real life

Nicole Kidman was "loneliest" when clutching her Oscar after divorce from Tom Cruise.

Even Hollywood megastars get the blues.

Everyone remembers that paparazzi picture of Nicole Kidman, 48, jumping in the air as she left her lawyer’s office, having signed the divorce papers to finalise her split with Tom Cruise.

She looked ecstatic to be escaping what had probably become a Scientology nightmare, and her career really took off after that, with Moulin Rouge, The Others, and The Hours all coming out post-split, and all being critically acclaimed.

She won the Best Actress Oscar (as the first Aussie girl ever) for playing Virginia Woolf in The Hours in 2002, but said that rather than elation, she felt more lonely than ever after her triumph.

Kidman at the Women in the World Summit.

At the Women in the World Summit at Cadogan Hall in London last Friday, Kidman spoke about coping after her divorce from Cruise.

“I embraced my own life, which took a number of years… That culminated in winning an Oscar and that caused an epiphany — ‘This is not the answer’. I was sitting in the Beverly Hills Hotel with a gold statue and I was the loneliest I’d ever been. I was jolted out of the idea that ‘this is going to heal me’,” she said.

Kidman was asked if the difficult period she went through during her divorce actually helped her creatively.

“To be completely honest, I was running away from my life at that time. I wasn’t able to handle the reality of my life.

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“As an actor, the wonderful thing is you can become something else for a time. Out of that came work that was applauded so that was an interesting thing for me.”

Watch Kidman discussing that period of her life and the Women in the World Summit… Post continues after video.

Kidman realised, after experiencing such a lack of fulfillment at achieving acting accolades, that she wanted a partner to share her life with, and she wanted more children.

Enter Keith Urban.

Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban.

“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.

“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.”

Kidman has four kids — Isabella, 22, and Connor, 20, with Tom Cruise, and Sunday, 7, and Faith, 4. Isabella recently got married in London, but neither parent was invited.