Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman’s Relationship Timeline: From Meeting On Set to Divorce

Meeting in 1990

​​“She is a person who understands,” Tom told Vanity Fair in 1994 of meeting and starting a romance with Nicole on the set of Days of Thunder. “It was as if a whole new life had started for me.”

Marrying Later That Year

The two tied the knot in a very small ceremony held in Telluride, Colorado, on Christmas Eve, Entertainment Weekly reported.

Welcoming Children

Tom and Nicole’s adopted children, Bella and Connor, were welcomed into the family in 1992 and 1995, respectively. “Bella lives just outside London. You know, she really feels more English,” Nicole told Vanity Fair in 2019 about what her daughter is up to now, adding that Connor lives in Florida and works in the music industry.

Becoming Very Famous, Very Young

“I became famous very young. I became very famous because I was the wife of somebody,” Nicole told Easy Living Magazine in 2009, according to Marie Claire. “I felt I became a star only by association. I didn’t think (my early movies) were very good, which is why I would always cower in the background. I thought, I don’t deserve to be here. We would go to the Oscars and I would think, I’m here to support him. I felt it was my job to put on a beautiful dress and to be seen and not heard.”

Filming ‘Eyes Wide Shut’, 1996 to 1998

“We loved working with [director Stanley Kubrick],” Nicole told The New York Times Magazine in 2020 of the experience of filming Eyes Wide Shut from November 1996 through early 1999. “We shot that for two years. We had two kids and were living in a trailer on the lot primarily, making spaghetti because Stanley liked to eat with us sometimes.”

Split in 2001

“Citing the difficulties inherent in divergent careers which constantly kept them apart,” Nicole and Tom’s then-spokesperson Pat Kingsley told People in a statement at the time, adding “they concluded that an amicable separation seemed best for both of them at this time.” Nicole would later tell Ladies’ Home Journal that the split came as a “major shock.”

July 2024

More than two decades after their split, Nicole reflected on working with Tom in the 1999 film Eyes Wide Shut.

During an interview with the Los Angeles Times, Nicole revealed if director Stanley Kubrick took inspiration from their real life romance for the film. “I suppose he was mining it,” she said. “There were ideas he was interested in. He’d ask a lot of questions. But he had a strong sense of the story he was telling. I do remember him saying, ‘Triangles are hard. You have to tread carefully when it’s a triangle.’”

“Because one person could feel ganged up on. But he was aware of that and knew how to manage us,” Nicole added.

August 2024

Weeks after Nicole spoke about working with Tom, an insider exclusively told In Touch that he was upset she spoke about him in the interview.

“Tom doesn’t understand why Nicole constantly seems to constantly reference the times they shared together,” a source dished. “Even if it is more about the work they did together, it still bothers him because it’s so far in the past and something he’d like to forget.”

After noting that Tom has “said goodbye to that chapter of his life,” the insider said he “doesn’t understand why she can’t do the same, especially since she’s supposedly so happy with Keith.”

“For Nicole, it’s just nonsense because she’s just answering questions that pertain to her career, but there’s no denying she does love to go into detail about Tom’s creative genius,” the source added.