Nicole Kidman: I hit the floor when shooter fired at LA filming

Nicole Kidman has described how she “hit the floor” after a gunman opened fire while she was filming in Los Angeles.

The Australian actress, 51, was working on low-budget thriller Destroyer, where she plays a former undercover detective coming to terms with her past, when the real-life crime unfolded.

Speaking last night at a Bafta retrospective of her career, she said: “We were in south central LA shooting and they were like, ‘Get inside there’s a shooter, a live shooter.’"

“They were grabbing me in and I hit the floor because there was a shooter and helicopters.”

Kidman, whose career started as a teenager in Australia, was speaking in London as the latest star taking part in the A Life In Pictures series at BAFTA.

During the on-stage interview, she also revealed how she nearly dropped out of the film The Hours, which later won her a Best Actress Oscar for her portrayal of the writer Virginia Woolf.

“I was going through things in my own life. I just felt completely overwhelmed. I asked, ‘Is there any way you can cut me out’ … then I just got so immersed,” she said. “She just came into me, I don’t know any other way of explaining it.”