NICOLE KIDMAN — THE PHOTOGRAPH I DIDN'T TAKE

Donmar Warehouse, London — September 1998

In September 1998, Nicole Kidman was in London appearing in The Blue Room at the Donmar Warehouse in Covent Garden.

I had been sent to the theatre to try to photograph her.

I arrived early, but missed her going in, so I decided to stay and wait for her to leave. By then it was getting dark and I had changed to a short lens and flash, ready for when she came out.

A few minutes before Nicole was due to leave, someone approached me and asked if I would not photograph her. My recollection is that I was told she was tired and didn't feel she was looking her best.

I agreed.

When Nicole eventually emerged, she was accompanied by security and walked straight past me towards the waiting car. I kept my word and didn't take a photograph.

As she passed, I asked how The Blue Room was going.

“It's a challenge,” she replied.

She didn't stop and was quickly inside the car.

Then something happened that has stayed with me ever since.

As the limousine began to pull away, the blacked-out rear window lowered and Nicole thanked me for not photographing her.

It really made my day. She didn't have to do it.

SEVEN WORDS IN A DIARY

I've kept working diaries throughout much of my career, recording everything from major assignments to seemingly insignificant jobs.

At the time I was sometimes ridiculed for writing down so much. Nearly three decades later, those diaries have become invaluable.

My entry for Tuesday 8 September 1998 could hardly have been more understated:

“Nicole didn't pose so I let her go.”

Seven words that immediately bring the evening back to me.

Directly underneath is my entry for the following day, Wednesday 9 September.

I returned to the Donmar and this time photographed Nicole Kidman and Iain Glen together outside the stage door.

Those photographs are particularly frustrating because I no longer have them.

My diary records that a roll of film was sent to SIPA Press in Paris, the agency I was working with at the time. I have recently tried to trace the photographs through SIPA, but so far the original picture set has not been located.

Whether those photographs still exist somewhere under another reference, or have disappeared during the intervening years, I don't know.

ANOTHER NIGHT AT THE DONMAR

I did, however, photograph Nicole again outside the Donmar on another evening, while rehearsals for The Blue Roomwere still taking place before the production's opening night.

This time I wasn't alone. There were perhaps three other photographers waiting outside as Nicole left the theatre.

Among the small group of cameras, Nicole looked directly towards mine.

Whether she remembered our earlier encounter I can't know for certain, but at the time I felt that she did.

Fortunately, that photograph survived.

PAPA(RAZZI) AND NICOLE

A week after my decision not to photograph Nicole, something completely unexpected appeared in the Evening Standard.

On Tuesday 15 September 1998, its Londoner's Diary carried a small story under the headline:

“Papa(razzi) and Nicole”

Although I wasn't named, I knew immediately that the unnamed photographer was me.

The article described how a photographer had agreed not to photograph Nicole after being told she wasn't looking her best.

It even recorded our brief exchange.

I had asked how the play was going.

“Oh, it's a challenge,” the newspaper reported her replying.

It then said that the photographer had photographed her the following day — exactly as my diary records.

What puzzled me then, and still does, was how the story had reached the Evening Standard.

I hadn't told them.

Someone who witnessed the encounter, or heard about it afterwards, must have passed the story on, but I never discovered who.

The newspaper even reported that the incident had become a talking point in the Kidman/Cruise household.

For something that had seemed such a small encounter outside a London theatre, I found the whole thing rather extraordinary.

THE PHOTOGRAPH I DIDN'T TAKE

At the time, none of this seemed particularly important.

It was another couple of days in the working life of a press photographer. I went to the Donmar, did the job and moved on to the next assignment.

Nearly three decades later, things look rather different.

The original photographs of Nicole Kidman and Iain Glen that I sent to SIPA have so far proved impossible to locate.

But my little black 1998 Nikon diary survived.

So did my handwritten entry:

“Nicole didn't pose so I let her go.”

And so did the Evening Standard cutting, recording an encounter I might otherwise have struggled to date precisely all these years later.

There's a certain irony to that.

I had gone to the Donmar that evening specifically to get a photograph of Nicole Kidman.

The story that survived was about the photograph I chose not to take.

Stephen Butler
London, 2026