In a new British Vogue cover feature, Oscar-winning actress Nicole Kidman has offered candid reflections on her marriage to Tom Cruise, a relationship that began when she was 22 and unfolded under relentless media scrutiny.
The pair met on the set of director Tony Scott’s “Days of Thunder” in 1989, the racing film that served as Kidman’s Hollywood feature debut. They married on Christmas Eve 1990. Cruise initiated divorce proceedings in February 2001, citing irreconcilable differences, and the split was finalized that August.
Warnings She Chose to Ignore
Speaking to British Vogue for its September 2026 issue, which arrives on newsstands Aug. 20, Kidman acknowledged that people in her circle repeatedly cautioned her that marrying one of the planet’s biggest stars would derail her acting ambitions. She was 22 or 23 at the time, suddenly wed to a global icon, yet the entire experience seemed natural because they had fallen madly in love. Her reply to those warnings, she revealed, was simple: she did not care.
That defiance, Kidman now suggests, shaped everything that followed. Growing up in the full glare of public attention became her baseline reality, conditioning her to navigate red carpets and fashion weeks with an ease that traces directly back to those formative years.
Building a Career Amid the Tabloid Glare
Despite the forecast of professional ruin, Kidman’s résumé throughout the 1990s proved her doubters wrong. She delivered acclaimed turns in “To Die For,” “The Portrait of a Lady,” and “Practical Magic,” cementing her reputation as a serious dramatic talent even as tabloids fixated on her private life.
She shared the screen with Cruise twice during their union. Director Ron Howard’s 1992 period drama “Far and Away” drew tepid reviews. Their second collaboration, Stanley Kubrick’s “Eyes Wide Shut” in 1999, became the legendary director’s final completed work, with Kidman portraying Alice Harford opposite Cruise’s Bill Harford. In a recent Sight & Sound magazine conversation, Cruise disclosed that he had personally suggested Kidman for casting, telling Kubrick she was a talented performer he had advocated for from the beginning.
The year their divorce was finalized brought both “Moulin Rouge!” and “The Others” to theaters. The following year, Kidman won the Academy Award for “The Hours,” proof that the separation had done nothing to dim her star.
A Child Bride Who Needed to Grow Up
Kidman has not shied away from acknowledging how young she was. In a 2013 Vanity Fair profile, she characterized herself straightforwardly: she had entered that union as an immature young woman who required further maturation. The new interview revisits that assessment, with Kidman observing that so much of her existence has played out under public observation that she struggles to recall what came before.
During their marriage, the couple adopted two children — Bella, now 33, and Connor, now 31.
Life After Cruise
Kidman went on to marry musician Keith Urban in 2006. They had two daughters, Sunday Rose, now 18, and Faith Margaret, now 15. After 19 years of marriage, the couple separated in 2025, and in the British Vogue interview Kidman addressed this chapter too, reflecting on a time of surprising readjustment and continuing attempts to remain vulnerable even as her near-term path remains unclear.
The profile captures an actress in a moment of transition but not retreat. This summer found her moving between London, Ibiza, Paris, and Portofino, her evenings oscillating between quiet Scrabble matches and late-night clubs where she sometimes wears a dark wig to slip through crowds unrecognized. She emerges from the conversation as someone who has learned to hold opposing truths at once: internationally famous yet instinctively guarded, methodical by nature but ultimately led by emotion.