Writer of Pop Culture

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Nicole Kidman Sings for the First Time in ‘Moulin Rouge!’ (June 1)

Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor look and sound great in Baz Luhrmann’s “Moulin Rouge!” (note the exclamation point), but it was a painful experience for Kidman.

June 1, 2026

Estimated reading time: 6 minutes

Nicole Kidman really put herself out there for Baz Luhrmann’s Moulin Rouge! Not only was it Kidman’s first time to sing in a musical, but she also suffered for her work on the film too with a couple of odd accidents. While the jukebox musical isn’t for everyone, the movie received eight Academy Award nominations.

2001: Baz Luhrmann’s ‘Moulin Rouge!’ Debuts

Cast of the movie "Moulin Rouge!" — Ewan McGregor and Nicole Kidman in *Moulin Rouge! (TVDB)*

Directed by Baz Luhrmann, the Australian American movie, Moulin Rouge! is a jukebox musical. (That’s a musical where most, if not all, of the music is composed of existing music instead of original music.) Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor starred in the movie along with Jim Broadbent, Richard Roxburgh and John Leguizamo. It was Kidman’s first singing role. Ozzy Osbourne provided the voice of the Green Fairy who appears at the beginning of the film.

Moulin Rouge! is loosely based on the Greek tragedy of Orpheus and Eurydicetale about a poet. In the film, the story takes place in 1899 at the Montmartre Quarter of Paris. Christian (McGregor) falls desperately in love with Satine (Kidman) who is a cabaret singer/courtesan girl against a soundtrack that included songs from “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend” to “Rhythm of the Night” to “Your Song.”

Behind the scenes, most of the production went on without a hitch, however, Kidman took a beating. According to AFI, it was reported that she had injured her ribs twice (once while wearing a tight corset and being hoisted up during a dance number) and tearing knee cartilage (due to a fall during a different number).

Moulin Rouge! was nominated for eight Academy Awards including Best Picture, the first musical to do so in ten years following Disney’s animated Beauty and the Beast. However, Luhrmann was not nominated for Best Director. The film won two Oscars for Best Costume Design and Best Production Design.

A stage play of the musical debuted on Broadway at the Al Hirschfeld Theatre in 2019.

1980: 24-Hour News

(Wikimedia Commons)

Cable News Network, aka CNN, begins broadcasting.

1890: Adding Machine

The U.S. Census Bureau uses Herman Hollerith’s tabulating machine to count census returns.

2009: Run Down Cars

(Wikimedia Commons)

General Motors files for Chapter 11 bankruptcy – the fourth largest in U.S. history.

1792: Kentucky Becomes the 15th U.S. State

1796: Tennessee Becomes the 16th U.S. State

A fire at Universal Studios — *(Wikimedia Commons)*

2008: Universal Studios is on Fire

Talk about your bad days. On this day in 2008, a worker at Universal Studios Hollywood was using a blowtorch to warm up some asphalt shingles that were applied to a façade. However, when he was finished with the project, he left the shingles without checking to see if all of the spots had cooled. They hadn’t. This resulted in a three-alarm fire which wasn’t put out for another 24 hours.

This fire destroyed three acres of the studio’s backlot tour which included “New York Street,” “New England Street” and the attraction known as “King Kong Encounter.” Not only that, but it is believed that between 40,000 and 50,000 archived digital video and film copies were destroyed along with 118,000 to 175,000 audio master tapes belonging to Universal Music Group which were located in Building 6197. These tapes had contained unreleased recordings from various artists.