Nicole Kidman has opened up about marrying Tom Cruise at a young age and how the relationship shaped her early years in Hollywood.
During an interview with British Vogue, the Big Little Lies star recalled being thrust into an unfamiliar world after becoming the wife of one of the industry’s biggest actors at just 22.
“You have to remember literally, because of who I married at such a young age, I was thrust into it since I was 22,” Kidman said. “[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.”
Although the marriage brought intense public attention, Kidman said the decision felt completely natural at the time because she and Cruise were deeply in love.
“Suddenly I was 22, 23 years old and I had this huge movie star husband,” she recalled. “But it just seemed completely natural. We just fell madly in love and it was that simple.”
The Oscar-winning actress also remembered being warned that marrying so young could harm her career.
“I remember people saying to me, ‘OK, well this is really going to affect your career,’” she said.
Kidman, however, was willing to accept that possibility.
“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,’” she continued. “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.’”
The Moulin Rouge! actress married Cruise in December 1990. The couple remained together for more than a decade before separating in 2001.
Kidman has previously explained why she rarely talks about their marriage. Speaking to New York Magazine in 2018, she said revisiting the relationship felt disrespectful to her marriage to Keith Urban.
“Being married to Tom Cruise at 22 is something I’m always reluctant to talk about, because I’m married now to the man who is my great love, and it almost feels disrespectful,” she said.
Despite marrying for love, Kidman acknowledged that being connected to such a powerful Hollywood figure also provided her with protection.
“I got married very young, but it definitely wasn’t power for me. It was protection,” she explained. “I married for love, but being married to an extremely powerful man kept me from being sexually harassed.”
Kidman said she continued to work during the marriage but remained sheltered from many of the pressures surrounding her.
“I would work, but I was still very much cocooned,” she said. “So when I came out of it at 32, 33, it’s almost like I had to grow up.”
