You may be feeling a sense of deja vu upon Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban‘s divorce, and for good reason – she’s been through a high-profile divorce before.
The ’90s saw the birth of Kidman and Tom Cruise‘s love story, with the Hollywood star couple occupying every headline over the next decade and beyond.
The story began in early 1990, with Kidman, today 58, and Cruise, today 63, meeting on the set of Days of Thunder. Cruise played race car driver Cole Trickle, while the Aussie actress appeared as his love interest, Dr. Claire Lewicki.
Months later, and less than one year after finalising his divorce from Mimi Rogers, Cruise wed Kidman in a private ceremony held in Colorado on Christmas Eve, attended by their family members.
The MIssion: Impossible star was 28, while Kidman was only 23 at the time of the marriage.
She reflected on the decision in a 2016 interview with Red Magazine, sharing, “I was so young when I got married. I look back today and I’m like, ‘What?'”
During the course of their union, the couple adopted daughter Isabella in 1992 and son Connor in 1995.
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They also shared the screen on many more occasions, including Far and Away and Stanley Kubrick’s final film, Eyes Wide Shut.
Kidman recalled filming the controversial erotic thriller in an interview with The New York Times in 2020.
“We were happily married through that,” she shared.
“We would go go-kart racing after [intense] scenes. We’d rent out a place and go racing at three in the morning.”
Less than two years later, Cruise shocked the world in February 2001 when he filed for divorce from Kidman, citing irreconcilable differences as the reason for the split
“Citing the difficulties inherent in divergent careers which constantly keep them apart, they concluded that an amicable separation seemed best for both of them at this time,” a statement from the couple read at the time.
The reason for the split has never been made public, though Kidman tried to brush off the ordeal in a famous interview with David Letterman.
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She appeared on the late night show soon after the divorce, with the host asking her, ”I heard you’re getting divorced, how’s that going?”
“Um, yeah I get a lot of questions. Well, I can wear heels today!” she hilariously quipped.
The comment was made in reference to the infamous height difference her and ex-husband.
Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban’s love story in pictures
Over the years, Kidman has been forthcoming about her first divorce, sharing in an interview with Ladies’ Home Journal in 2006 that it came as a “major shock” to her.
“He was huge; still is. To me, he was just Tom, but to everybody else, he is huge. But he was lovely to me. And I loved him. I still love him,” she said at the time.
In a 2012 interview with DuJour magazine, six years into her marriage with Urban, she spoke about her first marriage.
“I thought our life together was perfect,” she said.
“It took me a very long time to heal. It was a shock to my system…We became very dependent on one another. I was reeling with Tom. I would have gone to the ends of the earth for him…. I was totally smitten – I fell madly, passionately in love.”
Cruise, for his part, has kept tight-lipped about why he ended the marriage, even amid rumours the Church of Scientology, of which he is a prominent member, put distance between himself and Kidman.
He reportedly told Vanity Fair following their split: “She knows why, and I know why [we divorced].”
“She’s the mother of my children, and I wish her well. And I think that you just move on.”
Since then, Cruise moved on with actress Katie Holmes, the pair later splitting in 2012. He is today rumoured to be dating actress Ana de Armas.
Kidman, of course, married Keith Urban in 2006 and filed for divorce last week after 19 years together.
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