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Veteran film critic Thomson admits that this provocation – it’s a biography only in the loosest sense – was dreamt up by his agent and editor over lunch. At its worst, it feels just how you’d expect such a book to feel – like a posh cuttings job which, hamstrung by its inability to discuss subjects like Kidman’s marriage to Tom Cruise, fills the void with hedged conjecture, close analysis of her mostly so-so films, over-the-top paeans to her beanpole beauty (including her ‘comma’ breasts and ‘gingery pubic hair’) and tired film studies blather about cinema as erotic reverie, acting as prostitution etc. The book will make no sense whatsoever to Kidman agnostics – those who, like your reviewer, feel that, while she’s decent enough, your average BBC period drama boasts actresses every bit as luminously skilful who will never ‘enjoy’ Hollywood success because they’re not skinny or ambitious enough.

In a sense, though, whether Kidman is or isn’t a good actress isn’t the point here. The point is that she’s a movie star and that Thomson is obsessed with her. (In this sense the book is a remake of Kenneth Tynan’s famous New Yorker profile of Louise Brooks, except that Tynan actually got to meet Brooks. Thomson had to make do with a phone call from Kidman.) The strength of this obsession – and the quality of Thomson’s writing, always astonishing – lures the reader into a sort of trance, and there was a point where I was prepared to believe anything he told me; to swallow any theory or judgement, no matter how ludicrous. He even made me want to watch ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ again, and I’d thought it would take a man holding a gun to my head to manage that.