Nicole Kidman: A Kind of Life (25 page)

She never explained, but certainly the trauma associated with her divorce would have figured into the equation. Apparently, director Stephen Daldry did not press the issue. Instead, he arranged for a wetsuit manufacturer to custom-make a skin-tight, skin-colored suit for Nicole that made it appear she was totally naked. Sometimes Nicole could be devilishly inscrutable—and the nudity issue was one such time.

Before leaving Sydney, Nicole explained to reporters that it was her intention to avoid the mainstream when choosing new films, preferring instead to focus on what she termed “risky projects”—you know, the type of films that Tom shied away from.

Meanwhile, as Nicole set her sights on a new project,
Moulin Rouge
was released to mixed reviews in the United States.
New York Times
critic Elvis Mitchell wrote: “What Mr. Luhrmann has done is take the most thrilling moments in a movie musical—the seconds before the actors are about to burst into song and dance, when every breath they take is heightened—and make an entire picture of such pinnacles. As a result, every moment in the film feels italicized rather than tumescent . . . This movie is simultaneously stirring and dispiriting.”

Premiere
magazine gave it three and a half out of a possible four stars and declared: “The sweet-voiced Kidman has never been sexier, McGregor could quite creditably sub for Bono if the U2 front man’s voice craps out and Broadbent can sell the unlikeliest song imaginable—at one point in the movie, he croons “Like a Virgin” and actually makes you like it.
Moulin Rouge
is surely the most daring summer movie of the year—it will no doubt be the most daring movie of any season this year.”

 Writing in the
Los Angeles Times
, Kenneth Turan noted: “Although it showcases excellent work from co-stars Nicole Kidman and Ewan McGregor as singing star-crossed lovers in turn-of-the-century Paris,
Moulin Rouge
is a film that can’t escape the defects of its virtues. Over the top in all things, it’s unwilling to differentiate between the delights of being cinematically outrageous and the drawbacks of having a plot that’s as simplistic dramatically as the film is complex visually, of characterizations that verges on cartoonish, especially in the minor roles, and of a weakness for the broadest, most exaggerated farce.”

The consensus seemed to be that while the film was visually vibrant and grandly decadent, it underplayed the talents of both Nicole and McGregor—and never found its true heart and soul. The big question was whether academy members would deem it powerful or special enough to snag an Oscar.

By the time American moviegoers were queuing up to see
Moulin Rouge
, Nicole was transforming herself into Virginia Wolf and thinking about what she would tell reporters about her next movie,
The Others.
It was a rhythm that seemed to suit her, for it meant that there was always something going on, professionally at least, in her life. She couldn’t tolerate “down” time, not when her emotions were dancing so carelessly along the edge of the abyss.

Divorce negotiations did not go as smoothly as she had hoped. She and Tom seemed to be in agreement about the children, but when it came to finances she found him difficult to deal with. Their lawyers huddled, worked out compromises, only to learn that they had compromised away exactly what each partner wanted most.

By June, Tom had his lawyers working double-time when he discovered that a Los Angeles man, Michael Davis, was contacting magazines and offering to sell them a secret videotape of Tom having sex with a man. Tom responded with a $100 million defamation lawsuit that claimed that the media pitches by Davis, publisher of
Bold
magazine, were “of the sort calculated to cause [Tom] harm both personally and professionally.” Legal documents filed by Tom’s attorneys denied that the actor had ever had a homosexual relationship and that such a videotape existed. Such allegations, the court documents asserted, were “unequivocally false.”

Tom subsequently dropped the lawsuit after the publisher agreed to a court stipulation that read: “Cruise does not appear on the videotape to which said defendant referred . . . [He] is not, and never has been, homosexual and has never had a homosexual affair.” Under the terms of the settlement, the publisher was required to pay his own legal fees and was prohibited from “issuing or authorizing the issuance of any statement contrary to any of the foregoing findings.”

In an unrelated lawsuit, filed around that time by Tom, he sued porn actor Chad Slater, who was quoted in the French magazine
Actustar
as saying he had a continuing homosexual relationship with Tom during the actor’s marriage and that the relationship was discovered by Nicole, who ended the relationship. Tom asked for $100 million—his favorite number—in damages. The case never went to court because the porn actor denied ever making the comments and the magazine agreed to print a retraction.

As Tom’s July 3 birthday approached, word leaked out that he was planning a big party at which he might introduce his new sweetheart, Penelope Cruz. According to news reports, Nicole asked their mutual friends not to attend as a sign of loyalty to her. Some of her friends honored her request, but Tom’s longtime friends Emilo Estevez, Rob Lowe, Ben Stiller, and Cuba Gooding Jr. showed up, along with new friends such as Renee Zellweger and Jim Carrey, who roared up to the door on his Harley Davidson.

In the days following the party, Tom’s publicist confirmed that Tom and Penelope were indeed dating. Nicole heard that bit of news on television, as did their son, six-year-old Connor—and it made her furious. She told friends that she suspected the romance had been going on for quite some time. In the weeks ahead, as publicity about the Cruise-Cruz romance intensified, both Connor and Bella urged Nicole to get a few dates of her own, advice she said she did not take.

In mid-July, Nicole took the children and went to Fiji on her private jet for a vacation. She and Tom had planned the two-week vacation long before their marital separation took place, so they divided the vacation time, with her taking a week and him taking a week. Shortly after Nicole arrived at the exclusive island retreat, longtime friend Russell Crowe was seen arriving at the airport in his private jet. There had been rumors about Nicole and Russell for years, so no one was surprised to see him arrive in her wake.

When Nicole concluded her vacation on the island, she left on a Saturday. The following day Tom arrived with a party of ten, including Cameron Crowe, who directed him in
Jerry Maguire
and his upcoming
Vanilla Sky
, and Crowe’s wife, singer Nancy Wilson. Penelope was thought to be included, though Tom’s publicist declined to confirm it, saying only she “might be there.”

New light was cast on the Cruise-Cruz relationship, when a
Vanity Fair
profile of the actress quoted Cameron Crowe as saying Penelope possessed a rare quality that enabled audiences to fall in love with her. In describing the onscreen romance between Tom and Penelope, Crowe said: “In this movie we really had to have this intense love story. So Penelope has to truly fall in love. And Tom falls in love with her. They did the rarest thing: they fell in love with someone on-screen. You watch them actually go through that hideous, great, awful, intoxicating moment. Without it, we wouldn’t have a movie .  .  .The first time we screened the movie—just in-house—it was that situation where at the end you get that reaction of ‘Wow!’ They were really in love!’”

For her part, Penelope handled the stories about her romance with Tom with admirable skill, batting her pretty eyes and slipping deeper into her Spanish accent whenever the questions became too personal. Her stock answer: “It’s not true—we’re friends.” Certainly, fielding such questions was something with which she had experience. Before meeting Tom, she was rumored to have had affairs with Nicolas Cage and Matt Damon. Interestingly, all three men ended up terminating long-time relationships—Tom with Nicole, Cage with his wife Patricia Arquette, and Damon with girlfriend Winona Ryder—after meeting the doe-eyed actress.
       

~ ~ ~

Throughout the summer, rumors swirled about Nicole and Tom as their “friends” and employees—the couple had long required employees to sign agreements that required them to pay huge fines if they ever disclosed information to the media—disclosed tantalizing new information about the marriage.

One week, Nicole was painted as an ice queen who had contributed little to the marriage; Tom was depicted as the partner who held everything together and saw that the children were cared for. The next week, Tom was painted as a lout who had gotten his wife pregnant, and then dumped her for Penelope Cruz. If Gallup had taken an opinion poll on the couple, the pollsters would probably have found that the public was evenly divided over who was the cheater in the marriage.

Nicole kept saying that she had no idea why Tom divorced her—“What the hell happened?” was her constant refrain—and Tom kept saying that Nicole knew “exactly” why he filed for divorce. When pressed by reporters, Nicole sometimes said she would probably never tell her side of the story.

Despite their personal difficulties, the couple presented a united front when it came to their business interests. On August 7, 2001, they both attended the premiere of her new movie,
The Others
, although not together. Nicole arrived with director Alejandro Amenabar and two of her close friends, actresses Naomi Watts and Rebecca Rigg.

As she walked up the red carpet outside the screening room, a crowd outside chanted what others had chanted in Cannes: “Nee-cole! Nee-cole!” Wearing a black dress flecked with silver, her hair pulled back into a ponytail, she paused to sign autographs and shake hands with well-wishers before disappearing into the theater.

Fifteen or twenty minutes later, in a well-choreographed move, Tom arrived, wearing black slacks and a white shirt, sleeves rolled up to the elbow. Asked by a reporter how he dealt with the publicity surrounding the divorce, he laughed and said he simply told everyone to mind their own business. He said no one should be surprised that he and Nicole both attended the premiere. “Tonight is a celebration of a picture that we all worked very hard on, and the performance that Nic has given is flawless,” he told an Associated Press reporter. With that, he moved quickly into the theater and sat down without saying a word to Nicole.

As always with Nicole’s movies, reviews were mixed.
Newsweek’s
Owen Gleiberman wrote that the film featured Nicole at her “icy best,” but then he went on to say, “The gimmicks, in the end, are too arbitrary to tie together in a memorably haunting fashion, though they do culminate in a Big Twist, a nifty one that almost—but not quite—makes you want to see the movie again.”

Writing in the
Los Angeles Times
, Kenneth Turan described Nicole’s performance as “diva-style,” delivered as if she were Lady Macbeth. “Though Kidman doesn’t hesitate to make Grace high-strung and as tightly wound as they come, she also projects vulnerability and courage when they’re called for,” he notes. “It’s an intense, involving performance, and it dominates and energizes a film that would be lost without it.”

Wesley Morris writing in the
San Francisco Chronicle
, said, “Clever as the film is, though, it turns out to be an exercise in narrative withholding that’s more headache provoking than suspense laden.” He said the real star of the film was not Nicole, but rather her skin: “Has it ever been paler or clammier-looking?”

~ ~ ~
   

 
On August 7, 2001, one day after Nicole and Tom attended the premiere of
The Others
, the court finalized their divorce and gave them additional time to work out a property settlement. Over the next three months, they met several times in the presence of their lawyers in an effort to iron out the details.

Finally, on November 12, they met one last time in a Los Angeles office building. The couple arrived separately, with Nicole wearing a blue suit and scarf, and Tom wearing a black T-shirt and black slacks. For three hours, they poured over the details of a settlement that divided up their $250 million combined estate.

Nicole took their $4.3 million home in Pacific Palisades and their $4 million Sydney Harbour mansion, while Tom took their 280-acre estate in Telluride, Colorado, and their fleet of airplanes, which included a Beech F90, a one hundred thousand dollar Pitts S-2B, and a $28 million Gulfstream IV jet. Tom agreed on alimony and child support, but the amount was sealed under court order.

The couple agreed on joint legal and physical custody of the children. Under the agreement, the children will live alternately with both parents and—this was important to Nicole—make joint decisions about their lives and religious upbringing. By this stage in the divorce, Nicole was expressing fears to friends that Tom would want to raise the children as Scientologists, something she did not want. She fought for—and won—the right to educate them in private schools in Sydney and with private tutors when they were in Los Angeles or on location with either parent.