One Of Nicole Kidman's Favorite Hobbies Proves She's A Total Thrill-Seeker

Many of Nicole Kidman's favorite hobbies are what you might expect from an ethereally beautiful actress who has been on the A-list for decades. She's a devoted reader and gardener. She rides horses. She collects rare coins. But she has at least one surprising hobby that's a little more high octane. Kidman loves to jump out of planes.

In fact, Kidman is so devoted to the thrill of skydiving that she's convinced every woman should try it at least once. She even earned her skydiving license. "It's an amazing sensation — not as good as sex, but almost," she told Vanity Fair in 1995. "It's like before you go onstage opening night, when you're almost dizzy from adrenaline. I love that feeling." Maybe it's that same boldness that is responsible for Kidman serving so many head-turning Met Gala looks over the years.

Kidman is clearly aware that her enthusiasm for such an extreme sport is a little surprising. "I have those strange dichotomies in my personality," she admitted to The Telegraph in 2014 (via AZCentral). Still, she's found a certain specific beauty in jumping out of planes, and when it comes to daredevil activities she's surprisingly discriminating. "[Bungee jumping] is not elegant. I don't like the idea of being on a cord and hanging upside down," she explained. "Skydiving is the closest thing to flying.”

Nicole Kidman's fearlessness goes back to her childhood. While Kidman might have undergone a stunning style transformation over the years, this aspect of her is remarkably unchanged. She attributes it, at least in part, to her Australian roots. "We cannot be stopped," she told Vogue Australia in 2024. "There was always that searching out the dangerous things, as well. For the drama of it."

In fact, though Kidman has been divorced from fellow actor Tom Cruise — who is famous for doing his own movie stunts — since 2001, it seems the pair once bonded over their shared love of adrenaline. "This woman got in the car with me when I was driving 185 miles an hour, and at the end of it she said, 'Let's do another lap!'" Cruise told Vanity Fair in 1995. Kidman has taught us plenty of hard lessons about love, but embracing the thrills might be the most surprising one.

In addition to skydiving, she's found plenty of ways to push her own limits over the years, dabbling in scuba diving, snowshoeing, go-karting, and rock climbing. While she admits she toned it down, especially after the birth of her two daughters with former husband Keith Urban, it's clear that thrill-seeking appeals to some deep-seated part of her personality. "It's scariness that's controllable," she explained. "When you do these things, you feel you've accomplished something that's almost impossible. You feel that every inch of you is alive."