Nicole Kidman has two shots at Oscar right now (but calls her career ‘so random and weird’)

BEVERLY HILLS, Calif. – For Nicole Kidman, this holiday season brings a tale of two drastically different mothers.

On Friday, “Boy Erased” begins expanding into theaters across the country, based on the true story of a Baptist family grappling with their son (played by Lucas Hedges) coming out. His preacher father Marshall (Russell Crowe) is ashamed and decides to send Jared off to Christian-based gay conversion therapy. His mother, Nancy (Kidman), silently acquiesces.

Then this Christmas, Kidman takes the lead in “Destroyer” (out Dec. 25), a crime noir in which she plays Erin Bell, an alcoholic LAPD detective who has largely abdicated parenting duties to her teenage daughter as she throws herself into a decades-long quest to bring down a gang leader she failed to nab years before.

The pair of tour de force performances are earning Kidman raves and Oscar predictions.

Review: Powerful gay-conversion drama ‘Boy Erased’ puts faith in standout Lucas Hedges

Oscar watch! You’ll barely recognize Nicole Kidman in ‘Destroyer’

“I’m playing mothers who are on different ends of the spectrum,” says Kidman, 51, a frothy cappuccino quickly losing heat by her side. In “Destroyer,” Erin “is working through enormous pain and shame and wreckage,” she says, while Arkansas mom Nancy “is all love-based, is all about her child and still had to navigate through something that she did to him that she now feels incredibly ashamed about.”

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