Dubious Makeover

Who's afraid of Virginia Woolf? Not Nicole Kidman. To play the novelist in The Hours, Kidman donned a wig and prosthetic nose that rendered her unrecognizable. The disguise fools moviegoers, but what about Woolf scholars? ''Just adding a larger nose doesn't do it,'' argues Dartmouth prof Brenda Silver, author of Virginia Woolf Icon. ''Woolf's nose was part of an aristocratic face. [She]was not homely.'' Nor was she dowdy, says Leslie Hankins, VP of the International Virginia Woolf Society. ''[Kidman] doesn't have the regal excess that marked Woolf. The kind of glamour Woolf had...was striking.'' But IVWS president Vara Neverow says she thinks the actress, um, knows best: ''I would anticipate that Kidman will interpret the role effectively, and that's what matters.''