Every good love story starts with a little chaos. Nicole Kidman didn’t just stumble into nearly two decades of country-singer bliss with Keith Urban. Before she got her fairytale ending, she was living through plot twists that could fill an entire HBO miniseries.
Tom Burlinson
Am I the only Tom Burlinson completist? You get Nicole Kidman fronting a New Wave band (and showering more than necessary), Kirk Douglas playing twins, Jennifer Jason Leigh on a first date under a dripping corpse. Burlinson was Oz’s Tom Cruise for a minute there. pic.twitter.com/NzBw7pPmOZ
— Alejandro Adams (@richesofchaos) November 18, 2022
Before Hollywood knew her name, Kidman was just a flame-haired Aussie teenager filming Windrider in 1986. That’s where she met her first serious boyfriend, actor Tom Burlinson. He was her co-star, and by all accounts, the two went steady for about three years.
Burlinson was already best known for The Man from Snowy River, but their relationship didn’t make international waves. It was her first foray into love under a spotlight, albeit a dim one. By the time Kidman was done playing house with Burlinson, her star was already on the rise.
Tom Cruise
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Now, here’s where the wheels came off, and the headlines started printing themselves. Nicole met Tom Cruise on the set of Days of Thunder in 1989, and by 1990, they were married. That pairing was Hollywood catnip, young, beautiful, and mysterious. The Cruise-Kidman era defined tabloid culture in the ’90s.
They adopted two children together, Isabella and Connor, and stayed married for 11 years, weathering Scientology rumors, career shifts, and media obsession. It looked airtight until it wasn’t. In 2001, Cruise filed for divorce. “Irreconcilable differences,” the papers said. In public, Nicole was classy. She told Ladies’ Home Journal she still loved him. Privately? A now-iconic paparazzi photo showed her leaving her lawyer’s office looking like she just got paroled.
And if anyone still thinks the breakup was all tears and closure, Cruise made it worse in 2025 when he casually told The Independent that he recommended her to Kubrick for Eyes Wide Shut, like she owed her most haunting role to his good word. Real classy.
Lenny Kravitz
After the emotional demolition of her marriage, Kidman took a wild left turn and dated Lenny Kravitz between 2003 and 2004. Yes, the dreadlocked rock god. Apparently, it got serious enough that they were engaged, though the public only pieced that together later when Nicole admitted it during an interview about working with Lenny’s daughter Zoë on Big Little Lies.
“I was engaged to her father,” she said casually like that was a normal thing to say during press for a TV show. Kravitz brought edge, but it didn’t last. Maybe there was too much leather, not enough longevity.
Keith Urban
And then came the quiet storm. Nicole met Keith Urban at the G’Day LA event in 2005. She was smitten. He took four months to call her. She thought he wasn’t interested. He thought she was out of his league. Plot twist, she was, but it didn’t matter. He called, they talked nonstop, and a year later, they were married in Sydney.
But even this storybook had its mess. Four months into the marriage, Kidman staged an intervention. Urban was still battling addiction and ended up checking into the Betty Ford Clinic. It could’ve broken them. It didn’t. Urban credits Nicole with saving his life and his career.
“I use the expression ‘I was born into her,'” he said. That’s not Hallmark. That’s a man who knows he was spiraling until she pulled him back.
They now have two daughters, Sunday and Faith, and nearly two decades of marriage under their belt. He still calls her “baby girl” onstage. She still blushes like it’s the first date. Through health scares, family loss, red carpets, and rehab, they stuck it out.
When Nicole lost her father in 2014, she said Keith carried her through it. Not metaphorically. Literally.
And when Urban won an ACM Award in 2025, he turned to the camera and said, “I love you, Nicole Mary.” No pretense. No PR. Just a guy who knows exactly what he’s got.
Nicole Kidman went from low-key Aussie flings to megawatt Hollywood marriages. She dated heartthrobs, a rockstar, and one Scientology poster boy before she found a man who didn’t need the spotlight, just her. It wasn’t perfect, but it was real. And in this business, that’s damn rare.
