Nicole Kidman: My Divorce From Tom Cruise Overshadowed My Oscar Moment

Winning an Academy Award "can show you the emptiness of your own life, which is kind of what it showed me," the actress tells Harper's Bazaar

By Alyssa Toomey Nov 19, 2013 9:22 PMTags
Nicole Kidman, Harper's Bazaar James White/Harper's Bazaar

Winning an Oscar should be the highlight of any actor's career, but according to Nicole Kidman her special moment was overshadowed by the pain she felt following from her divorce from Tom Cruise.

The 46-year-old beauty won her first Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in The Hours in 2003, although she tells Australia's Harper Bazaar in the December 2013 issue that winning the coveted honor "can show you the emptiness of your own life, which is kind of what it showed me."

Photographed by James White and looking gorgeous on the cover in a lacy ivory-colored gown with her hair swept up in a tight bun, the A-lister holds a crystal ball with a miniature version of herself inside, gazing at the camera with jet-black eyeliner while looking elegant as always.

But despite her picture-perfect exterior, Kidman insists she has endured her fair share of hardships.

James White/Harper's Bazaar

"I was having professional success and my personal life was struggling," The Paperboy star recalls. 

The Rabbit Hole actress and the Oblivion star pulled the plug on their 11-year marriage in 2001, 12 years after meeting on the set of Days of Thunder. The former couple has two adopted children together, Bella, 21, and Conor, 18.

"I was totally smitten—I fell madly, passionately in love," Kidman previously told DuJour magazine of her romance with the movie star in Nov. 2012. "I was reeling with Tom. I would have gone to the ends of the earth for him."

James White/Harper's Bazaar

But when the couple called it quits, the red-headed beauty found life tough without Tom.

"It took me a very long time to heal," she told DuJour. "It was a shock to the system."

Despite her past struggles, the demise of Kidman's marriage to Cruise paved the way for the stunning starlet to meet her current hubby Keith Urban, whom she recently called her "great love."

"With no disrespect to what I had with Tom, I've met my great love now," she said in the December issue of Vanity Fair. And I really did not know if that was going to happen. I wanted it, but I didn't want it for a while, because I didn't want to jump from one relationship to another. I had a lot of time alone, which was really, really good, because I was a child, really, when I got married [to Cruise]. And I needed to grow up."