I’m not a huge Nicole Kidman fan. And I’ve never listened to Keith Urban’s music (come to think of it, I’m not even sure I’ve ever heard the man speak). Why, then, do I feel so completely floored by the news of the couple’s separation?
Yes, after nearly 20 years of marriage, the Oscar-winning actor and the Grammy-winning country singer are reportedly calling it quits. The pair have been living separately since the beginning of the summer, according to that modern harbinger of celebrity doom, TMZ.
“Keith has acquired his own residence in Nashville and has moved out of their family home,” a source told the gossip site, adding that the separation was not Kidman’s idea and that she had wanted to fight for the marriage. The Babygirl star is allegedly “holding the family together through this difficult time since Keith has been gone”. On Tuesday (1 October), The Independent learnt that Kidman had filed for divorce.
It is a strange thing to not know a couple personally, or feel any particular affinity with them – Urban has always seemed somewhat inscrutable, while Kidman exudes the air of a beautiful, mysterious alien stranded on Earth – and yet be rocked by their breakup. But, much like dog years, celebrity years are different from those of mere mortals. Two decades is a good innings, regardless; in celebrity years, it’s practically an eternity. If the most solid of A-list marriages can’t make it, what hope is there for the rest of us of reaching the death bit of “till death us do part”? And if Kidman, one of the world’s most successful and highest-paid actors – with her cosmetically enhanced, age-defying face and body to boot – is vulnerable to being left, surely no one is safe?
Though notoriously on the more private end of the spectrum of famous spouses, Kidman and Urban also shared enough glimmers of a mutually loving and affectionate partnership over the years to convince us that they were rock-solid. There was the Instagram post from Urban in which he waxed lyrical about his wife’s induction into the American Film Institute, writing: “Babygirl – I’m so proud of you, and as much as I could come off sounding like the biased husband, I’ll let the list of previous honorees do all of the talking for me. What a list!”
There was the throwback to their wedding in 2006, with a picture of the pair lighting candles and Kidman’s cute caption: “Sweet XVI. Remember this like it was yesterday.” And then, oh so poignantly given the relationship breakdown, Kidman’s anniversary post just last year. She shared a photo of herself lying down on a stone wall as Urban sat beside her playing the guitar against a backdrop of the ocean, accompanied simply by the words: “Forever #happyanniversary.” It turns out that “forever” is rarely as long as we imagine it to be.
They’re not the first Hollywood couple to send shockwaves around the world by having the temerity to split up when we thought they had it made. Onlookers were stunned when Hugh Jackman and his wife of nearly three decades, Deborra-Lee Furness, filed for divorce earlier this year after announcing their separation in 2023. Furness described the experience as a “traumatic journey of betrayal”; fans could hard relate.
There were similar outcries when Lisa Bonet and Jason Momoa (together for nearly 20 years before divorcing in 2024), Sacha Baron Cohen and Isla Fisher (together for over two decades before jointly filing for divorce in 2023) and Susan Sarandon and Tim Robbins (together for 23 years before ending things in 2009) all went their separate ways.
Though it’s not your heartbreak, of course, it can nevertheless feel somehow personal and real – that’s the nature of the one-sided parasocial relationship that exists between stars and civilians. We feel like we know them, even though we don’t.
And at a time when the world feels incredibly unstable and insecure – when we long to have a few certainties to be able to bank on – perhaps it makes sense that finding out a stalwart couple aren’t quite the lifers we thought they were can affect us more deeply than it ought to. It is yet more proof that the ground is constantly shifting beneath our feet; nothing in this world can be relied upon to stay the same. Change is the only invariable.
Whenever a couple in the spotlight call it a day, it’s a stark reminder of the fact that relationships are hard, no matter who you are – or how many Academy Award nominations you’ve received. Twenty years is, as I say, good going for any marriage. Maybe we need to realise that endings aren’t failures at all. The real success lies in the length of time they managed to make it work.
