A Woman In Full.(Nicole Kidman)

Byline: EDITOR: ALEXANDRA KOTUR

As Baz Luhrmann's swashbuckling Australia arrives in theaters, its star Nicole Kidman is discovering the calmer joys of new motherhood, writes John Powers.

The ancient Greeks claimed that you can never step into the same river twice. The same is true of talking to Nicole Kidman, a woman of quicksilver moods. In the months since the birth of her daughter, Sunday Rose Kidman Urban, in Nashville on July 7, the famously driven, ever-changing Australian star has discovered a whole new side of herself. She is completely, well, relaxed.

"Giving birth was just glorious, very deep and moving," she says one afternoon on the phone from Sydney. "And since then, I've been in the bubble. I've done a lot of reading and breast-feeding and cheering when an Australian won at the Olympics."

The only acting she's done was a week of studio close-ups for Australia, Baz Luhrmann's ambitious national epic that opens this month. Kidman plays an English lady who goes Down Under and gets romantically involved with a grizzled cattle-drover, played by Hugh Jackman.

"It's really sad to finish working with Baz--I'm having separation anxiety." She laughs. "But I'm excited about Australia . It's meant to be a movie movie, sumptuous and fun. Baz is classically educated--he knows every opera--but he doesn't make highbrow films. He does quirky, entertaining films about falling in love. And that's what this is. Baz calls it a banquet."

It's an irony of ...