Celebrity - News
Inside Nicole Kidman And Tom Cruise's Relationship
By ANTONIA GEORGIOU
love at first jaw-drop
Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman first met in 1989 when the 22-year-old actress auditioned for a role alongside the seasoned A-lister in “Days of Thunder,” and Kidman told the Los Angeles Times that “[her] jaw dropped” the first time she saw Cruise in person. Cruise divorced his wife, fellow actor Mimi Rogers, the following year and began his relationship with Kidman.
she married young
The couple married when Kidman was 23 and Cruise was 28, and on reflection, Kidman suggested that the young female celebs of today have more agency than women in the ‘90s: “Look at Taylor Swift […] She’s 26. I had two kids by the time I was 27 and I’d been married four years.” She told GQ that she “became famous very young […] because I was the wife of somebody.”
Their steamy relationship
The couple’s flagrant PDA may look tame by today’s standards, but it caused a stir at the time. Cruise told Entertainment Weekly that his “first reaction to meeting Nic was pure lust,” and in 2009 Kidman told GQ, “I’ve explored strange sexual fetish stuff;” the it-couple were madly in love and wanted the entire world to know it.
she helped him open up
In a 1992 interview, Cruise revealed he was pretty somber before he met Kidman, but she was able to bring him out of his shell: “until I met Nicole, I always put my career ahead of everything […] It’s like a whole new life opened up.” The couple’s favorite hobbies included skydiving and playing pool, which they did frequently while living in London.
They couldn’t conceive
Kidman revealed to Marie Claire that the couple struggled to conceive, and she experienced an ectopic pregnancy at the start of their marriage followed by a miscarriage years later, which was “incredibly traumatic” for her. It was unlikely they would be able to conceive, but after coming to terms with the painful reality, they decided to adopt two children.