A “blindsided” Nicole Kidman has pulled the trigger to end her marriage to Keith Urban, filing for divorce after learning that he “is already involved with another woman,” multiple reports said Tuesday.
While there is no indication yet that the 57-year-old country singer was unfaithful, Kidman reportedly realized that their 19-year marriage wasn’t worth saving. Multiple sources connected to the Oscar, 58, winner told TMZ that “all the signs point to the fact Keith is with another woman.”
“Let’s just say, Nicole doesn’t dispute that, but she’s still shocked over it,” a source told TMZ.
In Nashville, the city that has been home to the estranged couple since 2008, “the chatter” about his new romance “has become impossible to ignore,” the Daily Mail reported.
“It’s all over Nashville,” the source told the Daily Mail, adding that it’s not clear when Urban’s reported new romance began. The identity of the “other woman” also is not yet known. But this alleged new romance, or Urban’s apparent unhappiness with Kidman, means that he has shown no signs of wanting to reconcile.
News broke Monday that the couple, who seemed to enjoy one of Hollywood’s strongest, most enduring and most PDA-filled marriages, had been living separately since the start of the summer.
The Daily Mail and other outlets said that the Australian actor and their two daughters, Sunday Rose, 17, and Faith Margaret, 14, were living in the family’s $4 million Nashville compound, while Urban has been away for much of the year on his High and Alive World Tour. But TMZ also said he had acquired his own home in Nashville.
On Monday, a source told People that Kidman had “been fighting to save the marriage” and that she was “holding the family together through this difficult time since Keith has been gone.”
Kidman was previously married to megastar Tom Cruise for 11 years from 1990 to 2001, and they adopted two children together, Isabella, 32, and Connor, 30.
For Kidman, that marriage also ended when her husband — in that case Cruise — initiated the split. She admitted in a 2006 interview that his wanting out of the marriage came as “a major shock,” according to Stylecaster. Neither Kidman nor Cruise has explained the reasons for the divorce, but he famously told Vanity Fair in 2001: “She knows why, and I know why. She’s the mother of my children, and I wish her well. I think that you just move on.”
Kidman and Urban were last seen together publicly in June, when they were pictured attending a FIFA World Cup match in Nashville, the Daily Mail reported. Fans have said that the couple looked tense in the photos and did not appearing to be sharing their usual affection. But that month, Kidman also posted a photo of herself cuddled up to Urban on Instagram to commemorate their wedding anniversary. “Happy Anniversary Baby,” she said with a heart emoji.
While he was on tour, Kidman and their daughters stayed in London while she filmed the sequel to her 1998 movie “Practical Magic,” the Daily Mail reported. She was paying a reported $87,000 each month to rent a luxurious Hampstead mansion once owned by pop star Boy George.
While Kidman was in the U.K. for work — and she is known for maintaining a busy schedule, working on films and steaming series — the couple’s separation over the summer “raised eyebrows” in her native Australia, according to the Daily Mail.
“(Kidman and Urban) do make an effort to speak every day when they’re apart, but it is shocking how much time they’ve spent apart since Nicole’s mother died last September,” an insider told the Australian Woman’s Day magazine earlier this month. ‘It’s like they both went their separate ways.”
On Kidman’s Instagram in August, “The Hours” star also shared a carousel of images of a family vacation to a sunny, seaside location. While the photos appeared to show her with her daughters, they showed none of Urban.
A year ago, Kidman had admitted that there was no such thing as a “perfect” marriage while promoting her Netflix series, ironically titled “The Perfect Couple.”
“There’s no perfect anything,” Kidman said in an interview. “Anything that’s presented as perfect… forget it.” But she also told People magazine last year that she regarded Urban as her “deep, deep love.”
“I’m so lucky that I have Keith… that gives me the ability to go and do whatever I have to do because I know where I can come back,” she added.
But as Cosmopolitan pointed out Monday, Kidman and Urban have faced challenging times as a couple, especially at the beginning of their relationship, when they had to tackle his stays in rehab and rumors that he cheated.
They met in 2005, about four years after Kidman’s divorce from Cruise.
“I would probably say that two very lonely people managed to meet at a time when they could open themselves to each other,” Kidman once told Vanity Fair. “We were a mixture of frightened and brave.”
Several months after Kidman and Urban tied the knot in October 2006, he checked into the Betty Ford Center in Palm Springs for drug and alcohol addiction. Unfortunately, during Urban’s rehab stay, model Amanda Wyatt made claims that he had cheated on Kidman multiple times with her leading up to their wedding.