Nicole Kidman Talks Love, Fame With "Starstruck" Jennifer Aniston

Aniston takes on interviewer duties in the new issue of Harper's Bazaar, chatting to her pal and costar about hubby Keith Urban and daughter Sunday Rose

By Gina Serpe Jan 05, 2011 4:47 PMTags
Nicole KidmanHarpers Bazaar

Nicole Kidman and Jennifer Aniston are two powerful, talent-oozing, iconically fashionable female stars. So what do they talk about when it comes time to sit down together and record their conversation for posterity?

Men. Obviously.

OK, not just men. (More like one man in particular.) And for someone as sweetly in love with her husband as Nicole seems to be, we're surprised she's able to talk about anything else, quite frankly.

Aniston had the task of interviewing her pal and Just Go With It costar in Harper's Bazaar's latest issue, and the conversation between the friends, who met in 2005 through their shared agent, ran the gamut from recollecting their first meeting, to their mutual admiration, to personal and professional highs and lows, to, wouldn't you know it, love.

"I was completely starstruck," Aniston wrote in the preamble to the interview of her first meeting, at a Golden Globes party, with Kidman. "I loved her immediately."

Which is something she and Keith Urban have in common.

"When you two first met, Keith said he saw you walk into a room and you just floated," Jen said. "Yes, I watched him on Oprah!"

"I remember thinking, 'Oh my God, if you ever gave me a man like that, I promise I would be completely devoted for the rest of my life.' Something that wild," Kidman said. "I remember praying after I met him that I'd meet somebody, if not him, like him."

It was a connection Nicole said she'd been after her whole life, and the fact that Keith lived in Nashville was the icing on the cake.

"It was perfect timing, because I had nowhere to live. I was living out of suitcases when I met Keith. I suppose in the back of my mind I was waiting to meet somebody. And I wanted it to be if that person didn't live in New York or Los Angeles, I would be able to move.

"You know how you dream as a girl...I'm one of those people. I would meet a guy, then I would imagine myself married and with kids within the first hour," she laughed. "But it worked out."

Kidman said that meeting Urban also came after one of the loneliest times in her life—which just so happened to also be one of her most professionally successful.

"It's strange how life gives you the best and the worst," she said of the time around 2003, just after she'd won her Best Actress Oscar for The Hours. "I was probably at my least happy when I won it. And I was single. It was a strange time."

As for the other loves of her life, her children, Nicole said that her older kids, Connor and Isabella, sadly don't really pay her all that many visits.

"They're not crazy about Nashville. They're so grown up now. I mean, they're adults."

As for Sunday Rose, Kidman said that her motherhood style has changed.

"I think I have more patience now but less physical energy. It's a trade-off. In your 20s, you're bounding around, they're attached at your hip, and you can just go and do anything. But I'm much more of a homebody now. My roots are deeper."

The topic of fame was also touched on, and both women agreed that it was the worst part of being an actor. Particularly, a world-famous one.

"I suppose it's the same when you're at school and you get a taste of girls who are being mean," Nicole said. "It's the same thing, just a bigger level."

And while Aniston was conducting the interview, the compliments weren't all one-sided, as Kidman took time out to deliver this very important message: "You are a freak of nature. You have the best body I've ever seen. And I'm a heterosexual girl. You look good morning, noon, and night."

That should go some distance toward redressing that mean-girl fame balance.

However, it wasn't long before the conversation turned back to love.

Nicole said that she would tell her 20-year-old self "that you're going to meet the love of your life. My whole thing, my whole thrust in life, was hoping I would.

"I like to ask people if they would rather have a great love that lasts a lifetime or an amazing career where you go down in history. Some people do answer that they want an extraordinary career."

"I know what I would choose," Aniston said. "That's a no-brainer. I would choose the love of my life."

Mark down this momentous occasion, people—it's the moment a thousand new lonely Jen magazine covers are inevitably being born.