The Tragic Truth About Nicole Kidman Is Heartbreaking
Death, cults, and a Hollywood divorce for the ages: A-list life isn't always easy, and nobody knows this better than Nicole Kidman.
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00:00Death, cults, and a Hollywood divorce for the ages. A-list life isn't always easy, and
00:06nobody knows this better than Nicole Kidman.
00:09Nicole Kidman was born in Honolulu in 1967 to Australian parents, and she was raised
00:14in Sydney before her career took off in the 80s. But before Kidman became the Hollywood
00:19icon she is today, she and her younger sister Antonia endured a trying childhood. In a November
00:252020 interview with Glamour UK, she reflected on her humble beginnings. Kidman said,
00:31"...I've always been aware of privilege because both my parents came from nothing. When we
00:35moved to America, we had nothing. My parents had to go to the Salvation Army and get a
00:40donated mattress, which we all slept on, while my mom helped put my dad through his Ph.D.
00:45as he came from a very poor family."
00:47What her family lacked in material possessions, however, they made up for in character. Kidman
00:52went on to say that when her dad got his Ph.D., he offered his therapy services for
00:56free to help others. She added,
00:59"...I grew up with one of the gentlest, kindest fathers who was a giver, and my mother was
01:03a nurse, so my family had that social conscience."
01:07In November 2009, Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban helped raise money for the women's cancer
01:12program at Stanford University. At the event, the actor spoke about why the topic was close
01:17to her heart, sharing that her own mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer when
01:20she herself was only 17. Kidman said,
01:23"...I think that was the pivotal moment in my life because I was about to lose, or thought
01:28I would lose, the most important person in my family, the heartbeat of my family."
01:32Kidman has long encouraged women to get checked, noting that the process saved her mother's
01:37life. As she once told ITN News,
01:39"...She had chemotherapy and radio and is a survivor now. I want that to be heard."
01:44In 2004, word got out that Kidman had been through her own cancer scare. In a statement
01:49to the Associated Press, she confirmed that her results came back negative, adding,
01:54"...needless to say, my family and I are enormously relieved and thankful."
01:59Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise first hit it off filming the 1990 movie Days of Thunder.
02:04"...Seeing Tom Cruise drive up in a Porsche, I think it was, and he got out of the car
02:08and walked through and I was like, ah, and my jaw dropped."
02:12The couple dated for less than a year before deciding to tie the knot that December. Kidman
02:16was young when she married Cruise. She was 23 at the time, and he was 28. She's since
02:21remarked that, at that point in her life, she was not ready for such a serious commitment.
02:26In a 2007 interview with Marie Claire, Kidman revealed that she had suffered an ectopic
02:31pregnancy early in their relationship. This dangerous condition occurs in pregnant women
02:35when a fertilized egg implants somewhere outside of the uterus. In Kidman's case, she miscarried
02:41at 23 weeks' gestation. Kidman explained,
02:44From the minute Tom and I were married, I wanted to have babies, and we lost a baby
02:48early on, so that was really very traumatic. And that's when it came that we would adopt
02:52Bella."
02:53Kidman had been told by her doctor that she would continue to struggle with conception,
02:57so she and Cruise decided to adopt two children, Bella in 1993 and Connor in 1995. As she told
03:04Tatler in June 2018,
03:06"...Whether you're an adoptive mother, whether you're a foster mother, whether you're a biological
03:11mother, it's the emotion of attaching to a child and helping to guide them and rear them
03:15that is important."
03:17In 2001, after 11 years of marriage to Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman experienced a second
03:22miscarriage.
03:23I've had a very, very rollercoaster ride with fertility. I just have, and it has never been
03:30easy for me."
03:32It was around this time that everything fell apart in Kidman's marriage as well, marking
03:36the year as perhaps one of her most difficult. In her 2018 interview with Tatler, Kidman
03:41spoke about the pain of losing a pregnancy, saying,
03:44"...the loss of a miscarriage is not talked about enough. That's massive grief to certain
03:49women."
03:50In 2008, Kidman and her current husband Keith Urban welcomed their first child together,
03:54Sunday Rose. Speaking to Tatler, she explained how finally giving birth was a bittersweet
04:00experience. She said,
04:01"...there's an enormous amount of pain and an enormous amount of joy on the other side
04:05of it. The flip side of going through so much yearning and pain to get there is the feeling
04:10of, ah, when you have the child."
04:13Tom Cruise's relationship with Nicole Kidman was headline news for years, and they played
04:17the part of the Hollywood it couple well. That is, until Cruise filed for divorce in
04:22February 2001, completely catching his wife by surprise. He cited irreconcilable differences
04:28in the filing, but others speculated that Cruise's involvement with the Church of Scientology
04:32may have played a role in their split.
04:35Mike Rinder, a former high-ranking member of the church, wrote about the couple's divorce
04:39in his 2022 book, A Billion Years, My Escape from a Life in the Highest Ranks of Scientology.
04:45He detailed how the church's head, David Miscavige, became unhappy when Cruise seemed to be pulling
04:50away from the church. Evidently, he blamed Kidman. Rinder wrote,
04:54When Tom and Nicole divorced, Miscavige was happy that the negative influence of Nicole
04:58was no longer dragging Tom away. Cruise thereafter became more fervent in his vocal public support
05:04of Scientology and Miscavige.
05:07We may never know the exact details of what caused Kidman's and Cruise's breakup, but
05:11what we do know is that it cut the actor deep. During a 2012 interview with DuJour, Kidman
05:16admitted,
05:17"'It took me a very long time to heal. It was a shock to my system.'"
05:22Nicole Kidman gave an astonishing performance when she played Virginia Wolf in Stephen Daldry's
05:262002 drama, The Hours. Kidman received glowing reviews for her role in the film, including
05:31one in The New York Times that read,
05:33"[Kidman tunnels like a ferret into the soul of a woman besieged by excruciating bouts
05:38of mental illness. As you watch her wrestle with the demon of depression, it's as if its
05:43torment has never been shown on the screen before."
05:45While filming The Hours, Kidman had been grappling with both the dissolution of her marriage
05:50to Tom Cruise and her own depression. As she said on the BBC radio series, This Cultural
05:55Life, however, this actually helped with her performance.
05:58"'So the idea of Virginia coming through me, I was pretty much an open vessel for it to
06:04happen.'"
06:05Nicole Kidman's performance in The Hours landed the actor her first Oscar in 2003. Snagging
06:11the award for Best Actress in a Leading Role would be a triumphant occasion for most, but
06:15in Dave Carger's book 50 Oscar Nights, Kidman revealed that she was still struggling after
06:20her divorce. She detailed how she didn't want to go to the Vanity Fair afterparty, but was
06:25eventually coaxed into it. Kidman recalled,
06:27"...I literally walked in, carried it around, was completely overwhelmed, emotional, shaking,
06:34and I didn't enjoy it."
06:35The sentiment lingered as the night went on. Kidman added,
06:38"...I went home and ended up ordering takeout and eating it on the floor of the Beverly
06:42Hills Hotel. That's when it hit me. I went, I need to find my love. I need a love in my
06:47life. Because this is supposed to be when you go, this is ours."
06:51This was a huge wake-up call for Kidman, as she knew she had to let herself move on from
06:55Tom Cruise and get back to living her life the best she could.
06:59Nicole Kidman has often spoken about her father, Dr. Tony Kidman, with adoration. In September
07:052014, he died at the age of 75. Tony was at a hotel in Singapore where he was visiting
07:11his youngest daughter, Antonia, when he collapsed and died from a suspected heart attack.
07:16In April 2024, while speaking at an Emmys for Your Consideration event, Nicole Kidman
07:21revealed that her actual reaction to her father's death shaped how she approached a heavy moment
07:26in the series, Ex-Pats. As she told the audience, when it came time to film the scene where
07:30her character visits a child in a morgue, she played it as real as she could. She recalled,
07:35"...I just said, I'm gonna try something because this is actually for my own life, not where
07:40I went to a morgue but when my father passed away and I laughed because it was so devastating
07:45when I saw his body and I had the most awful reaction which was I started to shake and
07:50laugh."
07:51Kidman said she was ashamed to talk about it but knew that it was simply a natural reaction.
07:55She added,
07:56"...at the same time I go, but it's real and it's based in the deepest love and not being
08:01able to handle a situation."
08:03The birth of the MeToo movement enabled countless female celebrities to speak out in solidarity
08:08about their experiences with sexual harassment and assault.
08:12"...women are worthy of being believed."
08:15Although Nicole Kidman has withheld many details of her own personal experiences, she's made
08:20it clear that she, too, has dealt with unwanted advances in Hollywood. In a 2018 essay for
08:26New York Magazine, she opened up about her marriage to Tom Cruise and the benefits of
08:30being linked to the fellow A-list actor. When they tied the knot, her career was only just
08:34getting started, whereas Cruise was already a full-fledged megastar. She described her
08:39marriage to Cruise as protection. Kidman wrote,
08:42"...I married for love, but being married to an extremely powerful man kept me from
08:46being sexually harassed. I would work, but I was still very much cocooned. So when I
08:51came out of it at 32, 33, it's almost like I had to grow up. Of course I've had MeToo
08:56moments since I was little, but do I want to expose them in an article? No. Do they
09:01come out in my work? Absolutely."
09:04Nicole Kidman's and Tom Cruise's adopted children, Bella and Conor Cruise, are grown up these
09:09days. Sadly, things haven't been great between Kidman and her kids, and it's reportedly down
09:14to their involvement in the Church of Scientology. After Tom and Kidman split, there was a lot
09:19of speculation about whether or not Kidman saw Bella or Conor regularly. Although Kidman
09:24had her daughter as a bridesmaid in her 2006 wedding to Keith Urban, she didn't attend
09:28Bella's wedding in 2015, although notably Cruise himself wasn't invited either. When
09:33Conor got married in 2019, Kidman was reportedly not welcome at the ceremony. Kidman seemed
09:39to confirm the media's theories about a falling out with her kids when she told The Sun in
09:43September 2019,
09:44"...They have made choices to be Scientologists. It's our job as a parent to always offer unconditional
09:50love. It's not about anything else other than, I'm here to love and support you."
09:55The pandemic was still ongoing when the Amazon Prime Series' expats began filming in Hong
10:00Kong in 2021, and so tensions remained pretty high. There were very strict rules regarding
10:05quarantine, so Nicole Kidman left her family behind to shoot the show, which ended up being
10:10a difficult decision for the actor.
10:12In a January 2024 interview with The Guardian, she spoke about how she struggled with this.
10:17"...I said, I cannot, cannot do this. It was like when a donkey just goes, I'm not going.
10:23I couldn't just get on a plane and get to them, and they couldn't get to me. That affected
10:27the performance to the degree that it also affected my psyche."
10:30In the show, Kidman plays a character whose son goes missing under the watch of his babysitter.
10:35Given her reluctance to leave her family behind, this would no doubt have made the job even
10:39harder for the actor. Still, despite her inner turmoil, Kidman pulled off an authentic performance
10:45and managed to get through filming. She continued,
10:48"...I think people go through this. My job is to be the conduit and perform it to its
10:52absolute authentic truth. And if I'm not doing that, then I'm not serving why I work as an
10:57actor, which is to artistically connect to the way life is, in all its pain and glory."