Nicole Kidman files for divorce from Keith Urban after 19 years of marriage
By Associated Press reporters
Actress Nicole Kidman has filed for divorce from Keith Urban after 19 years of marriage.
Kidman petitioned on Tuesday to end the marriage in a Nashville court. The filing states the marriage “suffered irreconcilable differences”.
The 58-year-old Oscar-winning actor and the 57-year-old Grammy-winning country singer, both raised in Australia, met in 2005 at a Los Angeles event honouring Australians and were married in Sydney the following year.
They have two teenage daughters.
The marriage was the first for Urban and the second for Kidman, who was married to Tom Cruise from 1990 to 2001. Kidman also has two older children with Cruise.
Last year at the premiere of the Netflix series The Perfect Couple, Kidman told The Associated Press the term did not apply to her and Urban.
“You’re heading for trouble if you consider yourselves the perfect couple,” she said. “I’m not a believer in perfect.”
A few months earlier, Urban paid tribute to Kidman, and brought her to tears, when she received the AFI Life Achievement Award.
Urban said she showed him “what love in action really looks like” when his substance abuse problems emerged almost immediately after they married in 2006.
“Four months into our marriage, I’m in rehab for three months,” Urban said. “Nic pushed through every negative voice, I’m sure even some of her own, and she chose love. And here we are 18 years later.”
Kidman’s film roles have included Days Of Thunder, Eyes Wide Shut, Moulin Rouge and The Hours, for which she won an Academy Award for playing author Virginia Woolf.
She has more recently worked in television, including the series Nine Perfect Strangers and Big Little Lies, for which she won Emmys as both actor and producer.
Urban has been a major country star since the 1990s, with hits including Somebody Like You and Blue Ain’t Your Color. He has won four Grammy Awards and more than a dozen Academy of Country Music Awards.
Their split was first reported by TMZ.
