Nicole Kidman has filed for divorce from Keith Urban after 19 years of marriage, bringing a surprising end to a long and seemingly successful union that brought together two superstars from the worlds of movies and music.
The 58-year-old Oscar-winning actor petitioned on Tuesday to end her marriage to the 57-year-old Grammy winning country singer in a Nashville court. The documents state the couple has undergone “marital difficulties and irreconcilable differences.”
Kidman and Urban have two teenage daughters together — 17-year-old Sunday Rose and 14-year-old Faith Margaret.
The filings include a marriage dissolution and child-care plan agreed on by the couple and submitted for a judge’s approval.
“The mother and father will behave with each other and each child so as to provide a loving, stable, consistent and nurturing relationship with the child even though they are divorced,” says the permanent parenting plan, using language common in the state’s divorces.
“They will not speak badly of each other or the members of the family of the other parent. They will encourage each child to continue to love the other parent and be comfortable in both families.”
The plan asks that Kidman be the primary residential parent to the daughters, having them for 306 days per year with Urban taking them for the other 59. The girls have lived in Nashville all their lives, and the documents give no indication that will change.
Urban, left, honoured Kidman, fourth from right, in April 2024 when she was presented with the AFI Life Achievement Award. They attended the gala in Los Angeles with daughters Faith Margaret and Sunday Rose Kidman Urban (second and third from left), Kidman’s niece Sybella Hawley, sister Antonia Kidman with husband Craig Marran, their son, Alexander Kidman Marran, and other family members. (Jon Kopaloff/Getty Images)
The filing states that each parent earns more than $100,000 per month and neither will need child-care or spousal support.
The marriage dissolution plan lays out a roughly equal division of joint assets, with each keeping all the assets that are in their own name, including the copyrights and royalties for their artistic work.
The detailed agreement suggests that the divorce had been in the works for at least well over a month. Urban signed the parenting plan on Aug. 29, Kidman on Sept. 6.
It will take at least 90 days for the divorce to become final under Tennessee law. Representatives for Kidman and Urban did not respond to emailed requests for comment on Tuesday.
Both raised in Australia, Kidman and Urban met in 2005 at a Los Angeles event honouring Australians and were married in Sydney the following year.
The marriage was the first for Urban and the second for Kidman, who was married to Tom Cruise from 1990 to 2001. Kidman also has two older children with Cruise.
Not the ‘perfect couple’
The couple had publicly but lovingly described some marital difficulties, but there were still few if any signs they were headed for divorce.
Their separation, first reported by TMZ, came just a day before the divorce filing.
Last year at the premiere of the Netflix series The Perfect Couple, Kidman told The Associated Press the term didn’t apply to her and Urban.
“You’re heading for trouble if you consider yourselves the perfect couple,” she said. “I’m not a believer in perfect.”
A few months earlier, Urban paid tribute to Kidman, bringing her to tears, when she received the AFI Life Achievement Award.
Urban said she showed him “what love in action really looks like” when his substance abuse problems emerged almost immediately after they wed in 2006.
“Four months into our marriage, I’m in rehab for three months,” Urban said.
“Nic pushed through every negative voice, I’m sure even some of her own, and she chose love. And here we are 18 years later.”
Kidman’s divorce petition filed Tuesday includes a child-care plan that would see her as the primary parent but continuing to live with her and Urban’s daughters in Nashville, where they were born, as well as a division of assets but no need for child or spousal support. (Jordan Strauss/Invision/The Associated Press)
Kidman’s film roles have included Days of Thunder, Eyes Wide Shut, Moulin Rouge and The Hours, for which she won an Academy Award for playing author Virginia Woolf.
She has more recently worked in television, including the series Nine Perfect Strangers and Big Little Lies, for which she won Emmys as both actor and producer.
Urban has been a major country star since the 1990s, with hits including Somebody Like You and Blue Ain’t Your Color.
He just wrapped the Canadian leg of his High and Alive World Tour on Sept. 20 in Ottawa. The tour also included stops in Toronto, Vancouver, Calgary, Regina, Saskatoon, Winnipeg and Montreal.
He has won four Grammy Awards and more than a dozen Academy of Country Music Awards.
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