Nicole Kidman has spent her career playing some of the most emotionally complex roles in cinema.

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But the role she's taken on in her own life might be the most quietly radical of all. Following the death of her mother, she trained as a death doula: someone who provides human presence, emotional support and practical guidance through dying and loss.

In 2025, that choice feels almost countercultural.

We are living through a moment of extraordinary technological change. Barely a week passes without a new announcement about what AI can now do: diagnose illness, draft legal documents, write code, compose music.

But there are some things AI won't touch. And certain parts of loss and grief is one of them.

I know this from my own experience. When my mum died suddenly, nobody around me knew what to do, what to say, or what came next. The grief was one thing. The aloneness of it was another. What I needed wasn't information. It was a person. And that's something no algorithm will ever replicate.

Kidman's decision points to something we don't talk about enough: we have never been more removed from death, and we have never felt the absence of human support around it more acutely. Previous generations encountered death more directly. For most of us today, it remains out of sight until the moment it isn't. And then it's overwhelming, and we realise nobody around us knows what to do either.

That's a human problem that requires a human answer.

Think about where people actually encounter grief in real life. At work, with a manager who doesn't know what to say and an HR policy that gives them five days and considers the matter closed. At the bank, trying to close a loved one's account while still in shock, facing systems entirely unprepared for a person in crisis. At home, in families where death was never discussed openly, where wishes were never shared, and where the people left behind are left to piece it together alone.

In every one of those spaces, a person with real knowledge and genuine compassion could change the experience entirely. Not technology. Not a process. A person. Someone trained to hold the emotional and practical weight of loss, and to help others carry it.

Our team help train bereavement first aiders in workplaces because we recognised that early human support changes outcomes. The evidence bore it out. For death literacy, the same logic applies. Organisations and institutions that invest in people equipped to support others through grief will be better places to work, to bank, to mourn.

At the very moment we are asking machines to take on more and more of our emotional labour, one of the world's most famous women has decided to go in the opposite direction. To learn how to sit with people in the hardest moments of their lives. No app, no algorithm, no AI assistant is coming for that role.

Kidman's instinct is right. We need more people willing to follow her lead.

Sam Grice is the Founder and CEO of Octopus Legacy, the UK's leading estate planner helping people plan for death and find support after a loss.

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The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official LBC position.

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