Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman

For a while there, it looked like Tom and Nic were going to be one of those rare Hollywood stories with a happy ending. Superstar meets willowy starlet, sparks fly, wedding bells ring, but he ends up filing for divorce and losing his mind instead. Come to think of it, that’s probably about as “happy” as a Hollywood ending can get.
 
The couple met while filming Days of Thunder in 1989. According to reports, Cruise personally chose Kidman to play his love interest after seeing her in Dead Calm. Until then, she hadn’t broken into the American mainstream, but her role as Dr. Claire Lewicki, as well as the romance with Tom that soon followed, catapulted her into a star.
 
Cruise, freshly divorced from Mimi Rogers, wasted no time making Kidman bride number two. They were married on Christmas Eve 1990 in Colorado when she was 23 and he was 28. Soon after their nuptials, Kidman suffered an ectopic pregnancy, something she didn’t reveal until years after they were divorced. Following the failed pregnancy, the couple decided to adopt, and in December 1992, they welcomed Isabella Jane to the family, and a son, Connor Anthony, in January 1995.
 
Although every step of their high-profile romance was documented by the media, for the most part everything went along swimmingly. They worked together again in 1992’s Far and Away and in Stanley Kubrick’s final film Eyes Wide Shut in 1999. They made the obligatory public appearances and walked the red carpet together at awards and one another’s film premieres.
 
Their only major snag was rumors about Cruise’s sexuality. Several times he was forced to consider legal action against publications and people that claimed he was gay. In 1998, the couple won a lawsuit against the British tabloid Daily Express when they published a story claiming that their marriage was staged by his publicists and the Church of Scientology to hide the fact that he is actually gay.
 
Although Tom admitted that he marriage was “not always perfect,” things seemed fine until he suddenly filed for divorce in early 2001 claiming that their busy schedules and careers kept them apart. No one was more shocked than Nicole, who to this day says she doesn’t know his real motivation for the split.
 
The inevitable war of words soon followed. Cruise claimed that their marriage was over in December 2000, before their 10th anniversary, while Kidman said that they had celebrated their anniversary together that year (10 years together meant a larger settlement for Nic according as per their prenuptial agreement). The jilted wife also revealed that she had been pregnant when he announced the split, and she had miscarried soon after. In the end, the two came together and reached a peaceful agreement that was finalized on August 8, 2001.
 
Kidman immediately slunk away from the spotlight and returned to her native Australia to regroup. Cruise, on the other hand, immediately embarked on a very public relationship with his Vanilla Sky co-star Penélope Cruz.
 
They have since gone on to remarry—Kidman to country music star Keith Urban and Cruise to actress Katie Holmes—and they maintain a friendly relationship. The brief segue into messy divorce battle has been replaced by quotes praising one another and admitting there is still love between them.


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