Nicole Kidman by Steven Klein for Interview Magazine

NICOLE KIDMAN: [laughs] I always said that. I had so much fun on the shoot. It was very inspiring. You create a beautiful sort of limbo world, which is nice to exist in. 

KLEIN: I was curious how you felt. If it's like when you've built worlds—like working with Kubrick—constructing reality as opposed to being in reality. 

KIDMAN: I like creating a bubble, and that was a bubble. I didn't expect it, so that's always good, too. But it does have a dreamlike quality. The whole thing felt like a dream. And at the end of the day, I went, "Did I do that?" 

KLEIN: Oh, that's good. 

KIDMAN: [laughs] So, when was the first time you picked up a camera? 

KLEIN: Probably when I was 14 years old and a friend of mine gave me a camera. At the time, I was really into making things out of clay. I was digging in the backyard to get my own clay and making pottery. And then I started taking pictures and built my own darkroom. I would go out at six in the morning and just take pictures. There was a mental institution near my house, and I would donate time teaching mentally ill patients how to do ceramics. I photographed them as well. So those were my first pictures. 

KIDMAN: That's amazing. And do you view the world through a lens? 

KLEIN: Yes. I guess it's a shield as well as my tool. But that's the way I've always seen things and been able to express myself. I didn't do so well in the academic world, so I think the only way I could express myself was through visual art—anything I could get my hands on, whether it was glassblowing, sculpture, painting, or photography. I always wanted to be a painter. Or a farmer. 

KIDMAN: A farmer? 

KLEIN: I don't know why. That's my earliest memory, wanting to be a farmer. Isolated. I have a farm now, but I'm not an actual farmer.

KIDMAN: Do you like the simplicity of that?

KLEIN: I do. Growing up, that's how I saw myself, living very simply, an artist on a farm creating work. My work is the antithesis of that. And directing—when you have a hundred people around—is the opposite of that. 

KIDMAN: Why do you love horses so much? 

KLEIN: Oh, that's a very personal story, but I had a huge crush on a girl when I was 13 years old. This older guy—I think he was probably four or five years older than me—wanted to meet her and he had a horse. I lived in the suburban area, and he lived in a farm area. One day he came over to my house with his horse, and I said, "Well, let's go to my girlfriend's house and show her the horse." And so we went over to her house and then he took her for a ride, took her to the lake, and then they never came back.