Us reached out to reps for Kidman for comment.

Us confirmed in September 2025 that Urban and Kidman had split after nearly two decades together. The actress filed for divorce later that month. Urban and Kidman, who share daughters Sunday Rose, 18, and Faith Margaret, 15, finalized their split in January.

Nicole Kidman Said She and Keith Urban Were ‘Always Working Through Stuff’ Years Before Split

Kidman — who is also a mom to daughter Bella, 33, and son Connor, 31, with ex Tom Cruise — broke her silence on the split in March.

“I’m always going to be moving toward what’s good. What I’m grateful for is my family and keeping them as is and moving forward,” she told Variety in an interview at the time. “That’s that. Everything else I don’t discuss out of respect. I’m staying in a place of, ‘We are a family,’ and that’s what we’ll continue to be. My beautiful girls, my darlings, who are suddenly women.”

While Urban has yet to publicly address the divorce, a source exclusively told Us in October 2025 that he had “moved on” and was “open with Nicole about where he stands.”

“The two had grown apart quietly over time, and by the end, the decision to separate was more about acceptance than surprise,” the insider added.

Nicole Kidman Was Warned That Marrying Tom Cruise Could Hurt Her Career. She Didn’t Care

At 23, Nicole Kidman was already deeply in love with one of Hollywood’s biggest stars. Decades later, the Oscar-winning actress is looking back on the choice she once made with her heart—not her career.

Nicole Kidman was only 23 when she married Tom Cruise, but by then, she had already found herself at the center of Hollywood’s brightest spotlight.

The Australian actress had met Cruise while filming Days of Thunder in 1989. He was 28, already one of the biggest movie stars in the world. She was a rising actress at the beginning of what would become one of Hollywood’s most accomplished careers.

When they married on Christmas Eve in 1990, people around Kidman had concerns.

She recently recalled being warned that marrying someone as famous as Cruise could have a serious impact on her own career.

Her response was simple: She was in love.

“I don’t care. I’m in love. I want to get married,” Kidman recalled telling those who questioned her decision in a new interview with British Vogue.

At the time, career calculations were the last thing on her mind.

“I suddenly was 22, 23 years old and I had this huge movie star husband,” Kidman said. “But it just seemed completely natural.”

A Marriage That Put Her in Cruise’s Shadow

Kidman and Cruise quickly became one of Hollywood’s most closely watched couples.

Cruise already had an extraordinary résumé, with films including Top Gun, Risky Business, Rain Man, The Color of Money and Born on the Fourth of July establishing him as a major Hollywood star.

Kidman, meanwhile, was still building her American career.

The pair appeared together in Days of Thunder and later reunited on screen for Far and Away in 1992 and Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut in 1999.

They also adopted two children, Isabella and Connor, during their marriage.

But the warning Kidman had received eventually appeared to come true—at least in one sense.

For years, she was often discussed primarily as Tom Cruise’s wife, rather than as an actress with a career of her own.

Looking back, Kidman remembers the reaction almost matter-of-factly.

“And then I was his wife and they were like, ‘See, we told you,’” she recalled.

Yet she did not view the decision as a mistake.

“So what?” she said. “I wasn’t meant to marry the man I love?”

Her Career Had Other Plans

If Hollywood expected Kidman’s marriage to Cruise to permanently define her career, history proved otherwise.

Throughout their 11-year marriage, she continued taking on increasingly challenging roles.

She appeared in films including Far and Away, Batman Forever, To Die For, The Portrait of a Lady and Practical Magic.

Her performance as the ambitious and darkly comic television personality Suzanne Stone in To Die For earned her a Golden Globe in 1996 and helped establish her as a formidable actress in her own right.

By the end of the 1990s, Kidman was no longer simply the young Australian actress who had married Tom Cruise.

She was becoming one of Hollywood’s most respected performers.

Then came Eyes Wide Shut and, shortly afterward, Moulin Rouge!

Her performance as Satine in Baz Luhrmann’s 2001 musical earned Kidman her first Academy Award nomination for Best Actress, while she also won the Golden Globe for the role.

The career that people had warned her she might sacrifice was becoming something entirely her own.

The Marriage Ended. The Career Didn’t.

Cruise and Kidman separated in 2001, ending one of the most famous marriages of the 1990s.

Their divorce became another enormous Hollywood story, but Kidman’s professional trajectory continued to rise.

She eventually won the Academy Award for Best Actress for The Hours in 2003, cementing her status as one of the industry’s leading performers.

In retrospect, the prediction that marrying Cruise would destroy or permanently derail her career proved difficult to sustain.

The marriage may have shaped the way the public initially viewed Kidman, but it did not determine where her career ultimately went.

Instead, she continued to build a body of work that stretched across dramas, thrillers, musicals, television and prestige projects.

Why Kidman Still Remembers That Decision

What makes Kidman’s recent comments particularly revealing is that she does not describe her younger self as naïve for choosing love over career strategy.

She describes her choice as completely natural.

At 23, she was not thinking about how history would judge the marriage.

She was not calculating what it might mean for her résumé or public image.

She simply wanted to marry the person she loved.

That perspective also provides a glimpse into how dramatically her life has changed since then.

Kidman is now 59, an Oscar winner and one of the most recognizable actresses of her generation. Her career has long since moved beyond any association with her first husband.

And yet, she can still look back at the young woman who made that decision without embarrassment.

There is no obvious regret in her recollection.

Only recognition of how young she was—and how certain she felt.

A Hollywood Life That Never Followed the Script

Kidman’s comments arrive at another major turning point in her personal life.

Her second marriage, to country singer Keith Urban, ended after nearly two decades. Kidman filed for divorce in 2025, and the divorce was finalized in January 2026.

Reflecting on the experience, she has acknowledged that life does not always unfold according to the plans people make for themselves.

That may be the thread connecting both of her marriages—and much of her career.

Kidman has spent decades living under extraordinary public scrutiny, making choices that were analyzed by audiences, tabloids and Hollywood insiders alike.

But the lesson she seems to have taken from it is not that she should have made different choices.

It is that life cannot always be controlled.

The young Nicole Kidman chose love over career calculations.

The actress who emerged afterward built a career powerful enough to survive the prediction that she would disappear into her husband’s shadow.

And decades later, the woman looking back on that decision still seems to have no interest in rewriting the story.

She was in love.

She wanted to get married.

And, for Nicole Kidman, that was enough.