Nicole Kidman said she was warned about marrying Tom Cruise.
The Oscar-winning actress, 59, confessed in an interview with British Vogue that she had conversations about how tying the knot with the action star, 64, could damage her career. The pair met in 1989 while filming Tony Scott’s Days of Thunder, Kidman’s first Hollywood blockbuster; they married one year later and divorced 11 years after that, all while launching into global stardom amid intense tabloid speculation.
“Yeah, I got married so young,” she said. “Suddenly I was 22, 23 years old and I had this huge movie star husband. But it just seemed completely natural. We just fell madly in love, and it was that simple. I remember people saying to me, ‘OK, well this is really going to affect your career.’ I’m like, ‘I don’t care. I’m in love. I want to be married.’ And then I was his ‘wife,’ and they were like, ‘See, we told you.’ I’m like, ‘So what? I wasn’t meant to marry the man I love? Of course I’ll throw my career away. I don’t care.’”
Her marriage with Cruise forced her to grow comfortable in the public eye. Despite her naturally shy demeanor, the press’s endless scrutiny doesn’t faze her, she explained.
“Strangely enough, I feel comfortable,” she said. “Is that weird? That’s so weird. But you have to remember, literally, because of who I married at such a young age, I was thrust into it since I was 22. [My life has been] more time like that than not. My memory of it not being that is quite blurry, because I was really young.”
In addition to Days of Thunder, Kidman and Cruise starred together in two other feature films during their relationship: Far and Away and Eyes Wide Shut. In February 2001, just two years after Eyes Wide Shut hit theaters, they announced their separation. Cruise filed for divorce, citing irreconcilable differences.
Kidman later married musician Keith Urban, 58, in 2006, with whom she had two kids before divorcing in January.
Soon after her split with Cruise, Late Show host David Letterman asked Kidman, a guest on the show, how she was doing. Kidman responded with a joke about Cruise’s 5′7″height.
“Well, I can wear heels now!” she quipped.
