NEW YORK — In the end, questions always return to "The Nose." Not only did the prosthetic proboscis help transform Nicole Kidman into Virginia Woolf in The Hours, it also rendered her unrecognizable as a Hollywood glamor girl. It’s just this sort of surrender of vanity that’s considered daring for movie stars, that makes performances, that wins trophies.

Kidman herself acknowledges as much. "As an actor, you can’t have vanity. Your body is your slate, it’s your tool, it’s your instrument, and it’s there to be changed and broken down and built up. That’s the fun of it as well. But vanity? Forget it."

Director Stephen Daldry chimes in, "I got used to Nicole spending most of her days looking like Virginia Woolf. It was much more odd talking to her without the nose. Without the nose, it was like, ‘Who are you? Right, you’re Nicole Kidman.’ It was a much easier relationship with Nicole when she was transformed."

Screenwriter David Hare, who adapted the film from Michael Cunningham’s novel, and who worked with the actress when she starred in his play The Blue Room a few years ago, also prefers the nasally augmented Kidman. When he first saw her on the set, he recalls, "I didn’t recognize her. And I’m afraid — and she hates me for this — I said, ‘Who is this incredibly attractive-looking woman?’ I’ve tried to persuade her to keep the nose intact because I think it does a lot for her and could really help her career."

Kidman says, however, that the bravest thing she did was not disguising herself but taking on the role in the first place. "I just felt that I was not right for it. That was the biggest challenge, Stephen convincing me that I was right for it. I had to be bold and trust him. Just throw yourself into it. You’ve got to be willing to fail."

Taking bold steps is, in part, what the movie is about for its three protagonists: Woolf, trying to keep her sanity as she sits down to write Mrs. Dalloway in a stifling suburb; housewife Laura Brown (Julianne Moore), trying to escape from 1950s domesticity; and Clarissa Vaughan (Meryl Streep), a Manhattan bohemian confronting an impossible relationship with an unavailable man that continues to paralyze her years later.

Those feelings of entrapment and loneliness were familiar for Kidman, who experienced them in the glare of the media spotlight during her 2001 divorce from Tom Cruise. "I just wanted to curl up in a ball and become very small. But as my mom always says, ‘All right, I think that’s enough now.’ She’s waiting for me to get it out of my system."

Moore, whose Laura Brown seems like an even darker take on the repressed ’50s housewife she plays in another current movie, Far from Heaven (she insists the synchronicity is just a coincidence), also knows first-hand her character’s feelings. "What drew me to the character was her relationship with that little boy because it’s so intense. I know what that is. I have that kind of relationship with my child [Cal, age 5]. They know, more than anything, what’s going on with their mother. We can all remember, if you think about being a small child, what it feels like, how much how your mother feels affects you. If your mother’s having a bad day, it’s terrible for you. So that relationship is so interesting."

And though motherhood doesn’t depress Moore the way it does her character, she appreciates that the movie doesn’t pull punches when it comes to Laura’s depression. "You don’t see Laura get better. You watch her struggle with this. I liked that it was presented this way."

Despite its focus on women’s feelings and relationships, the filmmakers insist that The Hours isn’t a chick flick. "It isn’t a women’s picture because they don’t all hug and say they’re all wonderful," Hare says. "It isn’t a celebration of women."

Daldry adds, "Feelings of entrapment, feelings of needing to transform, and the difficulties of those modes of change, the feeling of being miscast in a role or a situation that doesn’t feel like your life — that’s something we all feel. It’s not just necessarily about women. Men feel like that as well."

And Kidman concludes, "This is a very important film, not just for women, but for human beings, because it’s about not judging too harshly the choices people make. It’s about compassion. It’s also about the effect of a great writer and great literature."

Fine, fine. But what about the nose? After the shoot ended, did she get to keep it? "It didn’t exist. It was a different nose every day."