If bookies' favourite Nicole Kidman wins the best actress Oscar next week, she will have cause to thank a specialist bookseller from Sussex.

Paul Evans, 40, was called upon to help Nicole master her starring role as literary doyen Virginia Woolf in The Hours.

Nicole was famously fitted with a prosthetic nose to make her look more like the writer, who lived at Monk's House in Rodmell, near Lewes.

But the key role of Mr Evans, from Sompting, near Lancing, has been less well-documented.

He provided film-makers with more than a dozen rare first-edition books which the author and her fellow artists and writers in the Bloomsbury Group had published in the early 1900s.

They included a first edition copy of Virginia Woolf's 1925 novel Mrs Dalloway, worth £16,000.

Other unique props included a 1919 hand-printed edition of Woolf's short story, Kew Gardens, a book by the poet TS Eliot from 1924 and a dustjacket from Woolf's 1922 novel Jacob's Room.

Film-makers say the artefacts were used in the film and were read - and appreciated - by the star to help her get into character.

Mr Evans, who specialises in books by the Bloomsbury Group, said: "I had a phone call out of the blue and was told Nicole Kidman wanted first-edition books by Virginia to be used in the film.

"She wanted them to make her performance as convincing as possible.

"I was more than happy to help so I lent them various items which had to come from before 1925 when the film is supposed to be set."

Nicole is hotly tipped to win her first Oscar on March 23, fending off competition from the likes of Chicago star Renee Zellweger.

Mr Evans said: "Nicole Kidman is superb in the movie. The make-up and stance that she takes make her look exactly like Virginia.

"I was invited to see some filming at Richmond Hill in Surrey. One scene I saw was a woman sitting sobbing on a bench.

"I didn't realise it was Nicole Kidman until somebody told me a couple of hours afterwards. I couldn't believe how different she looked.

"Her attention to detail was just incredible. To all intents and purposes, she was Virginia.

"She definitely deserves to win an Oscar for her part and I'm sure she will."

Nicole Kidman's part in The Hours is set in 1924 when Virginia Woolf was about to begin writing Mrs Dalloway.

Woolf committed suicide in March 1941 aged 59 by filling her pockets with stones and drowning herself in the River Ouse.

Her widower Leonard continued to live in Rodmell until he died in 1969.