Nicole Kidman: How I Prepared to Play a Grieving Mother in 'Rabbit Hole'

"That rawness was available to me," the actress says.

Nicole Kidman says she tapped into her role as a mother to play a parent who has lost a child in Rabbit Hole.

The actress, mother to a 2-year-old with country star husband Keith Urban along with two teenagers with ex-husband Tom Cruise, says that while she's never experienced the grief that comes with losing a child, she was able to empathize with her character.

"When we first optioned [David Lindsay-Abaire's Pulitzer Prize-winning] play, I wasn't pregnant," Kidman told Reuters of her role in the film, which marked the inaugural project from her company, Blossom Films. "This has been years in the making, so there wasn't a thought of being pregnant. I thought I'd never get pregnant. But I get what she goes through. I get her relationship with her mother, her sister, God. I get the way in which she is so angry."

She said she tried to attend grief group meetings but was told that only people who have lost a child can attend.

"I totally get it, yet for whatever reason, that rawness was available to me," she said of the role that earned her a Golden Globe nom. "Maybe it was from giving birth 11 months prior."

She also said that she felt "a big thrust to honor" real-life parents grieving the loss of a child.

"There's almost something lifting you up, going 'Come on, if someone can actually be living this, I can be living this,' " she said.

Rabbit Hole, which also stars Aaron Eckhart, is in theaters.