Nicole Kidman showed a side of herself she’s never revealed before in her photoshoot for V Magazine. Is it getting hot in here? I’m not sure I would’ve recognized Nicole if she weren’t identified! I think we’re getting a sense of what to expect from her character in ‘The Paperboy.’ V Magazine’s Travel issue is sure to get plenty of attention.

About trusting her instincts, and her collaborators: “I don’t really make decisions,, I go with the flow. If I were a strategically minded person, I think I would have a far different career. But I would be more outlandish if I could. A lot of times you just don’t get the chance.”

About urinating on Zac Efron’s character after he gets stung by a jellyfish in ‘The Paperboy’: “The peeing thing, I didn’t think was that weird, because I was in character. That was for the jellyfish. And for me it said so much about Charlotte. One, she’s protecting him. Two, she’s tough as nails and no one else is going to pee on this guy. All of that made total sense to me. I just went for it and didn’t overthink it.”

About her first day on ‘The Paperboy’ set, where Kidman and john Cusack did a brutal sex scene atop a washing machine, in which he nearly strangles her to death: “I said, ‘If she can get through this, she can get through anything,” ['The Paper Boy' director] Daniels recalls. “At a certain point, I saw the bruises on her legs. So I said, ‘Nicole, are you okay?’ She lied. ‘I’m fine,’ she said. She wasn’t fine. I could see the bruises. But she kept going.”

About not being allowed in the sun btw 10am and 3pm as a child, and hence reading a lot of books: “At the time I thought it was the cruelest thing, and now I know it was the greatest gift. I probably had a strong sexuality as a child, so that informs all that yearning and wanting things, and the hormones that are running through you at a really early age—they all started to surge because of the things I was reading.”

About signing on with director Stephen Daldry to do ‘The Hours’ after divorcing from Cruise: “If you’re being completely drained in your personal life and you’re never being nourished there, it’s very hard to make it work. But sometimes, if you meet the right person who will mine it, and you’re open to being mined, it can really work. Stephen was able to mine me. I was crazy in love with him, and so I was like, I’ll do whatever, because I love you. I gave him every part of me that I could give him.”

About getting engaged to Keith Urban after just 3 months: “part of my spontaneousness, I guess” she laughs.

Several years and two kids later, I’d say that spontaneous decision paid off for Nicole! You can read her entire interview, and see the complete photoshoot, in the August issue of V magazine (the travel issue). It hits newsstands on August 30th!

Photos by Mario Testino for V Magazine, Styling by Carlyne Cerf de Dudzeele