Nicole Kidman Talks Post-Oscar Struggles: ‘I Was The Loneliest I’d Ever Been’

Nicole Kidman was on top of Hollywood’s A-list after winning an Oscar in 2003, but the superstar says it was the “loneliest” time of her life.

The Australian stunner had split from Tom Cruise two years before nabbing Best Actress honors for her role as Virginia Woolf in “The Hours, and opened up at the Women In the World summit in London on Friday about the personal struggles she faced following the high-profile divorce.

“To be completely honest, I was running from my life at that time. I wasn’t able to handle the reality of my life,” the 48-year-old said. “As an actor, you have this wonderful thing where you can go and get lost in somebody else’s life and become somebody else for a period of time. And when I look back on it, I really see that. Out of that came work that sort of was applauded and so that was an interesting thing for me.”

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Nicole said that becoming immersed in her characters helped her stay focused in the short-term, but it was the long-term lesson that proved the most profound.

“I embraced my own life and I got myself together, which took a number of years. And during that time, I worked a lot. The work was a great place for me to exist,” she began. “Then that culminated in winning an Oscar and that caused an epiphany, which was, ‘this is actually not the answer.'”

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The “Moulin Rouge” star continued, saying that she was “jolted” into an aha moment when she realized her emotional state after accepting the award didn’t match her glamorous surroundings.

“Holding this gold statue, I was sitting in the Beverly Hills Hotel and it was all extraordinary,” she said, “and I was the loneliest I’d ever been.”

Nicole went on to share how she did eventually find fulfillment with country star Keith Urban, whom she married in 2006.

“I did a lot of reading and a lot of talking, I managed through about five or six years and then I stumbled into Keith,” she said of meeting the fellow Aussie.

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“We didn’t know each other very well when we got married,” she said. “And we navigated things but I wanted that and I wanted a partner.”

The couple has two daughters, Sunday, 7, and Faith, 4, but Nicole joked that Keith initially balked at her desire to start a family right away.

“I wanted to have a baby the minute we met and he was like, ‘No,'” she said. “And I got lucky. I got to have a child when I was 41. I then got to have a surrogate who was an incredible woman in our life. I have two adopted children. I’m a mother that’s experienced motherhood through many different avenues.”

— Erin Biglow

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