Too successful. Too sexual. Too talented. Of course split was Nicole’s fault

It took micro-seconds before Nicole Kidman, the ginger-haired starlet from Longueville, was blamed for the break-up of her marriage to Keith Urban. One sexist trope after the other was trotted out before we were sure of what had happened, before she’d even filed for divorce, before the pair’s publicity managers could even subtly background journalists.

Nicole Kidman has filed for divorce from Keith Urban, her husband for the past 19 years.Credit: Dionne Gain

She had worked too hard. She was too sexual. Her ambition was too much. She kissed younger men in her movies. She travelled. An “intense work schedule put strain on marriage”.

What could any of us possibly know about the end of this 19-year union, which has produced two daughters and seemed, in public at least, to be intimate and loving? We can sure guess, though, and oh, how we all love to leap about between suspicion, suggestion and projection when a famous person separates from a partner.

The theories which are quickest to emerge are the most revealing about what we consider to be acceptable behaviour of men and women, or the kind of behaviour that might repel or expel a spouse. Of course, Kidman’s success, which has been enduring and extraordinary, would be the first possible contributing factor to be dragged under our collective microscope.

What has been quite stunning, though, is the suggestion that Kidman playing the parts of mature women who have sex on screen, and openly express desire, would have unravelled her relationship.

Does this ever happen to male actors?

Kidman stars in Babygirl as a lustful CEO who has an affair with an office worker – played by Harris Dickinson – almost 30 years her junior. Credit: AP

Look at these headlines: “The Sex Scene Question at Heart of Nicole Kidman’s Split and How Her Latest Raunchy Flick Was ‘Last Straw’ for Keith Urban”. Then there was: “Did Nicole Kidman’s string of ‘liberating’ racy roles end her marriage? How actress’ sexy career moves left Keith Urban ‘not seeing her as his wife’.” And another: “Nicole Kidman’s midlife glow-up before marriage split: Star, 58, upped her game for a string of racy scenes that husband Keith ‘struggled’ with”.

There have been frequent references to a radio interview with Urban which was apparently ended over intrusive questions about how he felt about his wife snogging a surgically smoothed Zac Efron on camera for the Netflix film A Family Affair.

According to a “source close to the family”, this “interview brought out an issue that had been simmering for a while. Keith supported Nicole’s career, but he found questions about her sex scenes uncomfortable. It left him embarrassed.” Then “another insider” revealed the couple had argued about this: “Nicole felt on-screen intimacy was simply part of her job, but Keith didn’t see it that way. The latest film brought those differences into focus.”

One tabloid explained: “Keith is said to have ‘struggled’ with his wife’s racy new image, and perhaps it’s no wonder given the intensity of her commitment to her erotic roles.”

Sigh. Kidman has played many roles in recent years, including an expatriate in Hong Kong in Expats, a Viking queen in The Northman, a CIA supervisor in Lioness, another queen in Aquaman and a teacher in Holland. Yes, she also starred in Babygirl as a lustful CEO who had an affair with a handsome office junior – played by Harris Dickinson – almost three decades younger than her. This did lead to some peculiar scenes with milk-drinking – both on and off-screen – that were quite perplexing. As was her declaration that she had to pause filming because she was having “too many orgasms”.

But then this alleged behaviour was dragged off-screen, with some suggesting that the real problem for Urban was Kidman’s “insatiable desire for sex”, IRL. Wanting sex! Ugh, everyone knows men hate that.

In Babygirl, this milk-drinking scene is a tipping point for her torrid relationship with the office junior.Credit: Niko Tavernise

Aside from the odd awkward milk moment (Kidman downing a glass of milk at press conferences to mimic a sexually charged scene in the film), we seem to forget how counter cultural it is to have a woman in her late 50s playing a sexual lead in a film.

As Kidman herself said: “A lot of times women are discarded at a certain period of their career as a sexual being. So it was really beautiful to be seen in this way.”

“My character has reached a stage where she’s got all this power,” she said, “but she’s not sure who she is, what she wants, what she desires, even though she seems to have it all. And I think that’s really relatable.”

What’s really relatable is that sometimes life doesn’t mould into the shapes we want it to, and we stand before it, frustrated sculptors throwing mashed clay onto the floor. That no one really “has it all”, and even the very concept is a distraction, something women are repeatedly told not to want.

As I said, I have no idea what happened in the Urban-Kidman marriage and honestly don’t really need to know. It may be complicated. It may have ground down over years. It may have been one last gruelling argument. It may be communication problems. It may be the blinding pain of betrayal. There may be … so many things. Any which way, it’s doubtless painful and sad.

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It’s uncomfortable, though, watching how, the moment a talented, beautiful woman separates from a man she is shamed for her talent, her beauty, her sexuality.

In the hype of conjecture, we often forget the facts: if it is, in fact, Urban who has called time, before Kidman filed, we do know that makes it an unusual midlife divorce. Researchers have repeatedly shown women initiate divorce more and do better psychologically after divorce than men.

Urban has described Kidman as “otherworldly”, and she has always seemed ethereal, pale and somehow cool, remote, and notably determined to express erotic affection towards her husband, nuzzling his tanned neck in public, closing her eyes whenever his face approaches hers, a kind of intensity that the jaded saw as a curious kind of performance and the hopeful as a sign of enduring romance.

It can’t be easy for a musician and a movie star to maintain a marriage, or even sanity, sometimes, in that rarefied air of celebrity.

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