Wife who tired of Cruise control

Daily Mail (London)/February 7, 2001
By Daniel Jeffreys

The fairy tale is over, if that is what it really was. Hollywood pretended to be shocked but insiders say Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman's marriage has been heading for disaster for at least 18 months. Ever since they finished filming the biggest critical bomb of their careers, Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, their relationship has been struggling.

According to friends, they broke up because Kidman has changed. They say she is no longer prepared to pretend that all is well in a relationship dogged by rumours of Cruise's ambivalent sexuality and his apparent inability to father a child of his own.

How different it was just two years ago. Then Kidman was adamant her marriage would mirror that of her Australian parents, who have been together for 38 years.

'My parents are great friends and still make each other really laugh. My mum was the same age as me when she married,' Kidman told an interviewer last year. 'I think we can last as long as my Mum and Dad. I'd be devastated if we didn't.' But there are signs she is far from devastated now it has happened.

Hollywood insiders say the Australian star has been enjoying the attentions of other men, including George Clooney.

If Kidman has walked out on her marriage for for another man, it will not be the first time. She was in a relationship with an Australian TV star when she met Cruise on the set of his movie Days of Thunder in 1989.

Back then Kidman spoke of Cruise as the man made for her in heaven. He used the same kind of language to describe her, claiming he fell in lust at first sight, with love arriving soon after.

It was a fortunate meeting for Cruise, on the rebound from his first marriage to actress Mimi Rogers, six years his senior. He decided to end their rocky two-year union when he spotted the younger Kidman, then barely known outside Australia. 'I'm with Nicole now,' he told Rogers, before sending his lawyers to craft a divorce deal. Rogers later told friends she had already tired of Cruise.

Foreshadowing problems that would soon surface as rumours in the Cruise-Kidman marriage, she claimed their sexual relationship had waned. 'Tom was seriously thinking of becoming a monk,' she said. 'He thought he had to become celibate.' The first date between Cruise and Kidman was a far cry from the celebrity lifestyle they would soon embrace. He simply took her to see a movie.

Kidman later claimed that the early days of their relationship were almost entirely about sex, as if Cruise's attempts to embrace celibacy had been swept away. 'The moment I laid eyes on Tom I just thought he was the sexiest man I'd ever seen in my life,' she told an Australian magazine. 'I was sort of like, "Whoa, this is dangerous!" I've obviously had a lot of relationships before that were lustful and that didn't work out. Then I think you're very lucky if that evolves into something a lot deeper. And, for us, that's what occurred.'

A whirlwind courtship followed. Cruise and Kidman were married in a Christmas Eve ceremony in Telluride, Colorado in 1990. With her younger sister, Antonia, at her side as bridesmaid, 5ft10in Kidman peered through her veil at 5ft7in Cruise to exchange the vows they had written themselves.

'Both Tom and Nicole, as well as their families, had tears in their eyes,' one guest recalled.

Soon there were tears of a different sort. The couple had announced they wanted to start a family but no children arrived. They had frequently denied they had fertility problems and could not conceive. Last year Cruise, an aggressive litigant, successfully sued two publications which claimed he was barren.

Yet his former wife Mimi Rogers has always fuelled this theory. She claimed their inability to have children was a factor in their own divorce, a suggestion that was given some validity when she got pregnant soon after her marriage ended.

Before they married, Cruise had insisted on Kidman having a fertility test. Some saw that move as an attempt to divert attention from any problems he might have of his own.

Whatever the truth, the couple's first child Isabella, came to them through adoption in 1993. Cruise found her through Scientology, the religion he joined in 1990, just before his marriage. He is thought to give the church about £1.3million a year.

He discovered an impoverished member of the church was pregnant and wanted to give up the child. Isabella's natural mother was allegedly persuaded by Cruise and other church members to follow strict Scientology rituals during her pregnancy, which included maintaining absolute silence during the birth.

Kidman became a Scientologist soon after the couple's marriage. But friends believe her different approach to the church is also a factor in the break-up. 'Tom has always been far more into Scientology than Nicole,' said Naomi Watts, an actress friend of Kidman's.

'He is somewhat of a fanatic, Nicole never wanted to go down that road.' Kidman admitted three years ago that she was only a fringe member of the church. 'I believe in a bit of Scientology, Catholicism, Judaism and the Eastern philosophies. I take a bit of each. I'm a hybrid,' she said.

'I would never have married Tom if he had insisted I become an out-and-out Scientologist. 'That would've been forcing me to do something I didn't want to do. He and I allow ourselves to be who we are.' Friends of Cruise say that attitude did not sit well with Scientology leaders, who demand absolute dedication. 'Tom takes his religion very seriously,' said a producer who worked with Cruise on Mission: Impossible.

'It would not have been easy for him to see Nicole treat Scientology like just one more dish in a religious smorgasbord.' That is just what Kidman discovered when she was at a party with Cruise and Mel Gibson. The Australian actor began to tease Cruise about his religion. 'Tom lost his cool completely, ' said an actor who was present. 'Unfortunately, Mel couldn't stop laughing at his own joke and this made it worse.'

Despite any simmering private differences, by the mid-1990s, the couple had established themselves as Hollywood royalty. They revelled in their fortune, had homes on three continents and their own Lear jet.

Both had seen their careers go into top gear. To Die For made Kidman one of Hollywood's most sought after actresses and the first Mission: Impossible established Cruise as Hollywood's best paid leading man with a salary of over £20million. Yet cracks were already appearing. Kidman, said to have a headstrong sense of her own star power, evidently began to resent playing second fiddle to her more famous husband.

'It was very tough for me for those years just to be seen as Mrs Tom Cruise,' she told Vanity Fair in 1996. 'Don't get me wrong, I don't think being married to somebody that you are in love with is a burden, but being judged in a particular way, that is something I don't like. I was just the wife.' A year later she was still feeling this kind of resentment.

'In an industry where everything is based on how much money your last movie made, I'd be at a party and the whole conversation would be directed at Tom,' she told Esquire. 'It's always been Tom-and-Nicole. Like one word.'

In 1995 the couple adopted a son, Connor. This again raised questions about their fertility and rumours spread that Cruise might be gay. They have always denied such suggestions but as the rumors intensified they became increasingly paranoid about privacy.

When Cruise began making all employees, including maids and gardeners, sign secrecy agreements which were tight enough to satisfy the CIA, Hollywood began to suspect the couple had something to hide. 'In my experience you only do that if something is wrong,' said an insider. 'I think they might have been hiding a difficult truth, that Nicole was finding Tom could not keep up with her, in sex and anything else you might care to mention.'

By 1998 there were signs that the couple were beginning to go their separate ways. Kidman likes to read and go to plays, when she is not heading for the latest fashionable night club. Cruise likes to skydive, fly antique planes and stay home with his children. 'However much they may have loved each other, the mix began to look wrong,' said a Hollywood agent and friend.

'I think their decision to make Eyes Wide Shut together was playing with fire. 'It was a very bizarre film, about jealousy and sexual obsession and I think it spilled over into their real lives.' Kidman's steadily rising profile may also have played a part.

After winning acclaim on the London stage with her performance in The Blue Room, she no longer needed the Cruise name to establish her credentials as a heavy hitter. Her last few roles, which have pushed a sexier image, have won her more high profile projects for 2001 than her husband. Her ambitions are obviously far from fulfilled.

'Okay, I've got two kids, and I've got a husband. But I still want to work,' she said recently. 'I still have this desire to explore other people. And that's what acting is - exploring other people, the human mind.'