Nicole Kidman is looking back on the moment she chose love over her career, and she has zero regrets about how it played out.
The actress was just 22 or 23 when she married Tom Cruise, instantly becoming one half of Hollywood’s most famous couple. That kind of spotlight comes with pressure, and plenty of people in her orbit tried to warn her about what she was walking into.
Kidman didn’t listen to a word of it.
Nicole Kidman Says She Was Ready to Throw Away Her Career for Tom Cruise
Speaking to British Vogue, Kidman got candid about the whirlwind of her early marriage and the people who tried to talk her out of it.
“I got married so young. Suddenly I was 22, 23 years old and I had this huge movie star husband. But it just seemed completely natural. We just fell madly in love and it was that simple,” she said.
She remembers the warnings clearly.
“I remember people saying to me, ‘OK, well this is really going to affect your career.’ I’m like, ‘I don’t care. I’m in love. I want to be married.'”
Even after the fact, when people pointed to her career taking a hit, she wasn’t shaken.
“And then I was his ‘wife’ and they were like, ‘See, we told you.’ I’m like, ‘So what? I wasn’t meant to marry the man I love? Of course I’ll throw my career away. I don’t care.'”
It’s a rare bit of honesty from someone who has spent decades in the public eye being picked apart for exactly this kind of decision. Kidman and Cruise were married from 1990 to 2001, and their split has been dissected in tabloids for years. But this quote makes clear that whatever came after, she doesn’t view the marriage itself as a mistake or a career misstep to be undone.
Kidman’s career obviously didn’t end up going anywhere. She’s built one of the most respected filmographies in Hollywood, with an Oscar and a string of acclaimed roles that came both during and after her marriage to Cruise. But hearing her frame that early chapter of her life in her own words, without any hedging or regret, adds real depth to how fans understand her journey.