Katy Raymond observes some surprising info on her cool blog, Fallible.com:

Yesterday, I saw Julianne Moore, Meryl Streep and Nicole Kidman interviewed about their upcoming move, Hours. I was fascinated to learn that both Streep and Kidman routinely phone their directors one week before filming of a new movie is to begin, and do their level best to back out.

They cite personal catastrophe, emotional upheaval, physical ailment, anything to get out of what they're facing. They even have other actesses hand-picked to suggest as their replacements. "She was made for this role!" they say. "She'd be so much better at it than I!"

Streep and Kidman were shocked that they both pull the same stunt regularly, that they both panic on the edge of performance, and are positive they cannot pull it off.

I am fascinated by the psychology of performance and what performers go through - or don't go through - to get themselves into performance mode. For me the key is to turn the fear into excitement: "this isn't scary, this is exciting and what I've wanted to do my entire life." I actually used to get the jitters much worse before I was to pitch a baseball game than before any other kind of performance. Since I love to blab, anything that involves blabbing has generally been no problem. I literally puked before an allstar game once.