Kidman keeps romantic soul amid heartbreak, court battles
| • | 'Cold Mountain' colors Law's view on life |
By Ann Oldenburg
USA Today
LOS ANGELES — For Nicole Kidman, love this year has come in the form of a new man, or so it appears from reports of her involvement with rocker Lenny Kravitz.
MGM Studios
After her divorce from Tom Cruise in 2001, she threw herself into her work and won an Oscar this year for "The Hours."
Jude Law is a wounded Confederate soldier who wants to reunite with his pre-war sweetheart (Nicole Kidman), in "Cold Mountain."
She looks super-thin in jeans and a black sweater set, her face fresh and her hair pulled back. In a room at the Hotel Bel-Air, she sits down and begins to explore the topic of love. Ask her how she's feeling about love and she says, "I feel protective of myself."
But the question everyone wants to know: Is she engaged?
Kidman, 36, has neither a confirmation nor a denial: "Unless I'm married, I don't talk about it. It's that simple. I can't. It's not being coy; it's being protective — of my own emotions and protective of any person in my life. And my children."
Her philosophy of love is that "if you're going to be with someone, you're with them, you're committed to them. I'm not sort of flitting around."
And, she adds, "If it ends, it ends."
It may have already ended with Kravitz. He was seen recently in Miami with someone else, according to gossip reports.
And it certainly ended with Cruise, although she will be forever linked to him because of their two adopted children.
She feels strongly about honoring the truth of her relationship with Jude Law, her co-star in "Cold Mountain," which opens Christmas Day. When tabloids wrote that they were having an affair, she sued.
"That goes against what I believe morally. That's adultery, and if I'm accused of that, no, that's not right. I have two kids who see that and remember that and judge me. It didn't happen, and it's not to be reported that way."
They did have to be intimate on the set, in character. "It's one of those films you dream you would get to make. It's an intimate love story set against an epic, epic backdrop."
Kidman says she's a romantic — "hopelessly so" — and cites her parents' 40 years together as the example. Every morning her dad brings her mother breakfast in bed, she says. "Good man, eh?"
