Nicole Kidman Reveals Late Mom’s Advice About Allowing Teen Daughter Sunday to Pursue Modeling

Nicole Kidman had a heart-to-heart with mother Janelle Ann Kidman about allowing the actress’ teenage daughter Sunday Rose to pursue a modeling career ahead of the matriarch’s death.

“As a mother, I’m just, like, ‘OK.’ My mother let me do my passion that I wanted when I was 14,” Nicole, 59, told Entertainment Tonight in an interview published Friday, July 31, discussing Sunday, 18, recently slaying multiple couture catwalks and fashion campaigns. “Actually, before my mumma passed, she was there and I said, ‘Oh, should I let her? She wants to model.’”

Nicole revealed that her mom simply replied, “Well, you did it.”

“I went, ‘OK,’” the Babygirl star continued. “That was sort of my mumma’s parting gift to Sunny was [that] she encouraged me to let her be able to follow her bliss and follow her passion and what she wanted. That’s exactly what she said, ‘You, kind of, have to let her because I let you.’”

Nicole announced in September 2024 that her mother had died.

“Today I arrived in Venice to find out shortly after, that my beautiful, brave mother Janelle Ann Kidman has just passed,” she wrote in a statement read aloud by Babygirl director Halina Reijn during a Venice International Film Festival panel. “I am 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.”

The statement concluded, “I am beyond grateful that I get to say her name to all of you through Halina, the collision of life and art is heart-breaking, and my heart is broken.”

In addition to the Oscar winner, Janelle is survived by daughter Antonia, 56, and multiple grandchildren. (Nicole shares Sunday and Faith, 15, with ex-husband Keith Urban, as well as Bella, 33, and Connor, 31, with ex-husband Tom Cruise. Antonia, for her part, is a mom of six.)

Nicole had traveled to Venice for the film festival but left before her movie’s panel.

“I was about to go out on stage, and I found out that my mother had passed,” Nicole recalled to Variety in April of the heartbreaking moment she learned the news. “I went right back to my room in Venice, was getting into bed, and I was completely devastated. [I thought], ‘I’m not sure how I’m going to move forward or function now.’ She was so much a part of my existence.”

According to Nicole, it was “harrowing” hastily trying to leave Italy to reunite with her family.

“I remember getting into a boat in the canal, literally at night, trying to find my way to the airport, and then turning around going, ‘I can’t even do this,’” she said at the time. “Then I went back to bed. And I was alone. [Keith] wasn’t there, my children weren’t there. I was there to win an award, which should’ve been a beautiful thing. That there is the contrast of life.”