Australia’s international contribution to culture and the arts.

“I think for a country like Australia, having cultural ambassadors who promote the best of the best of what we are, and who we are, is great, and certainly Nicole Kidman shines out and tonight’s achievement really recognises that,” she said.

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AFI president Bob Gazzale said Kidman embodied the “glamour and romance of Hollywood past. But she also has the daring and the bravery of one of this art form’s great character actors. She’s a true screen icon, but she’s also a risk-taker. Each performance is something new and something profound.”

Gazzale said Kidman also had the rare power of driving culture forward.

“She’s doing it with her commitment to amplifying the voices of female directors and producers. Nicole has been very specific about what she wishes for us to think about.

The award was first given out in 1973, and it’s intended for artists whose careers have “fundamentally advanced the art of film and whose achievements had been acknowledged by film scholars, critics, their individual peers and the public.”

Gazzale acknowledged that Kidman is the first Australian actor to receive the AFI award. “This art form is a global unifier at a time when needed most,” he said.

In its first decade, AFI Life Achievement Award recipients included actors John Ford, James Cagney and Bette Davis, and director Alfred Hitchcock.

Since then, it has been given to fewer than 50 individuals in the modern history of cinema. The list includes actors Barbara Stanwyck, Gregory Peck, Elizabeth Taylor, Jane Fonda, Jack Nicholson, Harrison Ford and Sidney Poitier, and directors Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese and others.

The most recent recipient was actress Julie Andrews in 2022. No award was given out in 2020, 2021 or 2023. One of the qualifying factors is that the recipient’s work “must have withstood the test of time”.