Though it’s been over for decades, Nicole Kidman’s marriage to Tom Cruise is still one of Hollywood’s most-talked about relationships.
While the Nine Perfect Strangers star has grown to keep her private life out of the spotlight, things were different when she wed Cruise in 1990. “I was young. I think I offered it up?” she told Harper’s Bazaar in September 2021 of publicly discussing her first marriage. “Maybe I’ve gotten a bit more trepidatious, but I’m always trying to be as open as possible. I just prefer to live in the world that way.”
The Top Gun actor was previously married to Mimi Rogers from May 1987 to February 1990. Less than one year after his divorce, Cruise exchanged vows with Kidman in December 1990. They adopted two children — Isabella Jane (born 1992) and Connor Antony (born 1995) — before the Jerry Maguire star filed to end their marriage in February 2001.
“I was willing to give up everything,” the Big Little Lies alum told Vanity Fair in November 2002. “I now see that as part of me. I’m willing to do that — I do it when I do a movie too. I’m willing to go, ‘Yeah, bring it on, consume me, intoxicate me.’ I want to feel alive — I want to reel, basically. I was reeling with Tom and I loved it and I would have walked to the end of the earth. That meant giving up a lot of things that were very important to me.”
At the time, the Oscar winner reflected on the heightened pressure of maintaining a relationship in the public eye. “You’re being watched and scrutinized, and that slowly affects you,” she told the outlet. “But it’s also deeply romantic, because it feels like there’s only the two of you and you’re in it together, as if you’re in a cocoon, and you become very dependent on each other. … I felt I didn’t deserve to be there in my own right, and so throughout I wasn’t there as Nicole — I was there as Tom’s wife.”
Both Kidman and the Mission: Impossible star remarried after their split. The Undoing actress was briefly engaged to Lenny Kravitz before she wed Keith Urban in June 2006. Cruise, for his part, settled his divorce from Katie Holmes in July 2012 after six years of marriage.
Over the years, the Paddington actress has gushed over Urban’s never-ending support, praising him for encouraging her every step of the way.
“I have the most extraordinary partner in life. I will always say that about him,” she told Entertainment Tonight of the country singer, with whom she shares daughters Sunday and Faith, in May 2019. “I’m one of the very fortunate women in the world to have had a wonderful father, and I have a wonderful husband, and I’m just very — I love to be able to say that because to talk about the good men that have influenced me and affected me.”
Scroll down to look back on some of Kidman’s most candid quotes about her marriage and split from Cruise: