World's Worst Biographer.

If you think you get some flak for being a perv, spare a thought for David Thomson. Then again, he gets paid for it, so don't. The Daily Telegraph's Catherine Shoard reviewing Nicole Kidman:

It's not uncommon for a biographer to fall for their subject. But it's rare they declare their lust as frankly as David Thomson. His book about Nicole Kidman is, he says, 'a testament from a fan, a love-letter, from someone in the dark to one of those beauties in the light'. Others may feel this is putting it mildly. If I got a letter like that I think I'd take it straight to the police.
Barely a paragraph passes without Thomson setting new records in dribbly critical candour. On page six he tells us that the curve of Kidman's bottom is as familiar to him as his own child's brow. She has 'a very lovely supple body' that 'shines like a lighthouse in sex scenes'. Her breasts are 'tidy', her legs a treat, her face is one of 'wondrous impassive depravity'.
'Millions of us could recognise the sweet curve of her bottom in the dark,' he writes. 'Millions more have had that palpable illusion help them make it through the night.' Thomson, already one of the world's most respected film writers, establishes himself here as one of the world's leading lechers.
But let's get one thing straight. This is not a role he wants. It has been thrust upon him. Nicole is, frankly, asking for it. That look she gives the camera? Definitely a come-on. 'Actors make love to people they will never meet,' he explains. 'It is their passion.' I mean, what's a man to do?
At first glance there's nothing wrong with an approach as passionate as this, for all its perviness and delusion. But Thomson's crush is not the type that makes him desperate for all the info on Kidman he can find. Rather, he shows an almost complete lack of curiosity in his subject. This does not make for the most gripping biography.
There are no facts here that couldn't be gleaned from the most rudimentary Google search. There's some strange, wild speculation about who Kidman's favourite sporting heroes might be, or what her take on American overseas intervention is, but Thomson answers none of the key Kidman questions: why did she and Tom Cruise divorce? Did Stanley Kubrick really feed them malicious stories about each other on the set of Eyes Wide Shut? Why did they adopt children just two years into their marriage? Has she had botox (he spends seven pages fretting without conclusion)? What's she actually like?
Rather, he devotes most of the book to the one thing that interests him more than Nicole: his own opinion. In discussing her films, one after another after another, he doesn't even attempt to be comprehensive (wilfully abstaining from any discussion of Far and Away – an interestingly awful movie if ever that was one); he tries still less to be concise.
But the acres of plot and endless digressions are nothing to his habit of weighing in with how he'd have done a better job had he been in charge – casting William Hurt rather than John Malkovich in The Golden Bowl; adding an illicit affair to the script of The Others; giving Birth an especially horrid rethink. And he doesn't stop with movies that have actually been made. He tells us, too, about films that only exist in his dreams – usually starring Kidman, generally in some state of undress.
Thomson may be a first-class fantasist, but he's still never less than an elegant writer, and there are some lovely lines here: in The Human Stain, Kidman (playing a down-at-heel cleaner) looks 'about as dowdy as a sunset over the mountains'. He makes a few sharp points about the links between acting and prostitution, though one can't help feeling they'd carry more weight if he weren't quite such an interested party.
But as the book progresses so Thomson's hold on reality seems increasingly wobbly. Could it be that, rather than just being content with his role as 'someone in the dark', he's really a frustrated participant? One anecdote implies he thinks he could have slept with another one of his favourite actresses, Tuesday Weld, one night (she was 38, he was 42, he was giving her an award 'and my wife was out of town'). He brags, too, about knowing the location of a couple of houses Nicole 'prefers to keep secret' and that he has 'no wish to divulge' – shades of Paul Burrell, here.
Most damning, though, is his huffy disapproval of Kidman's recent boyfriends, none of which seem to him to be 'especially substantial or rewarding' – including new husband, Keith Urban. If only she could find a man worthy of her, eh? A man who really understood her, who wasn't afraid to shout his love from the rooftops. Watch out, Nicole – he only wants you for your body.