"They said it would ruin my career, but I didn't care": Nicole Kidman on life after the painful divorce
Behind the quick divorce from Keith Urban lay difficult months and a custody battle over the girls. Now, as the frustrated ex watches her move on, the 59-year-old star gives an interview about her fears, the brave choice to keep her heart open, and why she has absolutely no regrets about being willing in the past to "throw her career in the trash" for Tom Cruise.
The last year in Nicole Kidman's life has been a crazy emotional rollercoaster, full of rumors and drama at a dizzying pace. The one who was considered half of the most stable couple in Hollywood suddenly found herself breaking up a package of almost two decades, locking herself in her shell, and then re-emerging in Portofino while attached to a mysterious millionaire. Now, as she is ready to reveal everything, she allows a rare glimpse in a huge interview for British Vogue.
For almost two decades, Nicole and her husband, country star Keith Urban (58), presented to the world a fable of a stable relationship. But behind the scenes, the writing was already on the wall, and the two began living separately as early as last summer, before the official separation in September 2025. Kidman did not waste time, and the day after the separation announcement, she already filed the divorce papers. The official procedure was finalized last January, when Nicole came out on top and received majority custody of their shared daughters, Sunday (18) and Faith (15) - the girls are with her no less than 306 days a year, while Keith will have to settle for only 59 days.
Associates say that Urban had a hard time accepting the speed with which his ex-wife moved on - which, according to rumors, simply finished him off. However, Kidman says now that she chose to retreat into herself and process the grief. "I had other things going on. I was inside my shell," she admits in an interview with Variety. Although this is the star's second divorce, Kidman clarifies that the experience does not make the pain any easier. When asked about it, she replied: "It's all new, every time anew."
"I didn't expect this," admits Kidman when asked about her new life. "I had a different view of what my life was going to look like, but this is what it is now. You make all these plans and you have all these ideas of how everything is going to be, but no. You have to adapt. You adjust yourself. The future, it's just completely unknown to me right now." Kidman does not hide the great fears that accompanied her on the way down: "There was a point where I was very frightened and deeply hurt, which is a vulnerable thing," she recalls with mesmerizing honesty. "And at the same time I said to myself, 'I can either not deal with this at all and just curl up inside myself, or I can just go forward with a huge amount of hope.'"
This hope, it turns out, leads her to make decisions from the heart, not the head. Kidman admits that she takes an emotion-focused approach and navigates her life mainly with the help of her heart. "I can still approach things intellectually," she explains. "But my aspiration is not to be controlled by my head. I always wanted to live a life that was deeply examined, and then what does that actually require? Trying things, making mistakes, failing, getting back up, moving on, embracing love, staying open, keeping the heart open and the possibilities." She even adds an inspiring insight about coping: "I always chose to be a person who sees the light, and I think the bravest thing a person can do is to stay with an open heart, even when it feels the least safe to do so."
This choice to follow the heart is not new for Kidman. When she looks back at her first marriage to Tom Cruise, which she started when she was almost a child, she regrets nothing. "I married so young," she recalls with a smile. "Suddenly I was 22, 23, and I had this husband, this huge movie star. But it just seemed completely natural. We just fell madly in love and it was that simple. I remember people telling me, 'This is really going to affect your career,' and I said, 'I don't care. I'm in love. I want to be married.' And then I became 'the wife of' and they said, 'See, we told you.' And I responded: 'So what? I wasn't supposed to marry the man I love? Of course I'll throw my career in the trash, I don't care.'"
Today, Nicole puts all the focus on what is really important to her - her family and her daughters, whom she defines as an extraordinary purpose for which she drops everything from her hands. She tells with pride about 18-year-old Sunday, who is a unique creature in her own right, with a strong sense of style and amazing creativity in photography and cinema, and about young Faith, who has a classic and clean style. Despite the painful separation from Keith and the fact that their life together in Nashville, Tennessee, has come to an end, she refuses to leave the city: "We have our lives here. I've been part of this community for 20 years. This is my home." As for the other juicy details about the divorce - don't count on her to dish the dirt: "Everything else is a subject I don't discuss - out of respect. I remain in a place of 'we are family', and that is what we will continue to be."
