Nicole Kidman files for divorce from Keith Urban after nearly 20 years
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Nicole Kidman (right) and Keith Urban attend the 60th Academy of Country Music Awards in Texas on May 8. Kidman filed for divorce from Urban on Sept 30.
PHOTO: REUTERS
Claire Moses and Neil Vigdor
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Nashville, Tennessee – Oscar-winning actress Nicole Kidman has filed for divorce on Sept 30 from her Grammy-winning singer-husband Keith Urban after nearly 20 years of marriage, according to court records.
In a filing in circuit court in Davidson County, Tennessee, in Nashville, where the Australian-American entertainment power couple have lived, Kidman, 58, cited irreconcilable differences in her request to end the marriage.
Reports of their split started circulating on Sept 29, after celebrity gossip website TMZ covered the news. The couple have two daughters together.
Kidman and Urban, 57, met in January 2005, when both were being honoured at G’Day USA, an annual gala in Los Angeles hosted by the American Australian Association.
“It sounds a bit like a pickup line from Crocodile Dundee,” Urban, referring to the 1986 movie, said during a speech in 2024 when Kidman was honoured with a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Film Institute.
“I was trying to play it cool, but inside, I felt like I’d snuck into the royal ball,” he said. Kidman had an “otherworldly aura about her”, he added. “I felt a bit like I was meeting a real-life princess.”
After their first meeting, Urban almost felt too intimidated to call her. “I was scared,” he said when they appeared together on a 2017 episode of The Graham Norton Show.
A few months after meeting, they started dating. In May 2006, Kidman confirmed their engagement to People magazine and said: “He’s very good to me.” They married in Australia a month later.
About four months after the wedding, Urban said he had checked himself into rehabilitation for drug and alcohol addiction and stayed for three months.
“I deeply regret the hurt this has caused Nicole and the ones that love and support me,” he said at the time.
In an interview in May 2025 on the podcast The Zane Lowe Show, Urban, now sober, reflected on that time and said that Kidman had called an intervention for him, which was a crossroads in his life.
Their long marriage was seen as a rarity in Hollywood, and they were often held up as a model couple among the rich and famous.
In June, Kidman posted a black-and-white photo on Instagram of her putting her head on Urban’s shoulder in an embrace. “Happy Anniversary Baby,” she wrote with a heart emoji.
A few days earlier, the couple appeared together at a Fifa Club World Cup soccer match at Geodis Park in Nashville.
When a radio show host in Adelaide, Australia, asked Urban in July how he felt about Kidman appearing in love scenes with younger, good-looking actors, including Zac Efron in the Netflix romantic comedy A Family Affair (2024), he hung up in the middle of the interview.
Kidman was previously married to American actor Tom Cruise, 63, with whom she has two children. They divorced in 2001 after more than a decade together.
In September 2024, in a red-carpet interview to promote her Netflix series The Perfect Couple (2024), Kidman told The Associated Press: “I don’t think anyone is the perfect anything. You’re heading for trouble if you consider yourself the perfect couple.”
Kidman is known for several acclaimed performances in movies – including The Hours (2002), for which she won the Academy Award for Best Actress in 2003, as well as Moulin Rouge! (2001) and Babygirl (2024) – and on television.
Over the past few years, she has been a fixture on streaming platforms, starring in limited series like Big Little Lies (2017 to 2019), The Undoing (2020), Nine Perfect Strangers (2021 to 2025) and The Perfect Couple.
She recently announced on Instagram that she had wrapped filming for Practical Magic 2, a sequel to the 1998 fan favourite.
Urban, an internationally famous country singer, was a judge on American reality singing competition American Idol (2002 to present) and a coach on Australian reality singing competition The Voice (2012 to present).
In May, he accepted the Triple Crown Award, a prize for winners of multiple American Country Music Awards. In his acceptance speech, he thanked Kidman.
“My wife, Nicole Mary, is here tonight,” he said. “I love you, baby girl.” NYTIMES
