They tried to show themselves as one of the most perfect couples in the world of cinema, but their marriage was always under suspicion and with Scientology as a backdrop.
They formed one of the most revered couples in Hollywood and also one of the most enigmatic. Twenty years ago now, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman announced their separation, a story surrounded by great secrecy in which Scientology played an important role. The actors broke up and the two children they adopted, Isabella and Connor, chose to stay with their father. Despite the two decades that have elapsed, the mystery around their relationship continues.
The actors met on the set of Tony Scott's Days of Thunder. They were married on December 24, 1990, with Dustin Hoffman as a witness, in a chapel in Telluride, Colorado, where the couple owned a cabin. It is never known if she became a follower during those years of Scientology, where he is a prominent member. During the 11 years they were together, they walked around the red carpets around the world showing their cloying love with incessant kisses and caresses. They embodied what seemed like a perfect couple until everything broke. The official version is that their professional careers separated them. Two years earlier, Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise reunited on screen for a landmark film, the master Kubrick's latest work, Eyes Wide Shut, a grueling 400-day shoot that marked the end of their love story. When Kubrick decided to film Eyes Wide Shut he looked for a pair of actors, if possible married. He thought of Kim Basinger and Alec Baldwin but ultimately settled on Cruise and Kidman.
For a decade the actors lavished themselves on flattery. “Our marriage is nine years old now [in 1999] and we have passed the date of the fateful first seven years. When you are also loved for your flaws, you are truly safe. I don't know what I would do without Tom. We are so close that we each finish each other's sentences. We understand each other without speaking“Kidman revealed. "When I read Jerry Maguire's script I cried over the last line, which was, 'You complete me.' It's exactly how I feel about Nic," Cruise added.
Despite these statements, some US media did not stop insinuating that their marriage was just a facade to hide Cruise's alleged homose- and boost Kidman's career. The couple, fed up with those comments, went to court, where they won several lawsuits. Cruise was at that time very attacked by his ex-wife, also an actress Mimi Rogers, who insinuated that he was not very interested in s-x. The adoption by the Kidman-Cruise couple of a girl, Isabella, and later a boy, Connor, did not help to kill the advances.
His life facing the outside was idyllic. They both scheduled their movies according to filming dates and locations so as not to be away from each other for more than two weeks. Mission: Impossible 2 was shot, for example, in Australia because Nicole Kidman was supposed to work there too. Otherwise, Tom Cruise would get on his private plane to meet his wife.
But they went from love to separation overnight. She had to sign a confidentiality agreement. In 2001, the actress told host David Letterman about her divorce: "Well, now I can wear heels." It was not until 2012 that he spoke about something else. It was in DuJour Magazine. “I fell madly, passionately in love. She would have gone to the ends of the earth for him, she explained. She also remarked that, due to media pressure in general, and paparazzi harassment in particular, they were "in a bubble": "Just the two of us. We became very dependent on each other.” The break, as she confessed, "was a shock." “It took me a long time to recover,” he recounted.
In a revealing interview that she gave almost three years ago to Tatler magazine, the actress revealed for the first time the reasons why she adopted Isabella and Connor together with Cruise. In 1990, shortly after the wedding, she suffered a first miscarriage, and the nightmare repeated itself in 2001 during the divorce proceedings. “Loss due to miscarriage is not talked about enough. It is an immense pain for many women, ”she recounted. Kidman is now the mother of two daughters with singer Keith Urban. Cruise married actress Katie Holmes and divorced; with her, he had a daughter. Now no relationship is known to him.
