Harris Dickinson toys with ambiguity in ‘Babygirl,’ and keeps a secret from Nicole Kidman

Harris Dickinson was nervous to approach Nicole Kidman.

This would not necessarily be notable under normal circumstances, but the English actor had already been cast to star opposite her in the erotic drama “Babygirl,” as the intern who initiates an affair with Kidman's buttoned-up CEO. They’d had a zoom with the writer-director Halina Reijn, who was excited by their playful banter and sure that Dickinson would hold his own. And yet when he found himself at the same event as Kidman, shyness took over. He admitted as much to Margaret Qualley, who took things into her own hands and introduced them.

“She helped me break the ice a bit,” Dickinson said in a recent interview with The Associated Press.

On set would be an entirely different story. Dickinson might not be nearly as “puckishly audacious” as his character Samuel but in the making of “Babygirl,” he, Kidman and Reijn had no choice but to dive fearlessly into this exploration of sexual power dynamics, going to intimate, awkward, exhilarating and meme-able places. It’s made the film, in theaters Christmas Day, one of the year’s must-sees.

“There was an unspoken thing that we adhered to,” Dickinson said. “We weren’t getting to know each other’s personal lives. When we were working and we were the characters, we didn’t veer away from the material. I never tried to attach all of the history of Nicole Kidman. Otherwise it probably would have been a bit of a mess.”

His is a performance that reconfirms what many in the film world have suspected since his debut seven years ago as a Brooklyn tough questioning his sexuality in Eliza Hittman’s “Beach Rats”: Dickinson is one of the most exciting young talents around.

Dickinson, 28, grew up in Leytonstone, in East London — the same neck of the woods as Alfred Hitchcock. Cinema was in his life, whether it was Christopher Nolan’s “Batman” films at the local multiplex or venturing into town to see the more social realist films of Mike Leigh and Ken Loach.

“Working class cinema interested me,” he said. “People around me that represented my world.”

Appropriately, his entry into making art started behind the camera, with a comedy web series he made as a kid, which he now describes as “really bad spoofs” of films and shows of the time. But things started to really click when he began acting in the local theater.

“I remember feeling invigorated by it and accepted,” he said. “I felt myself for the first time and felt able to express myself in a way where I didn’t feel vulnerable and I felt alive and ignited by something.”

At around 17, someone suggested that he should give acting a try professionally. He hadn’t even fully understood that it was a career possibility, but he started auditioning. At 20, he was cast in “Beach Rats” and, he said, just “kept going.” Since then, he’s gotten a wide range of opportunities in films both big, including “The King’s Man,” and small. He’s captivated as a male model in Ruben Östlund’s Cannes-winning “Triangle of Sadness,” an estranged father to a 12-year-old in Charlotte Regan’s “Scrapper,” an actor bringing an ex-boyfriend to life in Joanna Hogg’s “The Souvenir Part II,” the charismatic, tragic wrestler David Von Erich in Sean Durkin’s “The Iron Claw” and a soldier in Steve McQueen’s “Blitz.”

But “Babygirl” would present new challenges and opportunities with a character who’s almost impossible to define.

“He was confusing in a really interesting way. There wasn’t loads of specificity to it, which I enjoyed because it was a bit of a challenge to sort of pinpoint exactly what it was that drove him and made him tick,” Dickinson said. “There was a directness that unlocked a lot for me, like a fearlessness with the way he spoke, or a social unawareness in a way — like not fully realizing what he’s saying is affecting someone in a certain way. But I didn’t make too many rules for him.”

Part of the allure of the film is the ever-shifting power dynamics between the two characters, which could change over the course of a scene.

As Reijn said, “It’s a cautionary tale about what happens when you suppress your own desires.” She was especially in awe of Dickinson's ability to make everything feel improvised and the fact that he could look like a 12-year-old boy in one shot and a confident 45-year-old man in the next.

Since its premiere at the Venice Film Festival earlier this year, the film has led to some surprisingly direct conversations with audiences spanning generations. But that, Dickinson understood, was what Reijn wanted.

“She really wanted to show the ugliness and the awkwardness of these things, of these relationships and sex,” he said. “That sort of fumbly version and the performative version of it is way more interesting, to me at least, than the kind of fantasized, romanticized, sexy thing that we’ve seen a lot.”

Dickinson recently stepped behind the camera again, directing his first feature film under the banner of his newly formed production company. Set against the backdrop of homelessness in London, “Dream Space” is about a drifter trying to assimilate and understand his cyclical behavior.

The film, which wrapped earlier this year, has given him a heightened appreciation for just how many people are indispensable in the making of a film. He’s also started to understand that “acting is just being able to relax.”

“When you’re relaxed, you can do stuff that is truthful,” he said. “That only happens if you’ve got good people around you: The director that creates the good environment. The intimacy coordinator facilitating a safe space. A coworker in Nicole encouraging that kind of bravery and performance with what she’s doing.”

Dickinson did eventually get to the point where he managed to ask Kidman questions about working with Stanley Kubrick and Lars Von Trier. But he also kept one shattering possibility between himself and his director.

“There is a world in which Samuel doesn’t even exist. He’s just a sort of a device or a figment for her own story. And I like that because it kind of means you can take the character into a very unrealistic realm at times and be almost like a deity in the story,” Dickinson said. “We didn’t talk about it with Nicole.”

Nicole Kidman, left, and Harris Dickinson arrive at the premiere of "Babygirl" on Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2024, at the DGA Theater in Los Angeles. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP)

Harris Dickinson, left, and Halina Reijn arrive at the premiere of "Babygirl" on Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2024, at the DGA Theater in Los Angeles. (Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP)

This image released by A24 shows Nicole Kidman, left, and Harris Dickinson in a scene from "Babygirl." (A24 via AP)

This image released by A24 shows Nicole Kidman, left, and Harris Dickinson in a scene from "Babygirl." (A24 via AP)

FILE - Harris Dickinson appears at the 15th Governors Awards in Los Angeles on Nov. 17, 2024. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File)

This image released by A24 shows Nicole Kidman, left, and Harris Dickinson in a scene from "Babygirl." (Niko Tavernise/A24 via AP)

FILE - Harris Dickinson appears at the fourth annual Academy Museum Gala in Los Angeles on Oct. 19, 2024. (Photo by Jordan Strauss/Invision/AP, File)

This image released by A24 shows Harris Dickinson in a scene from "Babygirl." (Niko Tavernise/A24 via AP)

ST. MORITZ, Switzerland (AP) — When Lindsey Vonn last raced on the World Cup circuit nearly six years ago, the constant pain in her knee left her in tears and led to retirement.

Flash forward to Vonn’s comeback race on a titanium knee at age 40 last weekend, and the American skiing standout couldn’t have felt more different.

No more pain. No more swelling. No more tears.

“The last few years of my career were so much different than they are right now. I’m skiing without thinking about my knee, which I really haven’t done since I first tore my ACL in 2013. So it’s been a long time that I felt this good,” Vonn said Saturday after placing 14th in a super-G in St. Moritz. “I’m a little bit older, but honestly I’m a hell of a lot stronger than I once was.”

So much stronger that she’s talking up her knee replacement surgery — the first of its kind in World Cup skiing — as a new frontier for the sport.

In April, Vonn had a robot-assisted replacement performed by Martin Roche, a South Florida-based orthopedist specializing in complex knee disorders. Part of the bone in her right knee was cut off and replaced by two titanium pieces. A month later, she was planning her comeback.

“It’s a lot better than my non-existent cartilage,” said Vonn, one of the most successful skiers of all time with 82 World Cup wins. “I’ve talked to a lot of skiers already about it and I really think that it could be something that should be considered.

“I feel amazing. I mean, obviously not everyone responds the same way to surgeries. For some reason, I bounce back pretty well from surgery. But I think it’s something to seriously consider for athletes that have a lot of knee problems.”

Andrea Panzeri, the Italian Winter Sports Federation’s head physician and an orthopedist who has operated numerous times on Vonn’s good friend and fellow downhiller, Sofia Goggia, said knee replacements are usually performed on patients older than 50.

“This is definitely the first time in World Cup history that such a young athlete has raced with one," Panzeri told The Associated Press. “And I’m not aware of any other elite-level athletes in other sports competing with one, either.”

Panzeri performs knee replacements. But he had never even thought about doing one on a World Cup skier — until he saw Vonn competing with one.

“Partial prosthetics, like the half-knee ones, are definitely the ones that offer the best performance and we’re seeing that (with Vonn)," Panzeri said. “I don’t think her decision is going to change pro sports. But it could provide more motivation for so-called ‘normal’ people to try a prosthetic."

Three-time Grand Slam tennis champion Andy Murray played with an artificial hip at the end of his career. Vonn’s former skiing teammate Julia Mancuso also redid her hip a few months after she retired in 2018 and maintains an active lifestyle.

“I, for sure, would have considered a comeback if I didn’t have kids," Mancuso told The AP recently. "So I can totally relate to Lindsey.”

But Panzeri said that “hips have different biomechanics than a knee and many more people are able to play sports with a hip prosthetic than a knee prosthetic."

Elan Goldwaser, a sports medicine physician at Columbia University Medical Center who works with the U.S. Ski Team, has seen many athletes come to his clinic for knee replacements but not elite-level competitors.

So, is Vonn’s operation going to be a trend-setter in skiing?

“I wouldn’t say it’s the go-to like in baseball with Tommy John surgery,” Goldwaser said in St. Moritz. “But if it’s necessary, it’s a good procedure to do.”

Chris Knight, Vonn’s personal coach, said they had questions over whether her titanium knee would hold up to the forces required to navigate downhill skiing turns at 80 mph (130 kph) as she hurls herself down steep mountains.

“There was not a lot of research out there with high-level athletes and partial knee replacements," Knight said. “It is a new frontier. But so far everything’s working really well... And I would not be surprised if other people do it because the results that Lindsey’s had, with no pain and no swelling, have been unbelievable.

“Granted, she stayed in great shape the entire time she hasn’t been racing. So, that probably helped. I mean, if you’re sitting around as a non-active skier and not doing anything with your fitness, then maybe it wouldn’t be as effective. But if you’re an athlete who’s got some knee problems, from what I’m seeing, I wouldn’t be saying no to them.”

Vonn’s new knee also left an impression on U.S. Ski Team head coach Paul Kristofic.

“I’m definitely due for one myself,” Kristofic said. “I’m going to talk to her."

Still, there are doubters.

Four-time overall World Cup champion Pirmin Zurbriggen told Swiss tabloid Blick last week that “there is a risk that Vonn will tear her artificial knee to pieces.”

But Panzeri said the titanium does not rupture.

“Absolutely not,” he said. “It’s a small prosthetic that doesn’t break.”

Vonn will race next in St. Anton, Austria, Jan. 11-12.

AP skiing: https://apnews.com/hub/alpine-skiing

Sofia Goggia of Italy, left, and Lindsey Vonn of United States of America, talk with journalists after completing an alpine ski, women's World Cup super G, in St. Moritz, Switzerland, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (Jean-Christophe Bott/Keystone via AP)

United States' Lindsey Vonn celebrates at the finish area of an alpine ski, women's World Cup super G, in St. Moritz, Switzerland, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Giovanni Auletta)

United States' Lindsey Vonn, right, smiles after completing an alpine ski, women's World Cup super G, in St. Moritz, Switzerland, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (Til Buergy/Keystone via AP)

United States' Lindsey Vonn starts a course inspection before competing in an alpine ski, women's World Cup super G, in St. Moritz, Switzerland, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Marco Trovati

United States' Lindsey Vonn competes in an alpine ski, women's World Cup super G, in St. Moritz, Switzerland, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Marco Trovati)

United States' Lindsey Vonn, right, is congratulated by Red Bull Head of Athletes Special Projects Patrick Riml after she competed in an alpine ski, women's World Cup super G, in St. Moritz, Switzerland, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (AP Photo/Giovanni Auletta)

United States' Lindsey Vonn competes in an alpine ski, women's World Cup super G, in St. Moritz, Switzerland, Saturday, Dec. 21, 2024. (Jean-Christophe Bott/Keystone via AP)