A secret ill-fated engagement, a traumatic miscarriage, a brand-spankin'-new rehab-bound husband—on and offscreen, Nicole Kidman knows from drama.
The typically reticent, at least in matters of privacy, actress has opened up to Vanity Fair on the turns in her life that have both dominated the headlines and miraculously managed to keep out of them—until now.
The 40-year-old actress, who has two adopted children with ex-hubby Tom Cruise and who has made no secret of her desire to have more with new hubby Keith Urban, reveals in the magazine's October issue that she suffered not one but two miscarriages during her relationship with Cruise and that her early loss paved the way for the adoption of her two children, Isabella, 14, and Connor, 12.
"From the minute Tom and I were married, I wanted to have babies," Kidman, who was 22 when she met the movie star, tells the magazine. "And we lost a baby early on, so that was really very traumatic. And that's when we would adopt Bella.
"My mother has an adopted sister, so it's been a part of our family, and I knew it would probably play out somewhere in mine. I didn't think it would happen so early, but it did."
While Kidman opted not to reveal the circumstances surrounding either the miscarriage or the adoption of her daughter, followed just two years later by the adoption of her son, she does hint that there were extenuating circumstances that would, for now, remain untold.
"There's a complicated background to that, given that I never speak much about many things. One day, maybe that story will be told."
While the Oscar-winning actress has previously acknowledged she suffered a miscarriage in early 2001, when she and Cruise filed for divorce, Kidman rarely speaks about her marriage to Cruise. However, she did reveal that she was warned by her agents prior to tying the knot with the world's most enduringly famous movie star that by becoming Mrs. Cruise, she would essentially be killing her career.
"I was appalled," she says in the article. "I was like, 'Hello? I'm in love, and I don't care if it's shooting myself in the foot, I'd much rather be married and have a family.
"I just saw a guy who rides around on a motorbike and happens to be the biggest movie star in the world. But I was in love with him, which is why I think we lasted 11 and a half years together. I have no regrets in that relationship."
Ditto her current marriage.
Despite a rocky start, with Urban checking into the Betty Ford Clinic just four months after tying the knot with Kidman last year, she says they have come out of the experience much stronger.
"I'm more than willing to walk it with him," she says of her support of Urban's recovery. "We were in a very, very, very bad, painful place and have managed to step through it, and I hope that gives some people some hope who may be in the same place. And that's enough said. Anything else is overindulgent and unnecessary right now."
Kidman, who says she and Urban never spend more than 13 days apart and that they "start to hurt after seven days," says she and her Grammy-winning hubby were a perfect match from the moment they met, though not for the fairy-tale reasons.
"I think we were two lonely people. I would probably say that two very lonely people managed to meet at a time when they could open themselves to each other."
Kidman said her feelings of loneliness were exacerbated after winning the 2003 Best Actress Oscar for The Hours.
"It felt big. It felt lonely and big. You're in a hotel, and you're like, okay well, I'm sitting in this big suite with an Oscar, and I still don't have a life. What is wrong with me? It hit home that I needed to get a life. Who do I jump on the bed with, and celebrate with, and order pancakes with?"
Still, Kidman wasn't lonely for long, though Urban wasn't the first to attempt to fill the void.
"I get engaged, and I get married—that's my thing," she said, revealing to the magazine that she was briefly engaged in the time between her split from Cruise and her coupling with Urban.
While Kidman opts not to identify her fleetingly betrothed better half, the prime candidates being billionaire Steve Bing and Lenny Kravitz, the two men she was romantically involved with during that time, she simply said, "It just wasn't right. I wasn't ready. We weren't ready."
There is one thing she's more than ready for now, however: more kids.
"I'm yearning to have one," she says of her and Urban's babymaking plans. "I think I would be very sad if I wasn't able to have a baby. Keith knows I want one, and he has been getting there slowly."