A brief statement issued Monday by their publicist, Pat Kingsley, blames the split on "divergent careers which constantly kept them apart." The jet-setting couple have homes in Los Angeles, New York, Colorado and Australia (where Kidman has her roots) and, despite a pledge to never spend more than two weeks apart, they have increasingly spent less time together over the past few years.
Cruise and Kidman "stressed their great respect for each other, both personally and professionally," the statement reads. However, "they concluded that an amicable separation seemed best for both of them at this time." There's no immediate word on whether the two plan to divorce.
* Check out E! Online's Tom Cruise retrospective
* Tom and Nicole in happier times, together in the Oscar 2000 photo gallery
* Just the facts: Tom and Nicole's bios
Theirs was a match made in Hollywood, literally. They met on the set of the 1990 car racing flick Days of Thunder and, despite their mismatched frames (she's 5-foot-10, he's 5-7), they immediately hit it off. That Christmas Eve, they wed in Telluride, Colorado. It was the second trip down the aisle for Cruise, who was previously hitched to actress Mimi Rogers (they divorced in 1990, just months before he married Kidman), and the first for Kidman.
Along the way they tried juggling their careers--his as a reigning A-lister, hers as an up-and-coming starlet--and family. They adopted two children, Isabella Jane, 8, and Conor Anthony, 6, and managed to costar as lovers in two other films, Ron Howard's (widely panned) epic romance Far and Away (1992), and Stanley Kubrick's (widely panned) final opus, Eyes Wide Shut (1999).
Of course, tabloids and gossips proclaimed the couple's romance a bit too fictional, with stories of their impending split popping up nearly every year of their decade-long marriage. The couple frequently fired back--filing lawsuits against such publications as the Star, London's Sunday Express and the German magazine Bunte over inaccurate accounts of their love life.
In a 1998 interview with Newsweek, Kidman, whose own career has taken off in recent years, said, "I can't say what our journey is going to be. But it will be a hell of a journey. And I see myself as an old woman and he's an old man and we're married. I do see that."
Cruise, 38, most recently appeared in the smash Mission: Impossible 2 and is currently in Los Angeles filming Cameron Crowe's Vanilla Sky. He's slated to shoot Minority Report with Steven Spielberg this spring. Kidman, 33, is currently recuperating from a knee injury she suffered while filming the recently wrapped musical Moulin Rouge, which was filmed Down Under.
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