Nicole Kidman: “Depression after divorce from Tom Cruise”

It may have earned her the only Academy Award of her career (so far, of course), but The Hours It was one of the darkest times of her life for Nicole Kidman. In the role of Virginia Woolf, in fact, she sharpened the sense of loss after the divorce from Tom Cruise, in 2001.

The 54-year-old actress had shared 11 years of marriage with her colleague and star Mission: Impossible and overcoming the breakup literally shattered it. Two decades after those events, the Australian diva retraces those very delicate moments, above all because the character had suicidal thoughts (later implemented) and this led to her suffering from depression. On the other hand, she herself refused the stunt double in the death scene, subjecting herself to further emotional stress, as she revealed in an interview with BBC Radio 4 in the program This cultural life. The participation is part of the promotion of the new film, the biopic Being the Ricardos with Javier Bardem (available on Amazon Prime Video), who stars her as Lucille Ball.

“I don’t remember – he revealed to the microphones of the broadcast – if I really thought about the danger of the situation, I was totally taken by the character”. And then he described the moment of the take: “I put the stones in my pocket and walked towards the river. Once and then another and another. It obviously didn’t seem dangerous enough. ‘

He knows the reason very well, as he explains immediately after: “Depression: I no longer felt my body as mine”, “it’s like I’ve really let Virginia take over, because at that moment I was an open door. And the director (Stephen Daldry, ed.) Was very attentive to me because he knew everything ».

In one of the latest projects, the series Nine perfect strangers (on Amazon Prime Video) the actress addresses the issue of mental health, declined in a series of clinical cases of a clinic with unorthodox methods. Before that, however, he collected roles of women who have suffered from physical and psychological trauma, in the series Big Little Lies e The Undoing (both on NOW), During the podcast WTF con Marc Maron she had said that it had been impossible for her to leave that restlessness on the set: «I really got sick – she revealed – and this is one of the major consequences of acting as an actor. For a week my immune system refused to recognize the difference between acting and reality. ‘ Doesn’t the experience help? Apparently not: “I have not yet learned a technique – he explains – capable of teaching my brain and my body that it is fiction nor did I understand how to get rid of all this. Nothing to do: do it at home, but I don’t sleep beautiful and I don’t feel well if what I play makes me uneasy ».

It is not the first time, in fact, that the actress, happily married to musician Keith Urban for 15 years now (together they have two girls, Sunday, 13, and Faith, 11, born from gestation for others), talks about her first marriage . Immediately after the divorce he had revealed a Who magazine that the union “didn’t work and I had to dig deep and work my way through the depression. Not that I have any regrets, it is part of the growth ».

Life, even after, put her to the test with various miscarriages and an ectopic pregnancy, leading her first to adopt two children with Cruise (Isabella and Connor, 29 and 26) and then, with her second husband, to undergo various fertility treatments. And, after the various unsuccessful attempts, the depression returned, to the point of never thinking of being able to give birth again and instead what he calls “the miracle” arrived. She said she took ten such little joys around the house, but fate made her take another path and today she says she is very happy with her six grandchildren, as well as being the proud godmother of twelve children.