In a 1995 issue of Vanity Fair, much before Nicole Kidman had achieved the kind of undeniable and transcendental fame that her name is now associated with, she was interviewed and subsequently portrayed as a (metaphorical) lady on fire. Kidman’s love for danger – things that would usually make other people borderline neurotic out of fear, her appreciation for transitory experiences and antique objects, and her strong belief in fate, will, and destiny makes her a one-of-a-kind woman. The world would soon after go on to find out how true that statement was.
By the time she was 17, Nicole Kidman hurtled toward everything that was told to her by everyone to be beyond her reach. The then-young Australian actress defied the status quo and shattered glass ceilings, married the man the entire world lusted for at 23, and had Hollywood’s biggest directors falling in a trance at her formidable beauty, authoritative presence, and boundless personality by the time she was 25.
It is only understandable that a star of the caliber such as hers knew – with complete and utter compulsion – of her place in this industry, what she was meant to achieve, and who she wanted to share all of her experiences with. When Nicole Kidman met Tom Cruise, however, her penchant for looking at things and realizing it as destiny did not immediately take over. Rather, it was lust at first glance – “I thought he was the sexiest man I’d ever seen in my life” – followed by the grounded and settling feeling of finding the person that a Romantic would probably define as one’s soulmate.
“It’s an amazing sensation—not as good as s*x, but almost. It’s like before you go onstage opening night, when you’re almost dizzy from adrenaline. I love that feeling. It’s scariness that’s controllable. Tom will put himself in a position where if you make one mistake you could die; he’s worse than me. But when you do these things, you feel you’ve accomplished something that’s almost impossible. You feel that every inch of you is alive.”
And even though Kidman’s desire for being the epitome of femme fatale went unnoticed by many, the same was not the case for her husband. Cruise later claimed, “This woman got in the car with me when I was driving 185 miles an hour, and at the end of it she said, ‘Let’s do another lap!’” Soulmates, indeed.
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