Nicole Kidman reveals the REAL secret to her marriage

In an exclusive in-depth interview, Nicole Kidman makes a surprising admission about the texting habits of her and husband Keith Urban, why their sleeping positions are a “serious business”, and responds to the viral reaction to THAT infamous miniskirt cover.

Nicole Kidman will appear in Paramount+ new series "Special Ops: Lioness". Picture: Getty

In an exclusive in-depth and wide-ranging interview, Nicole Kidman sits down

with the Stellar podcast Something To Talk About to discuss how her illustrious film and television career has not only nourished her ambition, but also given

her the ability to foster important changes for other women. Plus, the actor

opens up about life at home with husband and “favourite person” Keith Urban, prioritising time with their two young daughters and the importance of resilience: “It’s lovely to know there’s this fire within that doesn’t just get extinguished”

On family life with her husband, country music star Keith Urban, and their two daughters Sunday Rose, 15 (who celebrated her birthday earlier this month), and Faith Margaret, 12: “We just had a whole bunch of 14- and 15-year-olds with us, which is really fun. I love it. I love being around their energy and their ideas. And then I have a 12-year-old as well. So there’s a lot of great energy in our house and really different ideas that bounce around from all walks of life. My sister has six children as well, so we have a lot of that. [Laughs] A lot of ages and a lot of perspectives on the world. Everyone has their voice, and I think it keeps you engaged in what’s happening in the world.”

On whether their daughters offer their famous parents any feedback on their respective career decisions: “Kind of, but they’re far more interested in their own lives. We don’t feature heavily. If anything, we’re in the background and it’s more just them, which is what we want the focus to be. But we have sit-down meals every night. And we have holidays together. We bring friends. We spend an enormous amount of time together. And we’re very, very close. So I think a lot of the periphery – which is our jobs and all of those things – yes, they’ve grown up with it, but they’re definitely not impressed by it. Probably the opposite.”

Nicole Kidman on the cover of this weekend’s Stellar.

On her relationship with Australia, where she was raised and first found fame as an actor, and where her mother Janelle, 83, and sister, journalist turned family lawyer Antonia Kidman, are based: “It’s so deep in me; my roots are so deeply embedded in being Australian. A lot of the way in which I’m formed is just Australian. I don’t even know how you explain that. Maybe that’s resilience. You know, there’s just a sense of ‘get on with it’ that I’ve had since I was little, because that’s what you do in Australia. I’m very, very close to my sister, her family and her children. And they’re all living there so that’s my base. And as much as my daughters were born in Nashville, because of when we came back and lived [in Australia] for so long during Covid, that was their Australia. They have friends there now who will be friends for life. They’ve been to school, they’ve worn the school uniform. They’ve got all those parts of them that make you a hybrid. And I see it in them – they’ve got that, sort of, I call it Aussie swagger. I love that Aussie swagger. I married a guy with Aussie swagger!”

Listen to the full interview with Nicole Kidman on Something To Talk About here:

Her answer when asked what is the secret to her happy marriage of 17 years to Urban: “Favourite person. And prioritising us, going ‘What’s going to benefit us? Will this decision that I make contribute to us?’ That’s just the way we operate. I was talking to friends last night, asking ‘How do you sleep in your bed?’ Someone has to write a book about it, because I’m telling you, everybody is different. That’s probably the same for relationships.

Nicole Kidman describes husband Keith Urban as her “favourite person”. Picture: AFP

What makes people vibe and be able to be together year after year? No-one has the secret. It’s so idiosyncratic. It’s pairing, it’s luck, there’s chemistry, of course, and then there’s just being able to flow together. But I wouldn’t reveal how we sleep in the bed... It’s so not glamorous. It’s very serious business, is all I’ll say. And we never text each other, can you believe that? We started out that way – I was like, ‘If you want to get a hold of me, call me.’ I wasn’t really a texter. I think he tried texting me a few times and I never texted back. Then it was like, this is quite nice. If you really want to get a hold of me, you have to call me. Everyone else we text with. That’s just the one thing we don’t do.”

On Special Ops: Lioness, the new spy thriller series that features Kidman in a supporting role and for which she also serves as an executive producer through her company Blossom Films: “[Creator] Taylor Sheridan is excellent at action. He just knows how – he’s a writer [and] the showrunner. He writes everything, which is amazing. You just go, ‘What?’ He wrote [the 2015 action thriller] Sicario, which is one of my favourite movies with a lead female, [played by] Emily Blunt. So the idea of teaming up with him was really interesting. And this show is [about] the Lioness Program – which is women who are in the military, in the CIA, working internationally – and what that life is like. I play the woman who runs the program. [It’s a] support [character], and that was something that I was like, ‘I’ve never done that before. I’d like to try that’ – and particularly to be able to deliver so much [of Taylor’s] brilliant dialogue. He gave me some killer monologues towards the end of the series, which were just so fun to do. And I’m doing them opposite Morgan Freeman – one of the greats – and Zoe Saldaña, who I love, and has become a very close friend. And then you have the Lioness team, who are also great actresses who are being discovered in the roles, which is kind of fun, too.”

“I made this pledge a long time ago that I was going to support female directors, before most people were aware of that,” says Kidman. Picture: AFP

On her commitment to seeking out, starring in and producing work with female talent – both in front of and behind the camera: “I made this pledge a long time ago that I was going to support female directors, before most people were aware of that. Meryl Streep [who co-starred with Kidman in the second season of the TV series Big Little Lies in 2019] and I had discussed that the only way to actually change the way in which women were given a fair shot at directing was to just work with female directors, to choose to be directed by them. And so that was sort of what I did. And I’ve subsequently now worked primarily with women. My quota is probably far more slanted female in terms of directors now, but it hasn’t always been. And I’m always open… but I do want the roles to be layered or complicated. Even in Lioness, the role that I’m playing, you don’t really see the layers in terms of her own backstory. But what you’re seeing is the other women and their backstories and the way in which they’ve been formed. And so I’m happy to be there supporting that because they’re the people that I get to go, ‘I’m allowed to use some of my power to help support you.’ That phrase ‘pass it on’, a lot of that is saying, ‘I’m willing to share whatever I’ve got and let you share it or take a huge portion of it so you can go and explode.’ That gives me a lot of joy. That’s what we’re meant to do – to share our stories and our power, not horde it. And then if more comes, fabulous. And if [it] doesn’t, hopefully someone will put their hand out to you and go, I’m going to help you. I’ve definitely had that happen, where I haven’t had the same opportunities and I’ve had people – be it a director or something – reach out and go, I’m going to give you a chance. And I never forget it. I’m so grateful for it.”

Nicole Kidman and Zoe Saldana star in Special Ops: Lioness. Picture: AFP

On her creative partnership with writer and producer David E Kelley, with whom she has worked on the hit TV series Big Little Lies, The Undoing, Nine Perfect Strangers and Love & Death (currently streaming on Binge), on which Kidman was an executive producer: “[I call] Blossom Films a bespoke production company because we’re not about just putting content out. We try to choose shows that we feel are either entertaining or important or relevant – or everything. But we’re sort of lean and mean; I don’t have a lot of people working for me because I get too close to everyone. David is fantastic because he gets us, and he’s just such a good writer. He’s obviously had years and years of experience. I’ve worked with some of the greatest screenwriters and also playwrights like David Hare – who, when he wrote me the monologue in The Hours [the 2002 psychological drama for which Kidman won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of writer Virginia Woolf], he was like, ‘Here’s a gift, Nicole.’ And I have to say, that was the gift of a lifetime. That’s part of the reason I have enormous love of writers.”

On whether she feels there has been progress beyond longstanding tropes about competition between women, and if she is seeing more solidarity and support among females: “It does worry me when you see the way in which a young culture now can be very, very tough on the way they look and the way they are. I think that’s very, very harmful. But then my daughters’ generation, they don’t tolerate the bullying at school. As they say, you go where the love is. And you realise that isn’t necessarily with the popular girl, that isn’t necessarily the person to be trying to be. Once you grasp that early on... And I was never the popular girl, so I was always on the perimeter trying to get in [laughs] – but, you know, you seek your own path that way, right?

“We never text each other, can you believe that? We started out that way – I was like, ‘If you want to get a hold of me, call me.’ I wasn’t really a texter,” revealed Kidman.

That is becoming far more acceptable now, to be your own person. And I’ve always been… I was, you know, 5 ft 10.5 [inches] – I never say 5 ft 11” because I’m not [laughs]. But I was this tall when I was 13. I would walk into a room and everyone would always go, ‘Oh, you’re so tall.’ And it was sort of ostracising. And that wasn’t the most comfortable place to be for me. I just had to go, ‘That’s it. That’s who I am, you know? Can’t change it. Oh, well.’ And then they would say, ‘You know, you may not have a career because you’re going to be taller than most of your leading men.’ But, hey, that didn’t happen.”

On shifting the conversation around the visibility of women as they grow older, and the viral reaction to her appearing on the cover of US magazine Vanity Fair’s Hollywood Issue last year in a Miu Miu miniskirt: “I make the most random, crazy choices. I call them ‘teenage choices’ because I just don’t ever think of consequences. Part of my brain just doesn’t think like that. I just go, ‘Oh, I’m going to wear that; it reminds me of my school uniform.’ Or ‘Oh my God, yeah, I’d love to do that.’ I try to [stay] in that place because I think otherwise you get scared or worried – and in terms of reactions... Don’t tell me, I don’t really want to know – it will stop me doing what I want to do. There are times when you hear things and you go, ‘Oh my gosh, that’s really hurtful.’ Because you can’t be under a rock. But at the same time, I really try to stay free in the choices because otherwise, before you know it, you’re just closed off and you can’t step anywhere. And I’d hate for that to happen to my daughters. I’d hate for it to happen to anybody I love. I want for myself just to keep going, ‘Oh, well, I’m trying something or I wanted to do it. It was fun. That was my choice. And yeah, I own it. I’m accountable. Whatever. I take responsibility. Nobody else chose it.’”

Zoe Saldana as Joe, and Nicole Kidman as Kaitlyn Meade in Lioness, streaming on Paramount+. Photo credit: Ramona Rosales/Paramount+

On what drives her to continue working and creating at such a substantial pace: “It’s fun, and I love it. I’m one of those people in the world who got to find the thing that I love doing. So I’m incredibly grateful that I found that. Yes, it’s work at times – but primarily it’s not. I love the travel, the people, the life it’s given me. I will never pooh-pooh that. I’m always going to be on my knees saying ‘Wow, this actually happened.’ That’s partly why I then support things philanthropically that I feel passionate about. ‘We have an opportunity to raise a million dollars? My gosh, because I show up? OK, let’s go.’ I was in Vegas and we were at a car show because Keith loves cars. So we’re there and they said, ‘We’re auctioning off a car tomorrow [to benefit the fight against] child trafficking and child abuse.’ And I went, ‘You are? I’m here tomorrow. I’m not working. I’m just here with my husband. Can I come back and help you?’ Would I have preferred to sit by the pool? Yes, sure, I would have. But to go and actually stand there and help raise money, beg people, offer kisses and tickets, whatever it’s going to take… That’s the stuff that I have to do. There are some things I don’t have to do; those things I have to do. But I can’t do all of it. So you choose the organisations and the people you support. And you work incredibly hard for them.”

On resilience – both as a theme in the choices she has made onscreen across her four decades of acting, as well as in her own life: “I wouldn’t have thought I had it when I was younger. I felt very fragile and very vulnerable. I discovered that I had it through the things that came my way. And the discovery of that resilience was so empowering. It was like I was given this space that I could go, ‘Oh, I can still get up – no matter how bad it gets. It may take a long time. I may be battered and bruised at times, but I still kind of push through.’ And that was a discovery – and still is, actually, because [there are] even times I’ll still go, ‘Oh, I actually don’t know how to recover from this’ or ‘Am I going to get through this?’ And that little voice inside me goes, ‘Yes, you will.’ And I’ve seen family members – my family has been through a lot... many, many different things, each one of us – and I’ve watched it in all of us. And it’s not saying that the damage or the things that happened don’t need an enormous amount of nurturing and help and healing. But, gosh, it’s lovely to know that there’s this little sort of fire within that doesn’t just get extinguished.”

Special Ops: Lioness is streaming from July 23 on Paramount+

*This interview took place before the Hollywood actors’ strike was called.

Read the full interview inside The Sunday Telegraph (NSW), Sunday Herald Sun (VIC), The Sunday Mail (QLD), and Sunday Mail (SA) this weekend.