After Nicole Kidman had her two youngest children, she almost gave up acting.
Having moved to a farm in Nashville with their father – her new husband, the country singer Keith Urban – she felt ‘done’ with her showbusiness life and rather fancied being a stay-at-home mum.
It was her own mother Janelle who urged her to keep acting. And today Nicole is one of Hollywood’s most sought-after stars; she barely stops working. Indeed, over the past two years, she has played the lead in blockbusters such as Babygirl, Netflix series The Perfect Couple and the Paramount+ spy thriller Lioness.
But now she faces one of her biggest challenges yet – life as a single mum to Sunday Rose, 17, and Faith Margaret, 14.
Kidman and Urban’s divorce papers show that, despite her hectic work schedule, the actress will be the ‘primary residential parent’.
Court documents obtained by Daily Mail yesterday show that Kidman, 58, and Urban, 57, have agreed to a surprising parenting set up, in which she gets 306 days a year with her children while he receives just 59.
Keith will have their children from 10am on Saturdays to 6pm on Sundays every other weekend, while Nicole will care for them the rest of the time.
The estranged couple have also divvied up the special occasions they will each spend with their daughters: Kidman will have them on Mother’s Day and Easter, while Urban will get them on Father’s Day and Thanksgiving.
Keith Urban and Nicole Kidman with, from left, daughters Sunday Rose and Faith Margaret and the Hollywood star’s niece Sybella Hawley
Elsewhere, the document says that Kidman and Urban will make major decisions about their daughters together, including educational and extracurricular activities.
Neither party will receive monthly child support as Urban has ‘already prepaid all child support obligations’.
But what about Kidman’s hectic work schedule? The divorce details have raised eyebrows among some Nicole has worked with in the past. ‘She never stops working,’ says one. ‘And rarely does she film in Nashville, so it is going to be one big, transatlantic struggle for her.’
But she appears to have no choice. Urban is currently jetting around the globe on his High And Alive world tour and was last night due to play at the Giant Centre in Hershey, Pennsylvania before coming to the UK in 2026.
Sources in the movie industry say Nicole is a ‘doting’ mother and her daughters have been known to be on set with her, sometimes following her to wherever she is filming.
I can reveal that Sunday Rose and Faith Margaret accompanied their mother to London this summer while she was filming Practical Magic 2, a sequel to the 1998 movie.
Kidman rented a luxurious mansion in Hampstead, North London, the former home of 1980s music star Boy George, which costs £65,000 a month.
The property has five bedrooms, five bathrooms, a cinema, a roof terrace and a meditation room, which meant there was plenty of space for everyone. Although the world was none the wiser at this point, the girls were aware their parents were to divorce.
The estranged couple, pictured earlier this year at the 60th annual Academy of Country Music Awards, have divvied up the special occasions they will each spend with their daughters
‘Nicole brought the girls with her to London,’ says my source. ‘They seemed to have a great time. Of course Nicole had domestic help, but she wasn’t going to leave them in Nashville so she made arrangements for them to come to the UK with her.
‘That’s pretty standard for her. She works, but by the looks of her recent trip to London, she loves being a mother too.
‘There is always that flexibility for Nicole so that the kids can be there. She takes her role as a mother seriously and there are always plans put in place for her to be around her girls.’
Sources also point out that there are staff on film sets who ensure the two girls don’t miss out on their education. ‘There are tutors, nannies, basically whatever they need,’ says my movie insider.
On Monday night, Kidman and Urban announced they would be splitting up after almost 20 years of marriage. Sources say they had been living separate lives since the beginning of the summer.
Last night it emerged that Kidman had filed for divorce, with documents at Nashville’s Davidson County Circuit Court stating that the couple had ‘irreconcilable differences’.
And sources claim Keith has already found himself ‘another woman’, 25-year-old guitarist and singer Maggie Baugh, who plays in his band, although that has yet to be confirmed.
Kidman and Urban were last seen together in June, at a Fifa Club World Cup match in Nashville, but there was no sign of her husband in Kidman’s ‘summer memories’ Instagram slideshow posted on August 19, in which she embraced their two daughters, as well as her younger sister Antonia.
Nicole and Keith at the Golden Globes in January. The pair have been married for 19 years
Meanwhile, four-time Grammy winner Urban is said to have bought his own property in Nashville earlier this year, and he and Kidman told pals they now communicate ‘largely by phone’.
This is, of course, Kidman’s second divorce. In 2001 she split from actor Tom Cruise after 11 years of marriage. Despite having joint custody, her adopted children Isabella, 32, and Connor, 30, stayed with their father.
This meant they were raised in the controversial church of Scientology, of which Tom is a member, while Kidman is not. This may be why there appears to be little contact between Kidman and her eldest two children. Certainly she has not been seen with them in public for many years.
While Nicole has never addressed the fact that Connor and Isabella don’t live with her, she did say during an interview in 2018: ‘They are adults. They are able to make their own decisions. They have made choices to be Scientologists and as a mother, it’s my job to love them.
‘And I am an example of that tolerance and that’s what I believe – that no matter what your child does, the child has love and the child has to know there is available love and I’m open here.’
So perhaps it was the gaping hole of not having her two eldest children in her life that led her to reconsider her career when she gave birth to Sunday Rose back in 2008.
Speaking in an interview just last year, Nicole said she was ‘pretty much done’ with acting after Sunday Rose’s birth.
But she added that in the 1960s, her late mother didn’t have the opportunity to have a job. She’d had to raise her children, and told Nicole she should embrace being able to have both.
What Nicole didn’t realise back then, was that one day she would be juggling it all without her husband by her side.
