Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman seemed like a match made in heaven. How did it all go so wrong?
Days of Thunder, nights of worry...
Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman seemed like a match made in heaven.
How did it all go so wrong?
In 1989, Nicole Kidman was an up-and-coming 22-year-old who just scored her big break
with the thriller Dead Calm.
Meanwhile, Tom Cruise was a 27-year-old seasoned A-lister, hot off the success of Oliver Stone's
anti-war film Born on the Fourth of July.
Cruise saw Kidman in her breakthrough role and was intent on meeting her.
According to Vanity Fair, the Aussie actor was in the midst of a press junket in Tokyo
when she got a call from the superstar's team.
Kidman told Vanity Fair,
"I thought, Wow!
This is America!
Tom Cruise wants to meet me."
She subsequently auditioned for a role alongside Cruise in Days of Thunder.
Kidman never thought she'd get married, largely due to the influence of her ardent feminist mother.
But when she set eyes on Cruise during her audition, she was smitten.
Speaking about that fateful first encounter, Kidman told People,
"I remember being so nervous and seeing Tom Cruise drive up in a Porsche
He got out of the car and walked through and I was like, 'Ah.'
My jaw dropped."
Cruise fell head over heels for his co-star.
For Kidman, the feeling was mutual.
But there was a problem: Cruise was still married to his first wife, fellow actor Mimi Rogers.
The couple divorced the following year and thus began a Hollywood romance for the ages.
At the tender age of 23, Nicole Kidman tied the knot with Tom Cruise, then 28.
The couple celebrated their nuptials in a cozy ceremony under the Colorado sun.
On reflection, Kidman believes that she was far too youthful to devote herself to one person.
The actress told Today,
"I was so young when I got married.
I look back now and I'm like, 'What?'"
But settling down at a young age wasn't all bad.
Speaking with the BBC in 1998, Kidman acknowledged that she was lucky to have found such a profound
and powerful love at such a young age.
As she later told the Evening Standard,
"I was a baby when I married Tom, but I don't regret any of it."