NICOLE AND KEITH’S LOVE STORY

BATTLING DEMONS AND COMPETING CAREERS, THE A LIST COUPLE SHARE SECRETS OF THEIR STRONG MARRIAGE

For the five months Nicole Kidman spent in Byron Bay filming her role as an ethereal wellness leader named Masha in the Amazon Prime miniseries Nine Perfect Strangers, she stayed in character – Russian accent and all – much to the delight of her husband, Keith Urban. “Keith was really into Masha, so that was good,” the star said during an interview with The Project. “I think he just sort of liked the vibe.”

Keeping the sexy spark alive in their marriage is a cinch for the A-list couple, who celebrated their 15th wedding anniversary in June. Kidman, 54, marked the occasion by posting a racy picture of her country crooner husband licking her neck. “You’ve got to have spice,” Kidman continued. “Sugar and spice is the key to 15 years.”

While Urban, 53 – who is winning hearts himself with his charismatic return as a coach on The Voice this year – may have been turned on by his wife’s role in Nine Perfect Strangers, the actress herself has spoken of a deeper connection with the character.

“I love the idea of this woman who is totally and utterly committed to healing other people,” Kidman recently told The Sydney Morning Herald. “And truly, authentically believes that she can show a pathway through pain, trauma or anything.”

Kidman’s healing powers were paramount at the beginning of her relationship with Urban. When the pair first bumped into each other in 2005 at the G’Day USA gala in Los Angeles, Urban has admitted he “wasn’t in a very healthy place in my life”. As a result, he hesitated even to call Kidman, telling

interviewer Andrew Denton in 2018, “I’d never have thought she’d see anything in a guy like me.”

Urban, who has been open about battling addiction early in his career in the 1990s, had been sober for eight years and had completed two stints at rehab when he relapsed just four months after his starstudded Sydney wedding to Kidman.

“When she would go away, I would find myself feeling very alone, very lost, and vulnerable to my old ways,” he told Rolling Stone in 2014 of falling off the bandwagon again. “We had just gotten married, and this entity in my life is coming just to crush and kill everything that I’ve got.”

Kidman staged an intervention after returning home from a movie shoot and Urban re-entered treatment in 2007. “You can’t save somebody, they’ve got to save themselves,” Kidman told WHO’s sister publication People magazine in 2016. “At some point, you just have to say, ‘I love you and I’m here when you decide to do the work. If you don’t, then that’s it.’”

For Urban, the choice was clear. “It felt like an ultimate fork-in-the-road moment in my life,” he reflected on the Armchair Expert podcast with Dax Shepard in September last year. “It was literally like, ‘You either get this right now, or you are never, ever going to get it right. This is your one shot. I was going into the light, finally. It was everything I was looking for and then some.”

Together, the couple, who share daughters Sunday, 13, and Faith, 10, are fiercely protective of the harmonious life

for which they fought so hard. They split their time between a farmhouse in the NSW Southern Highlands, a condo in New York, a home in London, a mansion in Los Angeles and their sprawling home base in Nashville, Tennessee.

After wrapping Nine Perfect Strangers, Kidman, who was also a producer of the miniseries, spent time in Belfast working on the film The Northman. On August 12, she faced backlash after being allowed to skip hotel quarantine in Hong Kong to film the Amazon series Expats.

Her daughters, she admits, struggle with the juggle. “They complain that they have to move a lot as that is sort of their lifestyle, but we keep our family together and that’s the most important thing,” Kidman, who also has two adult children with ex-husband Tom Cruise, son Connor, 26, and daughter Isabella, 28, told The Project. “I tell them, they’re global children. They travel the world. They have friends all over the world.”

Despite their busy schedules, the pair make it a point to never take their love for granted. “I have a very good relationship. It is a very soothing, comforting place for me to go, and he’s a very strong, warm, kind man,” gushed Kidman to Glamour magazine. “That’s an extraordinary thing to have found, particularly later in my life. But it saved me, as well, which is a beautiful thing to have.”

While their first meeting may have been fate, the couple have worked very hard to get to where they are now. “Keith is her soulmate,” an insider tells OK! Magazine. “[Nicole] fully believes that her life with him and the family they build was her ultimate destiny and that he saved her.”

“That’s an extraordinary thing to have found, particularly later in my life”

KIDMAN

The couple have been through some tough times together, but have always managed to keep their relationship on track.

MEANT TO BE “I felt like I was just sitting dormant, and she came along and I came to life,” Urban told Rolling Stone of meeting the actress at the G’Day USA gala in LA back in 2005. “I was born into her, so who I am now was waiting the whole time.”

The actress was able to film Nine Perfect Strangers in Oz, while Urban was also Down Under working on The Voice.

Urban has described Kidman as “an amazing wife and mother” who also doubles as his “best friend”.

Urban’s family moved to Queensland from New Zealand when he was 2. TWO WORLDS The pair celebrated their 15th anniversary with sushi and a visit to the Art Gallery of NSW. “Two Aussies born in the same year but living in different worlds and cities,” reflected Kidman to Marie Claire. “How did that happen? It was meant to be.” Meanwhile, Kidman was born in Hawaii but grew up in Sydney.

The couple travel all over the world with their two daughters in tow … … although Nashville, Tennessee, is where they call home.

“My husband is an artist, so he understands all of it, and he also does not get involved,” Kidman says of her career. “He’s got his own career that he’s completely absorbed in.”

Urban signed up to be a coach on The Voice this year alongside Jessica Mauboy, Guy Sebastian and Rita Ora.