For stars looking for a new lease of life, Broadway is the place to make Hollywood take note
In 1998, when Hollywood actress Nicole Kidman took her first step onto a Broadway stage and starred in The Blue Room, David Hare’s adaptation of La Ronde, her professional life was kicked into a new, loftier orbit. Before that, her film parts had leaned toward the decorative category of The Girl (including one in a Batman movie). Within a few years, Kidman picked up an Oscar for playing Virginia Woolf in The Hours.

A decade later, another Mrs. Tom Cruise (the third) is making her Broadway debut. That’s Katie Holmes, whose supporting role in the revival of Arthur Miller’s All My Sons (also starring John Lithgow, Dianne Wiest and Patrick Wilson, scheduled to open on October 16 at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater) is modest compared with the five lustful characters embodied by Kidman in The Blue Room. But Holmes (who also appeared as The Girl in a Batman movie) is probably hoping that at least some of the career-rejuvenating fairy dust Broadway sprinkled on Kidman will fall upon her, too. Broadway, it seems, has eclipsed Playboy as the place to make Hollywood pay attention.

Daniel Radcliffe, who achieved celebrity as the title character in the Harry Potter movie franchise, bids fair to pull a Nicole this season. Radcliffe will be doing the full monty in the revival of Peter Shaffer’s Equus (also starring Richard Griffiths and set to open on September 25 at the Broadhurst Theater), a psychological melodrama with a certain literary heft. The timing is most auspicious for Radcliffe. The Potter series is nearing its end.

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