Nicole Kidman Makes Rare Comments About Her Divorce From Tom Cruise in New Interview

Nicole Kidman Makes Rare Comments About Her Divorce From Tom Cruise in New Interview
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  • Nicole Kidman, 54, opened up to Harper's Bazaar about the scrutiny she faced around her high-profile divorce from Tom Cruise.

  • The Nine Perfect Strangers star said she has become "a bit more trepidatious" about sharing parts of her life because she's "been hurt."

  • Kidman perviously said she's "reluctant" to share about Cruise out of respect for her current husband Keith Urban, whom she's never shy to gush over.


As an award-winning actress, Nicole Kidman is used to being in the spotlight and sharing parts of her life with the world. But when it comes to her former marriage with actor Tom Cruise, the actress prefers to keep their history (and divorce) private.

When asked by Harper's Bazaar if she felt discouraged by the media scrutiny around her divorce from Cruise, Kidman chalked it up to her age at the time. "I was young. I think I offered it up?" she said with a laugh.

Kidman and Cruise met in 1989 just before they starred in Days of Thunder together. The former couple married six months later in 1990, and were together for 11 years until Cruise filed for divorce citing "irreconcilable differences" in February 2001.

Photo credit: Getty Images
Photo credit: Getty Images

Kidman said her approach to sharing certain parts of her life has shifted throughout her decades-long career in the spotlight. "Maybe I've gotten a bit more trepidatious, but I’m always trying to be as open as possible," she told Harper's Bazaar. "I just prefer to live in the world that way."

But just because she's private doesn't mean she's aloof. "I'm wary at times, and I've been hurt, but at the same time I much prefer a warm approach rather than a prickly shutdown approach," she continued. "My husband, Keith, says that when he met me, he said, 'How's your heart?' And I apparently responded, 'Open.'"

Kidman and Keith Urban met in January of 2005 at G'Day LA, an event honoring Australians in the entertainment business. They started dating a few months later and eventually married in June 2006. Kidman said Urban gave a speech at the event in which he reflected on his mother and her sister, who was sitting right next to the Big Little Lies actress, Kidman recalled in the Bazaar interview.

"Well, it doesn't get much better than that," Urban's aunt had said, according to Kidman. "Yeah, but he's not gonna be interested in me," Kidman replied. But in the end, he really was. The actress said "angels" helped set them up in the months to come. "I was really, really into him," she said of the country music star. "He took a little time."

Kidman previously wrote in an essay for The Cut that she was "reluctant" to discuss her former marriage to Cruise in the media because of her current relationship with Urban.

"It almost feels disrespectful [to Keith]," she wrote. "That said, I got married very young, but it definitely wasn't power for me—it was protection. … When I came out of [the marriage to Cruise] at 32, 33, it's almost like I had to grow up."

Today, though, Kidman is never shy about gushing over Urban. The two have been married for 15 years and have two kids together, Faith and Sunday.

"He's such a good man, as I've said before," Kidman told Today of her husband. "I'm married to a really good man. And the kids have a great father and that's a very beautiful thing to be able to say."

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