Nicole Kidman knew exactly what people feared when she married Tom Cruise. At just 22, the Australian actor was warned that becoming the wife of one of Hollywood’s biggest stars could overshadow her own career. Her answer? She was in love, and she simply did not care.
In a new British Vogue cover story, Kidman looked back on the whirlwind romance, marriage and intense public attention that followed. According to Variety, she met Cruise in 1989 while filming Tony Scott’s Days of Thunder, her Hollywood feature debut. They married a year later and stayed together for 11 years.
Kidman recalled suddenly finding herself in her early 20s with a “huge movie star husband”. Yet, at the time, the situation felt completely natural to her.
“We just fell madly in love and it was that simple,” she said.
The warnings came quickly. People told Kidman that marrying Cruise could have a major impact on her career. But love mattered more to her.
“I don’t care. I’m in love. I want to be married,” she remembered saying.
After the wedding, the prediction seemed to come true. Kidman found herself repeatedly described as Cruise’s wife rather than as an actor in her own right. Even her friends reminded her that they had warned her.
Her response was blunt: “So what? I wasn’t meant to marry the man I love? Of course I’ll throw my career away. I don’t care.”
Despite the enormous media attention surrounding the marriage, Kidman’s career continued to grow. She appeared in acclaimed films including To Die For, The Portrait of a Lady and Practical Magic. She also worked with Cruise on Far and Away in 1992 and Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut in 1999.
The couple announced their separation in February 2001. Cruise filed for divorce that same month, citing irreconcilable differences.
Ironically, Kidman’s career reached another level soon after. Moulin Rouge! and The Others arrived in 2001, followed by her Oscar-winning performance in The Hours in 2002.
Kidman has since reflected on how young she was when she entered the marriage. In a 2013 interview with Vanity Fair, she said she was “a child” when she married Cruise and needed to grow up.
The experience also changed her relationship with fame. Kidman said she now feels surprisingly comfortable with life in the public eye because she entered it so young and spent much of her adult life under intense scrutiny.
Cruise recently revisited their professional relationship in an interview with Sight & Sound. He revealed that he suggested Kidman for the role of Alice Harford in Eyes Wide Shut, opposite his character, Bill Harford.
Cruise said he made the suggestion to Kubrick because Kidman was “a great actress”. The film became Kubrick’s final feature and remains one of the most notable projects the former couple made together.
For Kidman, however, the story began long before the headlines, warnings and career calculations. She was 22, deeply in love and convinced that marrying Cruise was worth the risk.
