Nicole Kidman said her ‘heart is broken’ as she confirmed her mum had died hours before she was set to accept an award at Venice Film Festival.
The 57-year-old star won the Best Actress award for her role in Babygirl but did not stay to receive the honour, days after touching down in Italy.
Director Halina Reijn, 48, accepted the award on Nicole’s behalf and read out a devastating statement from the star.
‘Today, I arrived in Venice to find out shortly after my brave and beautiful mother, Janelle Anne Kidman, had just passed,’ Nicole wrote.
Her mum was 84 and had worked as a nursing instructor in Australia, with the Practical Magic icon moving back to help care for her in recent years.
The statement continued: ‘I’m in shock and I have to go to my family, but this award is for her.
‘She shaped me, she guided me and she made me. I am beyond grateful that I get to say her name to all of you through Halina.
‘The collision of life and art is heartbreaking. My heart is broken.’
Nicole’s parents have been huge advocates for her career over the years, with both her mum and her father Anthony Kidman (who died in 2014) attending events with her.
They were both there to see her win her first and only Oscar for The Hours in 2003, in which she played Virginia Woolf.
Speaking in an NPR interview in 2022, Nicole said they had moved back home to care for Janelle and wanted to make sure she was ‘surrounded by her grandchildren.’
She shared: ‘I’m at the place where I’m being given the chance to view the world – because of how close we are, my mom is giving me the chance to view the world through an 81-year-old woman’s eyes.
‘That is so beneficial right now because she’s so cognizant. She has every faculty, brain faculty, available.
‘She hasn’t lost anything. She hasn’t lost any memory, which is fascinating.’
In 2016, after the death of her father, Nicole recalled her daughters – Sunday Rose, 16, and Faith Margaret, 13 – telling her it would be ok because ‘You’ve still got your mommy.’
She also shares daughter Bella, 31, and son Connor, 29, with ex-husband Tom Cruise who she divorced in 2001.
Janelle had breast cancer in 1985 when Nicole was just 17 years old, which the Moulin Rouge star called ‘very hard’.
‘It was very hard to see your mother going through such pain,’ she told the Sydney Morning Herald in 1997. ‘It opened my eyes to mortality, and to pain and suffering, and from that point on I was determined to support and be a part of and in some way help.’
Her husband at the time, Tom Cruise, funded the Women’s Reproductive Cancer Center at UCLA in honour of Nicole’s mum.
Just last year her second husband, Keith Urban, reportedly made a financial gift to Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center in Nashville to fund research into breast cancer.