Nicole: “I’ve had a roller-coaster ride with fertility”
As Nicole Kidman turns 50 this month, she opens up on her difficult journey to motherhood and how she rushed into her second marriage
Her age-defying H looks stole the show at the Cannes Film Festival, and as she prepares to celebrate a milestone birthday in three weeks, the 49-year-old Hollywood star has spoken about her battle with fertility, saying that her motherhood journey has “never been easy.”
Mum-of-four Nicole, who has two adopted children, Isabella, 24, and Connor, 22, from her 11-year marriage to Tom Cruise, became a mum again when she met country singer Keith Urban. But despite revealing that she wanted a baby as soon as the pair met, she admits: “I got lucky, I got to have a child when I was 41.”
SURROGACY
The pair now have two young daughters, Sunday Rose, eight, who was reportedly conceived naturally and Faith, six, born via a surrogate. Opening up about the experience, Nicole said she is grateful to have experienced motherhood through many different avenues.
She added: “The love I felt for our surrogate was enormous. She came into our lives and said she’d help us have a second child… I get emotional talking about it, I’m so grateful to her. I’ve had such a roller-coaster ride with fertility – it’s never been easy for me.
COMPROMISES
“I now have two gorgeous adopted children and two biological children, I can’t believe that’s what’s happened in my life.”
In January this year, Nicole told a magazine: “I still have the faintest hope that something may happen to me this year. Keith and I would love to have more babies. My grandmother gave birth to my mother at 49! I would be beyond happy and just welcome it with open arms.”
Nicole and Keith, 49, married in her native Sydney in 2006, but despite their solid marriage, she admits they rushed into a wedding having only met a few months earlier, and she quickly relocated to Nashville.
Nicole says: “I sort of stumbled into Keith and in my spontaneous way got married very quickly. We got to know each other when we were married.”
DATING PAST
In November, the couple slammed reports that they’d enrolled in an £8k couples retreat for “crisis talks.” Their life in the countryside comes in stark contrast to the media circus that followed Nicole since she became one half of Hollywood’s hottest power couples with Tom Cruise in 1989. The couple split in 2001 and, reflecting on that time, Nicole previously said: “I was so young when I got married. I look back now and I’m like, what?”
She went on to date a string of famous men, including a brief engagement to singer Lenny Kravitz in 2003, and a short-lived affair with Robbie Williams, who claimed he romanced the actress in 2004.
But Nicole has no problems with turning 50, and will be celebrating it by enjoying the simple pleasures in life.
She says: “I love flowers and I suppose it’s because of the life I live, I meditate, I pray, but I garden as well. I sound like such an old woman, but I love that my kids wake up, come down and say, ‘Look at your roses, mama.’ It’s very difficult to grow roses in Nashville. They’re my pride and joy.”
❛keith and I got to know each other when we were married❜