Nicole Kidman Has Finally Opened Up About The Pain She Suffered During Her Marriage To Tom Cruise

Nicole Kidman may be beautiful and talented, but her life hasn’t always been easy. After marrying Tom Cruise, the actress went through a lot of problems she kept hidden – until she decided to finally spill the beans. Now, Kidman has spoken out, and she’s revealed just how painful her relationship with Cruise really was.

Speaking out

For ages, Kidman gave fans no clue she’d been dealing with some difficult memories. And her career has skyrocketed since divorcing Cruise. Soon after the separation, she won Best Actress at the 2002 Oscars. She also scooped a Golden Globe in 2018. Her personal life has gone from strength to strength, too, after her marriage to Keith Urban.

Nicole and Keith

By all appearances, Kidman and Urban have a successful relationship – judging by how affectionate the pair are in public, anyway! And the country singer is consistently supportive of his wife. After Big Little Lies turned out to be a massive hit, Urban told the Australian talk show Sunrise how glowingly proud he was of his other half.

Movie star marriage

But it wasn’t always that way. Before she married Urban, Kidman was with Cruise – and he was very much the more famous of the pair. In fact, it was the Top Gun star who gave the actress one of her big breaks with the movie Days of Thunder. After watching Kidman in 1989’s Dead Calm, Cruise convinced the Thunder producers to cast her as his love interest in the film. How handy!

Days of Thunder

Days of Thunder came out in 1990, and that same year, Kidman and Cruise were married. Talk about a whirlwind romance! “[Cruise] basically swept me off my feet,” Kidman would remark in a 2002 interview with Vanity Fair. “I fell madly, passionately in love. And as happens when you fall in love, my whole plan in terms of what I wanted for my life... I was like, ‘Forget it. This is it.’”

Religious ties

But there was another force at play. Kidman and Cruise’s wedding would be very much tied up with the Church of Scientology. Cruise was already well involved in the religion by then – so much so that the church’s head, David Miscavige, served as best man.

Child disagreements

Then, after the wedding, Kidman badly wanted to have children with Cruise. But it wasn’t to be, and so the couple ultimately decided to adopt. “My mother has an adopted sister, so it’s been part of our family, and I knew it would probably play out somewhere in mine. I didn’t think that it would happen so early, but it did,” Kidman said in a 2007 interview with Vanity Fair.

Adoptions

The pair adopted two children: a girl called Bella in 1993 and a boy called Connor in 1995. And the siblings had a Hollywood upbringing, with their parents starring in such huge movies as Mission: Impossible, Jerry Maguire, and Batman Forever while they were young. Kidman and Cruise also appeared in a film together in 1999 – the erotic drama Eyes Wide Shut.

Sudden separation

But in February 2001, Hollywood’s golden couple suddenly announced their separation. “Citing the difficulties inherent in divergent careers which constantly kept them apart, they concluded that an amicable separation seemed best for both of them at this time,” the pair’s spokesperson Pat Kingsley revealed in a statement.

The rumor mill

After the news hit, there was a lot of gossip about what had driven Kidman and Cruise apart. One media source claimed that the split was due in part to Kidman wanting to spend more time in Australia. Cruise, on the other hand? He had apparently wanted to stay in the U.S. Now, that would have been long distance! But it was also alleged that the root cause of the breakup was Scientology and Kidman’s refusal to become fully immersed in the religion...

A difficult production

Rumors additionally spread that Eyes Wide Shut and its intensely difficult shooting schedule – had been a big nail in the coffin. But Kidman debunked that idea when speaking to The Hollywood Reporter in 2012. “People thought that making the film was the beginning of the end of my marriage,” she wrote. “But I don’t really think it was. Tom and I were close then.”

Fertility issues

Whatever the true reason for the split, Kidman’s fertility issues had taken their toll. In 2007, just a few years after the divorce, Kidman talked to Marie Claire about what had happened. “I had a miscarriage at the end of my marriage, but I had an ectopic pregnancy at the beginning of my marriage. It was incredibly traumatic for me,” she said.

A brighter future

Luckily, things did get better in that regard. After marrying Keith Urban in 2006, Kidman had two daughters – one born through surrogacy. And in 2018, as Kidman’s children were growing up, she spoke to Tatler about all she’d been through.

That yearning

Kidman talked, for example, about how she had wanted a baby so badly. “I know the yearning. That yearning. It’s a huge, aching yearning,” she said. “And the loss! The loss of a miscarriage is not talked about enough. That’s massive grief to certain women.” Having been through both, Kidman is well-versed in that kind of pain.

Overwhelming pain

“There’s an enormous amount of pain and an enormous amount of joy on the other side,” the star went on. “The flipside of going through so much yearning and pain to get there is the feeling of ‘Ahhhh!’ when you have the child.” She also mentioned that she believes mothers are mothers regardless of whether their children are adopted or biological.

Feeling alone

Kidman also discussed how terribly lonely she’d felt once her divorce from Cruise had gone through – despite the fact that her career was taking off. Even while holding her Oscar for The Hours, the talented actress had felt lost. She had still wanted to have a baby, Kidman told the magazine – perhaps as a single mother.

Very empathetic

Then, at one point in the Tatler piece, the interviewer shared a personal story with Kidman. They wrote, “When I tell her that I also went through a divorce and also experienced issues with fertility, she is immediately empathetic. ‘And you were shattered?’ she asks, as if she knows only too well what that’s like.” It was a telling paragraph about the actress.

Tom’s second marriage

Of course, Kidman’s ex-husband went on to have his first biological child just a few years after the divorce. In 2006 he welcomed Suri, the daughter he shares with Katie Holmes. That marriage wasn’t meant to be, either. In 2012 Holmes filed for divorce from Cruise and gained primary custody of Suri. And, once again, rumors spread that Scientology had destroyed a Cruise relationship.

A heavy burden

Regarding Kidman and Cruise, though, it is a sad fact that infertility and miscarriages can hurt marriages. A 2014 study undertaken in Denmark concluded that couples who could not conceive children after fertility treatment were three times as likely to split up than couples who could.

Stronger after all

But Kidman went through all of that and came out the other side. She appears to be very happy with her life as it stands, too, and now has a brood of four children – both biological and adopted. And she has continued to somehow keep her public and private life separate. Kidman and Urban carefully control what is revealed about their marriage. They keep even closer control over their two children, who are barely ever glimpsed by the media.

Family appearance

All changed on February 28, 2021, when Kidman and her family made a virtual appearance at the Golden Globes. The star was nominated for Best Actress in a Miniseries or Motion Picture for The Undoing. Yet things got off to a rocky start, though, when host Amy Poehler joked, “The Undoing was a sexy and dramatic mystery where Nicole Kidman’s coat is suspected of murdering her wig.” 

Rare kid spotting

Kidman took the jibe in stride, though in the end, she lost out to Anya Taylor-Joy for her performance in Netflix’ The Queen’s Gambit. But this wasn’t what really got tongues wagging. Instead, there was a hubbub when the entire Kidman-Urban clan appeared via Zoom, including daughters Sunday and Faith, who are rarely seen in public. 

Dream family

It was fitting in a way because her family is clearly incredibly important to Kidman. In 2018 she told The Australian Women’s Weekly, “To have met Keith just before I turned 40 and to be able to have Sunny and Fifi with him, what a beautiful, unexpected turn of events for me. I wanted it and I dreamed of it but I had no idea if it was actually going to happen.”

Second stride

A Hollywood titan for three decades, Kidman’s career experienced something of a lull in the early part of the 2010s. But ever since she picked up her fourth Oscar nomination for 2016’s Lion, she has enjoyed a renaissance. She followed that film with more critically acclaimed work like The Killing of a Sacred Deer and even ventured into blockbuster territory with Aquaman.

Moving to TV

Yet Kidman’s greatest mainstream success of recent years has been in her move to high-budget television. She starred in two seasons of HBO’s Big Little Lies, winning the Best Actress Golden Globe and Emmy Award for her performance. The Undoing was her next HBO miniseries, and the release of Hulu’s Nine Perfect Strangers is just around the corner.

Shy start

With regard to her personal life, Kidman met her future husband in 2005 at the amusingly named “G’Day USA” gala. Kidman gave Urban her phone number, but the Aussie singer songwriter took four months to call the actress back. Kidman believed he wasn’t interested in her, but Urban later revealed he simply didn’t think someone like her would be into him.

Falling hard

The couple tied the knot in 2006 after a whirlwind romance. And Kidman told People magazine that she knew she wanted to marry Urban within six months of their first date. The exact moment came on her 38th birthday when he took her away for a surprise trip to Woodstock. She revealed, “I believed by that point he was the love of my life.”

Breaking his addiction

But Urban spent a quarter of their first year as a married couple in a rehab treatment facility. He’d previously attended two facilities to combat his addictions to drugs and alcohol, but this time the love of a good woman helped him conquer them once and for all. He told Rolling Stone, “I was spiritually awoken with her...for the first time in my life, I could shake off the shackles of addiction.”

Two babies

The couple’s first child, Sunday Rose Kidman Urban, came along on July 7, 2008. People revealed she was named in honor of Urban’s grandmother and also Australian artist Sunday Reed. A second daughter followed in 2011, this time with the use of a surrogate. The couple wrote on Instagram that Faith Margaret Kidman Urban was a true blessing and a gift.

Still wanting more

Plus Kidman told Vogue magazine in 2015 that she would love to have been able to have more children with Urban, but she’d gotten together with him in her late 30s. She said, “I wish I could have met [Keith] much earlier and had way more children with him, but I didn’t. I mean, if I could have had two more children with him, that would have been just glorious.”

Homebird

In 2019 Kidman revealed to InStyle magazine that she is a real homebird. She said, “Other people are off doing things like having a girls’ weekend. I don’t have that because I go home. I want to be with my children and my husband.” The star added, “I’m an introvert, so my nature is very quiet, and I prefer being home.” 

Tech invasion

In October 2020 Kidman appeared via Zoom on the U.K. daytime chat show Loose Women. She was asked to name her biggest worry as a parent to her two young girls, and she quickly answered, “The technology. I’m not very techy myself. It’s very hard for me to monitor it and stay on it.”

Drawing a line

“I won’t let them be on Instagram,” continued the Bombshell star, who admitted this decision hasn’t been popular with Sunday. “I have a 12-year-old right now who is chomping at the bit and wants to get into all of that. It’s just that constant push, pull. I’d say a lot of parents would say the same thing.”

Giving space

The mom was then asked on Loose Women what she prioritises when she is parenting her daughters and she replied, “I think it’s keeping their confidence and their self-esteem intact. And still guiding them, not being overbearing, trying not to ‘helicopter parent.’ Allowing them to make mistakes and fall down and not trying to sort of absorb that pain.” 

Her biggest joy

Although everything to do with parenting couldn’t be covered in a single interview, Kidman did remember to gush about how much she loves being a mom. She said, “But it’s a joy, it’s a joy having these beautiful little women that are growing up and I’m discovering them day by day. I love it.” 

Her other children

Yet Kidman’s relationship with her daughters is a far cry from the one she has with her two adopted children from her previous marriage to Tom Cruise. Because when she and Cruise divorced in 2001, Isabella and Connor chose to stay with their father. This meant they stayed in the embrace of the controversial Scientology church Cruise has long been a member of.

Losing her connection

Kidman rejected the religion following the divorce and was thus labelled a “suppressive person.” Then devoted scientologists were told by the church to disconnect themselves from her and, sadly, this included her own children, according to website New Idea. She became fully estranged from Cruise and attempts were made to remove her from the kids’ inner circle. 

Refusing to comment

But Bella and Connor didn’t fully commit to this removal at first. In 2006 they attended their mother’s wedding to Urban, for instance. But later circumstances became more and more difficult. Kidman wound up estranged from her children but refused to speak publicly about it for the longest time.

Putting her kids first

In 2018 she finally broke her silence on the matter during an interview with WHO magazine. She explained, “I’m very private about all that. I have to protect all those relationships. I know 150 percent that I would give up my life for my children because it’s what my purpose is.”

Unconditional love

Regarding Bella and Connor’s decision to remain part of Scientology, she said, “They are adults. They are able to make their own decisions. They have made choices to be Scientologists and, as a mother, it’s my job to love them. And I am an example of that tolerance and that’s what I believe – that no matter what your child does, the child has love…”

Staying open

While Kidman mightn’t have liked her children’s decision, she refused to let it change her feelings toward them. She told WHO magazine, “I think that’s so important because if that is taken away from a child, to sever that in any child, in any relationship, in any family – I believe it’s wrong. So that’s our job as a parent, to always offer unconditional love.”

Closing the distance

Then in 2019 a report emerged via OK! magazine claiming Kidman had been welcomed back into Bella and Connor’s lives. An unnamed friend of Kidman told the publication, “They’re chatting with Nicole fairly regularly. Connor and Bella haven’t met their younger siblings and that’s something Nicole hopes to change.”

Open invitation

By April 2021 no reunion had taken place, but an unnamed inside source told New Idea that Kidman hadn’t given up. And the insider claimed Kidman was pushing for Connor to leave his home in Florida, which is closely monitored by Scientology representatives. The source alleged Kidman wanted him to move to Australia to be closer to her.

Leaving the charter

Connor owns a fishing charter in Florida, but Kidman allegedly doesn’t see that as too much of a hindrance in him moving to the land of Oz. The source explained, “It might be a case of wishful thinking, but she knows he would love the beaches and the people, and he could easily continue his hospitality work there.” The insider even claimed Connor thinks of Australia as his home away from home.

Glamour at home

Speaking of home, Kidman and Urban’s house in Australia was where she and the family Zoomed into the Golden Globes from. All award nominees appeared via video link for the event, which was hosted in-person by Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. It meant Kidman, Urban, Faith and Sunday could experience the glamour of the awards from the comfort of their own couch.

Dressed to the nines

Despite staying home, the family were dressed to the nines for the prestigious awards show. Because Kidman wore a gorgeous Louis Vuitton gown, and she was seated between her two daughters, both of whom were wearing white dresses. Urban also looked dapper in his black tuxedo, and the family waited with bated breath to see if Kidman had won.

Unexpected appearances

And although Kidman was overlooked, it still looked like a fun evening was had by the family. Fans were fascinated about the girls being made a part of the event, as it was such an unusual public appearance for 12-year-old Sunday and 10-year-old Margaret. They are normally kept firmly out of the limelight by their parents, you see. 

Small roles

Perhaps the awards show appearance was part of a gradual introduction to the showbiz world that Kidman has been treating her daughters to over the last few years. Because recently she revealed they have been following her footsteps into acting with small roles in some of their mom’s productions. For instance, Sunday and Faith both appeared in Big Little Lies.

Introducing the industry

Kidman revealed that her girls had blink-and-you’ll-miss-it roles in the show during an appearance on The Ellen Degeneres Show in October 2018. She admitted, “They were in as extras in Big Little Lies, which I’ve never told anyone. There I am now being a big mouth.” She then elaborated about this on Good Morning America (GMA) in May 2019.

Playing extras

“You see them fleetingly in the classroom scenes,” Kidman explained. This was backed up by Cameron Crovetti, who played one of Kidman’s sons on the show. He told Huffington Post, “In the classroom scene where I say, ‘What about a dead father?’ and we’re sitting down in a circle, Faith was sitting next to me. And they did some other scenes, yeah!”

Bringing the kids

Kidman told the GMA audience that it was special to have her daughters on-set. She explained, “I’ve always said this. There’s something wonderful about bringing your children to work, and them seeing what you do, and them being a part of it, and being interested and curious and feeling like it’s theirs as well.” 

Beloved guests

The girls must have left a good impression, too, as Kidman’s co-star Zoe Kravitz was complimentary when she spoke with Entertainment Tonight. She revealed they never sought attention and blended in perfectly. She laughed, “Yeah, they’re around a lot and I sometimes can’t tell when they’re actually in a scene or just hanging out. But they’re so sweet and really, really smart.”

Tough work

Kidman’s daughters once again appeared with their mother in an HBO show, a few years later. This time it was The Undoing, and Kidman told News.com.au that her daughters were troopers on the New York shoot. She said, “They’re in the first episode. They’re used to being extras, but they did five days in the freezing cold, never complained, and didn’t get any special treatment.”

First speaking role

And the girls made such a good impression on The Undoing that they managed to finagle something every extra must dream of. Kidman laughed, “And then one day they came home and said, ‘We got a line!’” So the star was enormously proud of her daughters for graduating from unspeaking extras to extras with dialogue.

Getting behind the camera

The star also revealed that one of her girls may have a burgeoning passion for a career behind the camera. She explained that Sunday, “wants to be a filmmaker and she makes films every weekend.” Unfortunately for Faith, though, Sunday seems reluctant to cast her little sister in her movies. 

Getting fired

“The little one is battling to get in them, but she had a tantrum and wouldn’t say the lines,” laughed Kidman. “I keep vouching for Faith, saying, ‘She’s a good actress. Put her in one of your films!’” The Oscar winner even told The BINGE guide that she found herself on the wrong side of director Sunday. She admitted jokingly, “And actually, I got fired last weekend.” 

Lessons from the best

Kidman must have thick skin, though, as in 2019 a source told Closer Weekly that she had begun to give her daughters at-home acting lessons. According to the insider, the girls were bitten by the acting bug after Big Little Lies and The Undoing, so Kidman began to foster that passion. And who better for them to learn from than their Academy Award-winning mom?

Private training

“They’re serious about following in Nicole’s footsteps and she’ll do everything she can to get them to where they want to be,” explained the source to Closer Weekly. “Nicole has been talking about enrolling them in acting classes but for now, she’s realized that she can teach them herself! She’s giving them lessons at home, and they love every second of it.”

A time for bonding

But the benefits of the home lessons went beyond the girls improving their acting skills. The source believed the lessons actually brought the family closer together. They said, “The fact that Faith and Sunday are so interested in this makes Nicole feel closer to them and even though they’re still young, she’s happy to help launch them into the spotlight.”