For all intents and purposes, the 70th Cannes film festival belongs to Nicole Kidman. She has four offerings this year and seems to be a virtual one-woman invasion on the Croisette. She’s the ruthless head of a girls’ seminary in Sofia Coppola’s The Beguiled; she reigns as the intergalactic punk monarch Queen Boadicea in How to Talk to Girls at Parties; she goes deadpan in high-concept head-scratcher, The Killing of a Sacred Deer, from The Lobster director Yorgos Lanthimos. She also forcibly integrates TV into the festival by virtue of her star power with a turn in season two of Top of the Lake.

Nicole Kidman in Cannes: her tortuous journey to Queen of the Croisette Read more

It’s only May, and Kidman’s already experiencing a career year, having previously wowed audiences with her role as an abused housewife in Big Little Lies on HBO, and inspiring a new wave of articles reaffirming her oft-ignored brilliance along the way. She’s making one of those Hollywood comebacks audiences (and the writers who forge showbiz narratives from career trajectories) just love, surging in overdue recognition for a steadfast talent that’s been recently misapplied. Same goes for Colin Farrell, Kidman’s Beguiled and Sacred Deer co-star, and another fine performer enjoying toast-of-Cannes status after a string of flops and positively reviewed but largely unseen releases. As the pair bask in the glow of international flashbulbs on the French Riviera, let’s walk through the steps an actor on the outs can take to get back in the public’s good graces.

Phase out the extraneous

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise. Photograph: Chris Pizzello/AP

The second that a performer’s public presence as an object of gossip threatens to eclipse their presence as an actor, trouble’s afoot. Kidman has politely smiled through innumerable prying interview questions about a certain couch-jumping ex-husband, her country-singing current beau, rumored cosmetic surgeries she’s repeatedly insisted she hasn’t had, and even more flimsily founded links to Scientology. Through it all, she’s held her ground and stayed on message, dispelling the nonsense while redirecting the cultural conversation back to the work she’s done. Imagined scandal can hobble a career just as easily as the real kind, and it’s in any actor’s best interest to be just that, first and foremost – an actor. Giving the paparazzi as little ammunition as possible redirects the focus to matters of work and art, and prevents a perfectly skilled thespian from getting reduced to an unjust punchline.

Pick your directors wisely

Facebook Twitter Pinterest That auteur do it: Sofia Coppola. Photograph: Valery Hache/AFP/Getty Images

All four of the directors behind Kidman’s multiple-front Cannes blitz came into their productions as proven artists with a strong track record. Jane Campion, Lanthimos, John Cameron Mitchell and Sofia Coppola have demonstrated that they’re capable of fine work, and shepherding actors along the path to greatness. There’s no wiser move than to cast your lot with a director who clearly knows what they’re doing, so long as you’ve got the artistic cachet to earn their respect. But that’s the nice thing about film-makers: the best ones are students of film themselves, and often more capable of recognizing when a personality is going to waste than studio executives or casting agents. Consider Quentin Tarantino and John Travolta, who had become an object of mockery, but who the Pulp Fiction director remembered strutting on to the disco square in Saturday Night Fever. Tarantino knew the capacity for excellence was lying dormant in Travolta, and put him right back in his wheelhouse by getting him out on the dancefloor.

Embrace your eccentricities

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Playing against type: Colin Farrell in The Lobster. Photograph: AP

Visualize your notion of a typical Colin Farrell character: tough guy, stony expression, layer of stubble, language as salty as seawater. What you most likely do not see is a soft-spoken, potbellied, chronically awkward, bi-curious lonely heart. Farrell went against type in last year’s The Lobster, portraying an ineffectual and timid man in search of love in a hostile world. The critics lined up to rightly praise him for showing a bit of versatility (perhaps Farrell remembered how the hosannas rained when he donned a combover bald cap to play a coke-hoovering dipshit executive in Horrible Bosses), and Farrell found a surprising new fit for his style of restrained, internal emoting. Actors deliver their most interesting work when they accept and accentuate the aspects of their persona that make them distinctive, rather than trying to iron them out for the sake of some imagined mass appeal.

Take calculated risks

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Keeping it weird: Joaquin Phoenix. Photograph: Warner Bros/Everett/Rex

There was a time not so long ago that the whole performing side of the showbiz industry was split into TV actors and film actors, the twain never to meet. But just as film-makers have undertaken a mass exodus to the small screen in recent years, actors have also begun to approach a stint on the airwaves as more of a rehabilitation period than an admission of defeat. Taking the lead on True Detective’s first season catalyzed the McConaissance, just as Kidman got a prime platform from which to shine with Big Little Lies. Attempting something completely unexpected can vaunt a declining celebrity back into the limelight and earn some valuable respect. Joaquin Phoenix chafed at the thought of A-list superstardom following his big Oscar win in 2006, so he self-destructed with Casey Affleck’s mockumentary I’m Still Here, masquerading as a self-fashioned rapper. It baffled a lot of people, but it earned a lot of respect too, and most importantly, it paved the way for a cavalcade of complex, troubled roles from high-prestige directors.

Stick your landing

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Mickey Rourke AKA Mr Second Chance. Photograph: 20th Century Fox/Everett/Rex

A comeback means nothing without the proper follow-through; it only officially reaches completion when the party in question cements their newfound legitimacy by parleying it into a more protracted stretch of success. The ability to maintain a standard of quality sets the returning heroes apart from the one-hit-wonder flukes, and plenty of resurgent stars have flamed out when they were unable to reproduce their headline-grabbing success. It looked like Mickey Rourke was going to get a second act when he earned unanimous praise and made a run at the best actor Oscar for his turn as a washed-up fighter in The Wrestler. But Sean Penn snuck away with the statuette, and all Rourke did with his increased clout was take the role of a forgettable, cockatoo-loving baddie in the equally forgettable Iron Man 2. Staying power defines a star in an industry with the attention span of a flea and the memory of a goldfish.