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SYDNEY - It's impossible for a tall, beautiful, rich, famous actress to appear invisible when giving evidence in a public courtroom, but Nicole Kidman gave it her best shot.
Demure, undramatic, even drab were the words that best described her debut in a real-life courtroom drama, when she was called to testify in a defamation case brought by a paparazzi photographer against a Sydney newspaper.
Far from making a grand entrance, Kidman arrived quietly and without fuss.
She looked like a primary school librarian - a very pretty one at that - or maybe a suburban accountant's secretary.
She could have been auditioning for The Prime Of Miss Jean Brodie.
Her long, blonde hair was piled up sensibly at the back in ringlets.
She wore a fawn cardigan, tan shoes, a bone blouse done up to the collar and a grey woollen skirt worn down to the knees.
The effect was so beige that Richie Benaud might have been her wardrobe man, and the carpet Kidman trod really was beige.
The Oscar-winning actress, well used to red carpets, walked down an appropriately beige one as she entered court 12C of the NSW Supreme Court, where even the walls are a yawn-inducing cream.
She clasped her hands in front of her, and spoke in a soft, flat monotone which at times came close to a stage whisper.
Kidman's voice was so mousey that the amplification system struggled to make her audible, and the judge asked her to speak up.
She maintained eye contact only with the judge and the barristers asking her questions, never once glancing around the courtroom.
Ms Kidman remained calm and composed throughout, even when describing how she felt "really, really scared" on a trip from her home in eastern Sydney to visit her parents on the north shore in January 2005.
She told the court how she crouched down in the back of her car after her driver told her that paparazzo Jamie Fawcett was following them, and that she arrived "in tears and distressed".
A lighter moment came when she was asked to read her police statement, and she began reading it out aloud until the judge told her just to read it by herself.
She smiled and tapped her forehead in a reflex action as might Homer Simpson, though a tad more daintily.
Her evidence played to a sell-out audience in the bleachers, where it was standing room only.
But that's only because the court was so small.
By far most of the 60 or so people inside were media.
It was all as low key as possible.
It was a different story, outside, however.
When she was escorted out by four court sheriffs after her 55-minute appearance, Kidman was mobbed by several dozen photographers, including a number of paparazzi.
Reporters asked her whether that moment was more frightening than the one she described in court.
But there was no response as she departed in a conveyance far too flashy for any schoolmarm - a sleek, black limo.
- AAP
