The 58-year-old actress noted the idea “may sound a little weird” but she was inspired to help support people and their loved ones during their final days because of her and her sister Antonia’s experiences before their mom, Janelle Ann Kidman, passed away in September 2024 at the age of 84.
A death doula (also called an end-of-life doula) is a term for a non-medical professional who supports individuals and their families during the dying process, much like how a birth doula supports someone during childbirth.
This type of role doesn’t replace medical or hospice care but works alongside it, intending to provide holistic, emotional, spiritual, and practical support. The International End Of Life Doula Association says the role helps advocate for a person’s end-of-life wishes, provide companionship, help create lasting legacies, and assist with funeral planning.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, Nicole made the revelation during a Silk Speaker Series talk at the University of San Francisco’s War Memorial Gym.
“As my mother was passing, she was lonely, and there was only so much the family could provide,” the star said.
“Between my sister and I, we have so many children and our careers and our work, and wanting to take care of her because my father wasn’t in the world anymore, and that’s when I went, ‘I wish there was these people in the world that were there to sit impartially and just provide solace and care.’
“So that’s part of my expansion and one of the things I will be learning.”
The Babygirl actress isn’t the only famous face to reveal plans to be a death doula.
In 2021, Riley Keough revealed she had undergone training and found supporting others proved to be helpful with her own grief over her brother Benjamin Keough taking his own life in July 2020.
The Daisy Jones and the Six star – whose mom Lisa Marie Presley died in January 2023 – said: “That’s really what’s helped me, being able to put myself in a position of service. If I can help other people, maybe I can find some way to help myself.”
And director Chloe Zhao recently revealed she had been training to be a death doula to help her overcome her own fears about the end of life.
Discussing her movie Hamnet‘s approach to grief, Chloe revealed she had “recently trained to be a death doula” in the UK.
She told the New York Times newspaper: “I just finished Level 1 training in the UK. In one of the training sessions, we had to research Indigenous cultures from around the world, how they deal with death and dying both today and in the past.
“You can see that the grief of losing a loved one doesn’t change.
“However, the societal understanding of death and the space it gives to grief and how it’s embedded in the culture and the medicalisation of death have shifted so much. In the modern world, when death is no longer seen as a natural part of life — because now it’s about staying alive as long as we can — there’s almost shame around death.”
The Nomadland filmmaker was then asked why she had undertaken the training and explained her fear of death had been so debilitating, she had been unable to “live fully”.
She said: “Because I have been terrified of death my whole life. I still am. And because I’ve been so afraid I haven’t been able to live fully. I haven’t been able to love with my heart open because I’m so scared of losing love, which is a form of death.”
