The Hamilton Spectator

Nicole Kidman says marriage to Tom Cruise protected her

- ANTONIA NOORI FARZAN

Nicole Kidman has avoided talking about her 11-year marriage to Tom Cruise. Seventeen years after the couple split, we still don’t know exactly what caused their breakup.

But in a recent interview, Kidman opened up about one aspect of their relationsh­ip that she hasn’t discussed before — how being married to a powerful man protected her from experienci­ng the kind of sexual abuse that more and more women in Hollywood are speaking up about.

“I got married very young, but it definitely wasn’t power for me — it was protection,” the 51-yearold actress said to New York Magazine’s the Cut in an interview published Monday. “I married for love, but being married to an extremely powerful man kept me from being sexually harassed.”

Describing herself as “very much cocooned” during her marriage, Kidman added, “So when I came out of it at 32, 33, it’s almost like I had to grow up.”

She also acknowledg­ed that she has experience­d sexual harassment, but declined to go into detail.

“Of course I’ve had #MeToo moments — since I was little!” she said. “But do I want to expose them in an article? No. Do they come out in my work? Absolutely.”

The Academy Award-winning actress added: “I’m open and raw. I want to have my well of experience and emotion tapped into, used — and I’m not just talking about sexual harassment. I’m talking about loss, death, the full array of life. But it has to be by the right people so it’s not abused again.”

Kidman and Cruise, who have two children together, met on the set of 1990s “Days of Thunder” and married that same year, when she was 22 and he was 28.

The two split in 2001, with Cruise citing irreconcil­able difference­s. In 2003, Kidman won the Academy Award for best actress for her performanc­e in “The Hours.”

She married country singer Keith Urban in 2006.

In the piece, Kidman explains that she generally avoids talking about her marriage to Cruise “because I’m married now to the man who is my great love (Keith Urban), and it almost feels disrespect­ful.”

Kidman spoke to the Cut as part of a special issue on women and power. The rare interview was an “as-told-to,” meaning that it appears in the style of a firstperso­n essay written by Kidman but was drawn from interviewe­r Holly Millea’s conversati­on with the actress.

She’ll probably tap into her experience with sexual harassment in a yet-to-be-named film about Roger Ailes, the founder and former chairman of Fox News who resigned in 2016 following allegation­s of sexual misconduct. Kidman will play anchor Gretchen Carlson, who filed the sexual harassment lawsuit against Ailes that led to his downfall.

It’s not the first time that her work has touched on weighty issues of gendered abuse. In the 2017 HBO miniseries “Big Little Lies,” Kidman starred as Celeste Wright, a wealthy woman experienci­ng domestic abuse. The emotionall­y intense role literally left her with bruises.

 ?? GETTY IMAGES ?? Nicole Kidman was married to Tom Cruise for 11 years.
GETTY IMAGES Nicole Kidman was married to Tom Cruise for 11 years.

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