Nicole Kidman Recalls 'Struggling' with Her 'Personal Life’ When She Won Her Oscar in 2003: ‘I Went to Bed Alone’

Kidman won her first Oscar after finalizing her divorce from Tom Cruise but felt something was missing: "I went... I need a love in my life"

As Nicole Kidman’s career reached one of its highest peaks, the actress was experiencing one of her most personal lows.

The star, 56, won her first Oscar in 2003 for playing Virginia Woolf in The Hours, just a year after her first nomination for Moulin Rouge!. But behind her bright smile and glamorous Jean-Paul Gaultier gown hid a private struggle; Kidman had recently finalized her divorce from Tom Cruise after 11 years of marriage.

“I was struggling with things in my personal life, yet my professional life was going so well,” she told author Dave Karger in his new book 50 Oscar Nights (on sale Jan. 23). “ That’s what happens, right?”

On stage, Kidman briefly broke down before composing herself (“Russell Crowe said don’t cry when you get up there and now I’m crying”), and was played off before she was able to finish her speech. Afterwards, she felt the urge to go home.

Related: Sally Field on Why Burt Reynolds Refused to Attend the Oscars with Her: ‘Not a Nice Guy Around Me Then’

“I’m not a big party girl, so I was going to skip the Vanity Fair party, and everyone was like, ‘You’ve got to go. You’ve got to walk through the party carrying your Academy Award,’" she recalls in the book. "I said, ‘That just feels like gloating, and it doesn’t feel humble.’  Like, what? You can’t walk through carrying the award! That feels really inappropriate. They’re like, ‘That’s what you do.’"

Ultimately, she did to the storied bash, at least for a little while, with her engraved Oscar in hand: “So I literally walked in, carried it around, was completely overwhelmed, emotional, shaking, and I didn’t enjoy it. I was almost apologetic, which is so stupid. I wish I could have enjoyed it more,” she says.

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Afterwards, in the quiet of her hotel room, Kidman was confronted with the urge to find love again.

“I went home and ended up ordering takeout and eating it on the floor of the Beverly Hills Hotel," she says. "I sat on the floor of the hotel eating French fries and a burger with my family and went to bed. That’s when it hit me. I went, I need to find my love; I need a love in my life. Because this is supposed to be when you go, ‘This is ours.’”

The Oscar evening ended with a whimper. “I went to bed alone; I was in bed before midnight. If I ever won again, I’m telling you, I’d be out for 24 hours.”

Related: Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban's Relationship Timeline

Two years later, Kidman began dating country star Keith Urban after the pair met at a G'Day USA gala in Los Angeles.

After six months, the Big Little Lies star realized he was the one, when her 38th birthday Urban stood on the stoop of her apartment at 5 a.m. with a bouquet of gardenias. "That is when I went, 'This is the man I hope I get to marry,' " she later told PEOPLE. "I believed by that point he was the love of my life."

The couple married in 2006 in Sydney and today share daughters Sunday Rose, 14, and Faith Margaret, 12. (Kidman is also mother to daughter Isabella, 30, and son Connor, 28, with Cruise.) In July, Kidman and Urbran marked their 17th wedding anniversary. 

"I met him later in life and it's been the best thing that's ever happened to me," she told Gayle King in 2022. "That man is the best thing that's ever happened to me."

The two occasionally share peeks into their world. On Kidman’s 56th birthday last June, Urban, also 56, toasted his wife on Instagram, writing: "To my gorgeous, sexy, adventurous, curious, nature loving, owl spotting, artist, wife: happy birthday baby !!!!!!”

Kidman continues to climb professionally, having won two Emmy Awards for Big Little Lies and scored three additional Academy Award nominations since her first for Rabbit Hole, Lion and Being the Ricardos. She next stars in the AppleTV+ limited series Expats.

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