While she’s remained largely out of the paparazzi spotlight these days, Nicole Kidman drew a swarm of shutterbugs while dining out in Los Angeles, CA on Thursday afternoon (January 26).

The Aussie actress donned slacks and a white blouse with heels as she exited Joan’s On Third cafe following a relaxing lunch with a few of her close gal pals.

As for keeping away from the public view, Miss Kidman recently spoke about how it helps her to better get into character for her movie roles.

The 44-year-old said, “Part of the reason of being an actor is you like playing other people’s lives and exploring all the psychologies in that and the emotions. I think having my life be as private and quiet as possible is a way in which then I can go and play characters. I like the privacy of my life and I protect it quite vigilantly.”

Nicole can next be seen portraying the role of Martha Gellhorn in an HBO movie special titled “Hemingway & Gelhorn,” which airs this May.

With Clive Owen starring as Ernest Hemingway, Kidman told of playing Miss Gelhorn, “She was the first female, really, war correspondent … and she wrote with such direct truth … and that is so hard to do. She’s not Hemingway, she doesn’t want to write novels, she wants to be a correspondent and I love that she was the first woman to do that … She was a trailblazer.”