Nicole Kidman plays Ernest Hemingway muse in HBO biopic

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Nicole Kidman won an Oscar for playing a famous writer with a chaotic private life. Now she’s found another such character.

In ‘Hemingway & Gellhorn,’ an HBO movie coming this spring, the Australian-born actress plays Martha Gellhorn, the pioneering war correspondent who became the muse and third wife of Ernest Hemingway. For Kidman, there were some parallels with her portrayal of Virginia Woolf in the Academy Award-winning feature ‘The Hours.’

‘It was kind of a necessity in the journey of my career to find these women and tell their stories,’ Kidman, 44, told reporters Friday morning at the TV press tour in Pasadena. ‘I love these women that defy the odds and burn bright.’

Gellhorn was a globe-trotting war correspondent at a time when such jobs were almost exclusively the province of men. ‘She didn’t believe in being objective as a journalist; she believed in having an opinion,’ Kidman said.

Hemingway, who is played by British actor Clive Owen, is at first attracted to Gellhorn’s independence but eventually has trouble dealing with her strong will. Kidman sees an irony given Hemingway’s evident desire to find a woman who could be his equal.

‘When he finally finds it, he doesn’t know what to do with it,’ she said.

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— Scott Collins (twitter.com/scottcollinsLAT)