Nicole breaks Aboriginal taboo

2008-12-16 10:25

Sydney - Australian Hollywood star Nicole Kidman will have no more children after breaking a taboo against women playing the didgeridoo, an Aboriginal cultural leader has warned.

Kidman, who gave birth to her first child in July at the age of 41 after long making clear her yearning for a baby, blew into the traditional instrument while promoting her latest movie on a German television show.

"People are going to see Nicole playing it and think it's all right," award-winning actor, screenwriter and Aboriginal language teacher Richard Green told Tuesday's Sydney Morning Herald.

"It bastardises our culture. I will guarantee she has no more children. It is not meant to be played by women as it will make them barren."

Kidman, who suffered an ectopic pregnancy and a miscarriage during her former marriage to fellow actor Tom Cruise, gave birth to daughter Sunday Rose after marrying country crooner Keith Urban in 2006.

The actress "blew feebly" into a didgeridoo - a long wooden instrument - on the show Wetten, Dass..? at the weekend while promoting the Baz Luhrmann film Australia with fellow star Hugh Jackman, the paper said.

Should have known better

A cultural officer at Sydney's Metropolitan Local Aboriginal Land Council, Alan Madden, said Kidman and Luhrmann ought to have known better after filming their sweeping romantic epic on location in the Australian outback.

"I presume she doesn't know, otherwise she wouldn't be playing it.... Baz should know something about it, after working with those traditional fellas on the film," he told the newspaper.

Complaints by indigenous academics earlier this year led HarperCollins to apologise for including a section on how to play the didgeridoo in "The daring book for girls" and to remove it from later editions.

Kidman, who has two adopted children from her marriage to Cruise, said at the premiere of "Australia" in Sydney last month that she might put further films on hold and have more children.

"In terms of my future as an actor and stuff, I don't know," Kidman told a news conference. "I'm in a place in my life where I've... had some great opportunities. And I may just choose to have some more children."

- AFP