{"id":738054,"date":"2026-08-14T19:12:15","date_gmt":"2026-08-14T19:12:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/738054\/"},"modified":"2026-08-14T19:12:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-14T19:12:15","slug":"nicole-kidman-is-a-role-model-for-midlife-reinvention-but-we-dont-need-her-to-look-20","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/738054\/","title":{"rendered":"Nicole Kidman is a role model for midlife reinvention \u2013 but we don\u2019t need her to look 20"},"content":{"rendered":"

I love everything Nicole Kidman<\/a>, 59, had to say in her Vogue cover story<\/a> (which came out today) about her midlife pivot. How inspiring to be entering her sixth decade newly single, with teenage daughters Sunday Rose, 18 and Faith, 15 \u2013 and to have spent the summer raving in Ibiza, grooving at Glastonbury<\/a>, chilling out at Wimbledon tennis<\/a> (she says just hearing the thwack of the ball made her feel relaxed) all in the wake of ditching her latest husband. \u201cLondon, Ibiza, Paris, Portofino… a Euro Summer\u201d is how she described it to Vogue<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Kidman is a \u201cQueenager\u201d icon<\/a> (Queenagers are midlife Queens, living their best lives \u2013 it\u2019s a phrase which is taking off; Michelle Obama used it in her podcast last week). It\u2019s all there. Her post-divorce reinvention is bang on trend. According to \u201cMeet the Queenagers: The Secrets of Midlife Women<\/a>\u201d, a study of 2,000 midlife women benchmarked against the UK population, over half of women by the time they hit 50 have been through at least five of divorce<\/a>, bereavement, redundancy, caring for elderly parents, menopause and helping a Gen Z kid to launch. Often they all hit together in a midlife collision. But what the research shows is that the more a woman goes through and sheds at this point, the happier she ends up.<\/p>\n

\"Queenager:Queenager: Nicole Kidman in her Vogue shoot (Venetia Scott\/Vogue)<\/p>\n

The way Kidman is embracing her new life in the aftermath of divorcing country singer Keith Urban<\/a> after 19 years of marriage<\/a> is in lockstep with her peers. Like her, there is a whole new generation of midlife women who aren\u2019t going mildly into that goodnight but are embracing the new longevity they are lucky enough to be living. <\/p>\n

Lifespans have doubled in the last 100 years\u2026 we\u2019re going to live longer than we think, likely into our nineties; which means 50 or even 60 isn\u2019t the end but just the beginning of a whole new fabulous Queenager phase. Kidman describes this new era for her as feeling like: \u201cFree falling\u201d or \u201cJumping off.. like, where am I going \u2013 and what\u2019s next?\u201d That\u2019s why Queenagers are like teenagers \u2013 it\u2019s transitional, a little hormonal, a pivot into a whole new phase.<\/p>\n

I love the energy of this time, epitomised by Kidman when she says \u201cI\u2019m either playing Scrabble or I\u2019m out. It\u2019s that simple.\u201d A typical evening for her in Ibiza consists of \u201cDinner at 10.30pm, club at 1am.\u201d She says she is the queen of \u201cstealth\u201d putting on a short dark wig and sunglasses to be anonymous so \u201cI can just dance\u2026 I need it!\u201d Again, bang on trend \u2013 this has been the summer of the midlife life day rave, or coffee rave \u2013 today\u2019s midlife women dance their troubles away. <\/p>\n

I was particularly drawn to Kidman\u2019s nonchalance about her status: \u201cI honestly couldn\u2019t care less where I am on the call sheet or even the billing\u201d; it\u2019s not about how it looks but how it feels. And you have to admire her voracious appetite for culture \u2013 she may have won Oscars, been in Stanley Kubrick\u2019s last movie and have a work ethic to be admired \u2013 but she consumes as much art as she makes. Recently she\u2019s been lapping up British theatre, The Guilty at the Donmar, Oresteia at the Bridge. She says she\u2019d love to return to the stage here in London (and that she has owned a flat in Notting Hill for 20 years). But she also loves poetry to soothe her post-divorce heartache, particularly Philip Larkin; she\u2019s currently reading Arundhati Roy.<\/p>\n

You have to admire her voracious appetite for culture \u2013 she may have won Oscars and have a work ethic to be admired \u2013 but she consumes as much art as she makes<\/p>\n

Kidman filed for divorce from her second husband (her first marriage to Tom Cruise ended after a decade in 2001) in September, citing irreconcilable differences. She said it was just a feeling: \u201cThat\u2019s just who I am, I don\u2019t overthink things. I\u2019m more feeling centred and I lead with my heart. I just go, \u2018OK what do I feel here? I\u2019ll give it a go\u2019.\u201d Again, leading with the heart, with what works for us now, is a key part of the Queenager reinvention; all about deciding what serves us for this time and not worrying about what people will say or what we have been before.<\/p>\n

In the midlife community of women that I founded and run \u2013 noon.org.uk \u2013 we see that for many women what has been at the centre of their lives tends to fall away at this point<\/a>. It could be a marriage, or a career, or having been at home to raise the kids \u2013 but at around 50, whatever it is, ends. We get made redundant<\/a>, the kids leave home, we get divorced. Of course, the ending of what has been so central is sad, the pivot is also a mourning, like a butterfly in the dark of its chrysalis waiting for a rebirth. <\/p>\n

\"KidmanKidman recently seperating from Keith Urban after 19 years of marriage (AFP\/Getty)<\/p>\n

But what comes next in this Queenager rebirth can be very sweet \u2013 the possibility of building a life which is truly resonant. Where what we are on the outside finally matches who we authentically feel we are on the inside. This seems to be very much what Kidman is expressing in this interview and her current life; it\u2019s about checking in with our true feelings and intuition to work out who we really are now and what we want to do next; not looking backwards but jumping into our next chapter with joy and enthusiasm and a zest for what could be. <\/p>\n

Kidman talks about her desire to go on \u201ctrying things, making mistakes, failing, getting back up, moving on, embracing love, staying open, keeping the heart open and the possibilities\u201d \u2013 that could be a new Queenager mantra. <\/p>\n

So I love everything Kidman says \u2013 just one little gripe. Why do British Vogue have to airbrush and primp her to make her look 29, not 59? I know she\u2019s a movie star and a fashion icon, so the normal rules don\u2019t really apply to her, plus she has all the money and stylists in the world. But the icing on the Queenager Kidman cake for me would be if she really showed up looking a fabulous 59 \u2013 in the Chloe shades and the groovy jeans and the amazing clothes, for sure, but just not so ridiculously airbrushed. We don\u2019t need to look like teenagers to have a Queenager reinvention! If she were actually allowed to look her age on the cover of Vogue, then she really would be a Queenager icon for us all to look up to. <\/p>\n

Eleanor Mills is the founder of NOON.org.uk and author of \u2018Much More to Come<\/a>: Lessons on the Mayhem and Magnificence of Midlife\u2019, published by HarperCollins<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"I love everything Nicole Kidman, 59, had to say in her Vogue cover story (which came out today)…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":738055,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32],"tags":[6491,96,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-738054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-celebrities","tag-celebrities","tag-entertainment","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=738054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/738054\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/738055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=738054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=738054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=738054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}