KEY POINTS:
LONDON - Nicole Kidman has begun piling on the kilos - not because she's pregnant, but for her next movie.
The 40-year-old Australian movie star has already added 4.5 kg to her svelte frame and plans to double her weight gain in coming weeks before she starts filming The Reader.
"She is naturally very slim and loves to run and swim so she is always very toned," an unnamed close friend of Kidman's told The Mail on Sunday newspaper.
"The part she plays demands that she gets fatter throughout the movie as her character slips into middle age.
"Nicole was originally planning to use prosthetics but was told by the director, Stephen Daldry, that it would be more realistic if she gained the weight."
Kidman plays Hanna Schmitz in The Reading, which delves into the emotional repercussions of the Holocaust in post-war Germany.
- AAP