Nicole Kidman is drawing attention to end-of-life care after saying she’s begun training to become a death doula, a decision she says was prompted by her mother’s passing in 2024.
Kidman revealed the news during a conversation at the University of San Francisco’s Silk Speaker Series. She told the audience that while her family was present as her mother was dying, her mother felt lonely and Kidman wished there had been impartial companions to offer solace and care. “That’s when I went, ‘I wish there was these people in the world that were there to sit impartially and just provide solace and care,’” she said. She later discussed the choice at a HISTORYTalks event, adding that becoming a death doula “seemed to have people confused or intrigued,” and that she found the role “fascinating” and “beautiful.” Kidman said she believes she has the personality suited to that work and hopes training will help ease suffering in people’s final stages.
A death doula — also called an end-of-life doula — is a nonmedical companion who provides personalized, compassionate support to people facing death and to their families. According to the International End of Life Doula Association, doulas focus on psychosocial, emotional, spiritual, and practical care to help preserve dignity and support self-determination during the dying process. They do not provide medical treatment but often work alongside healthcare teams to offer additional support: sitting with someone in their final days, helping facilitate difficult conversations, and assisting with end-of-life planning such as advance directives.
Public awareness of death doulas is growing, in part because of media portrayals. A recent episode of the medical drama “The Pitt” depicted a nurse acting as a death doula for a terminal patient, and physicians who are also trained doulas say such portrayals can prompt viewers to think about their own end-of-life wishes.
Physician and death doula Shoshana Ungerleider, founder of the nonprofit End Well, has worked to educate writers on realistic depictions of end-of-life care. Ungerleider says increased visibility highlights a wider problem: “I saw a gap between how we die and how most of us say we want to die.” She observed that many patients spend their final days in impersonal, overly medicalized settings and that conversations about what truly matters often happen too late, if at all. She argues that dying is fundamentally a human issue, not merely a medical one.
Experts welcome the added attention surrounding death doulas, hoping it will encourage more people to pursue this work and prompt better integration into healthcare. Advocates want more research on how doulas affect quality of life and cost outcomes, and hope growing interest leads to more thoughtful use of doulas on care teams. As Kidman and others bring visibility to the role, proponents say it could help reconnect the human elements of living and dying and make end-of-life experiences more compassionate and aligned with patients’ wishes.
