NEWS
Quick Access
Nicole Kidman warned after breaking Aboriginal taboo
(AFP)

16 December 2008
SYDNEY - Australian Hollywood star Nicole Kidman will have no more children after breaking a taboo against women playing the didgeridoo, an Aboriginal cultural leader has warned.

Kidman, who gave birth to her first child in July at the age of 41 after long making clear her yearning for a baby, blew into the traditional instrument while promoting her latest movie on a German television show.

‘People are going to see Nicole playing it and think it’s all right,’ award-winning actor, screenwriter and Aboriginal language teacher Richard Green told Tuesday’s Sydney Morning Herald.

‘It bastardises our culture. I will guarantee she has no more children. It is not meant to be played by women as it will make them barren.’

Kidman, who suffered an ectopic pregnancy and a miscarriage during her former marriage to fellow actor Tom Cruise, gave birth to daughter Sunday Rose after marrying country crooner Keith Urban in 2006.

The actress ‘blew feebly’ into a didgeridoo—a long wooden instrument—on the show ‘Wetten, Dass..?’ at the weekend while promoting the Baz Luhrmann film ‘Australia’ with fellow star Hugh Jackman, the paper said.

A cultural officer at Sydney’s Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council, Alan Madden, said Kidman and Luhrmann ought to have known better after filming their sweeping romantic epic on location in the Australian outback.

‘I presume she doesn’t know, otherwise she wouldn’t be playing it.... Baz should know something about it, after working with those traditional fellas on the film,’ he told the newspaper.

Complaints by indigenous academics earlier this year led HarperCollins to apologise for including a section on how to play the didgeridoo in ‘The daring book for girls’ and to remove it from later editions.

Kidman, who has two adopted children from her marriage to Cruise, said at the premiere of ‘Australia’ in Sydney last month that she might put further films on hold and have more children.

‘In terms of my future as an actor and stuff, I don’t know,’  Kidman told anews conference. ‘I’m in a place in my life where I’ve... had some great opportunities. And I may just choose to have some more children.’

 

 


OTHER STORIES
  Mandela avoids the spotlight in retirement
  Palin’s note-scrawled hand draws ridicule
  British comic actor Ian Carmichael dies at 89
  James Cameron left his wife for the movie 'Titanic'
  First female set to win Costa Rica presidency
  Palin whips up a storm at a Tea Party
+ MORE STORIES

Khaleej Times on Facebook
Khaleej Times Services
© 2010 Khaleej Times, All rights reserved