Nicole Kidman has been through one highly scrutinized Hollywood divorce before — but she says splitting from Keith Urban hasn't made heartbreak any easier.
"It's all new," the actress said in a cover interview with British Vogue. "Every time!"
Just months after her 19-year marriage to Keith Urban officially ended, the Oscar-winning actress is opening up about the emotional journey of starting over — admitting there was a point when she was "very fearful and deeply vulnerable" but ultimately decided she had to move forward.
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"Free falling?" she asked herself, as she searched for the right words to describe this chapter of her life. "Jumping off?"
Then came the question that seemed to capture her life at the moment.
"Like, where am I going? And what’s next?"
Kidman, 59, filed for divorce from Urban, 58, last September in Nashville after nearly two decades of marriage. Their divorce was finalized in January, with irreconcilable differences cited and Kidman named the primary residential parent of their two daughters.
The former couple agreed to make major decisions involving the girls jointly. Neither party sought spousal support, and both waived their right to appear at the divorce hearing.
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While Kidman didn't get into the details of what led to the split, she revealed what it felt like to be on the other side of a life she thought she understood.
"I’ve approached my whole life like that," she said of her "feelings first" philosophy.
"That’s just who I am. I don’t overthink things and I’m probably not that analytical. I’m far more feeling-centred and I lead with my heart. I just go, ‘OK, what do I feel here? I’ll give it a go.’ It throws people, because I think they think I’ll be far more measured and I’m not."
Kidman has never been one to let her head overrule her heart, she suggested in her interview.
"I can still approach things intellectually," she continued with a smile, "but my desire is not to be ruled by my head. I’ve always wanted to live a well-examined life, so what does that entail? Trying things, making mistakes, failing, getting back up, moving on, embracing love, staying open, keeping the heart open and the possibilities."
The "Practical Magic" star added, "But at the same time, I’m like, ‘OK, I didn’t expect this. I had a different view of what my life was going to be, but this is what it is now.’ You make all these plans and you have all these ideas of what it’s all going to be like and then it’s… not. You have to adjust. You adapt. The future, it’s completely unknown to me right now."
She paused and added, "Strange."
When asked whether the uncertainty was frightening, Kidman replied, "There was a point where I was very fearful and deeply vulnerable," adding, "which is exposing. And then at the same time [I'm] going, 'Well, I can either really not confront it and just curl up, or I can just go forward with an enormous amount of hope.'"
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"I know my character. I know my talent. I know who I am. If I make a mistake and it doesn’t connect, or something goes wrong in my life where it’s humiliating, it’s OK. Other people have had that and that’s OK. Take the onus off it."
But if Kidman thought her first very public divorce had prepared her for the second, she quickly learned otherwise.
The actress was famously married to Tom Cruise for more than a decade after meeting him on the set of "Days of Thunder." They married in 1990 and adopted two children, Isabella and Connor, before divorcing in 2001.
Her marriage to Cruise began when Kidman was barely into adulthood. She has previously described being swept up in the romance and largely ignoring warnings that becoming the wife of one of Hollywood's biggest stars could affect her own career.
"Yeah, I got married so young," Kidman said. "Suddenly, I was 22, 23 years old and I had this huge movie star husband, but it just seemed completely natural."
"We just fell madly in love and it was that simple," Kidman recalled.
When people warned her that marrying Cruise could overshadow her career, she didn't hesitate.
"I’m like, ‘I don’t care. I’m in love. I want to be married.’"
She remembered the people who later said, "‘See, we told you.’"
Her response was just as defiant.
"I’m like, ‘So what? I wasn’t meant to marry the man I love? Of course, I’ll throw my career away. I don’t care.’"
"But you have to remember literally, because of who I married at such a young age, I was thrust into it since I was 22."
After Cruise, she found love with Urban, the New Zealand-born singer-songwriter and guitarist. They married in 2006 and welcomed two daughters, Sunday Rose and Faith Margaret.