In a 1995 issue of Vanity Fair, much before Nicole Kidman had achieved the kind of undeniable and transcendental fame that her name is now associated with, she was interviewed and subsequently portrayed as a (metaphorical) lady on fire. Kidman’s love for danger – things that would usually make other people borderline neurotic out of fear, her appreciation for transitory experiences and antique objects, and her strong belief in fate, will, and destiny makes her a one-of-a-kind woman. The world would soon after go on to find out how true that statement was.

By the time she was 17, Nicole Kidman hurtled toward everything that was told to her by everyone to be beyond her reach. The then-young Australian actress defied the status quo and shattered glass ceilings, married the man the entire world lusted for at 23, and had Hollywood’s biggest directors falling in a trance at her formidable beauty, authoritative presence, and boundless personality by the time she was 25.

Nicole Kidman [via Vanity Fair]

The Indomitable Destiny of Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise

It is only understandable that a star of the caliber such as hers knew – with complete and utter compulsion – of her place in this industry, what she was meant to achieve, and who she wanted to share all of her experiences with. When Nicole Kidman met Tom Cruise, however, her penchant for looking at things and realizing it as destiny did not immediately take over. Rather, it was lust at first glance – “I thought he was the sexiest man I’d ever seen in my life” – followed by the grounded and settling feeling of finding the person that a Romantic would probably define as one’s soulmate.

Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman

Both Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman’s initial appreciation of each other were rooted in their mutual love for the somewhat same genre of death-defying adventures. The actress recalled in the Vanity Fair interview,

“It’s an amazing sensation—not as good as s*x, but almost. It’s like before you go onstage opening night, when you’re almost dizzy from adrenaline. I love that feeling. It’s scariness that’s controllable. Tom will put himself in a position where if you make one mistake you could die; he’s worse than me. But when you do these things, you feel you’ve accomplished something that’s almost impossible. You feel that every inch of you is alive.”

And even though Kidman’s desire for being the epitome of femme fatale went unnoticed by many, the same was not the case for her husband. Cruise later claimed, “This woman got in the car with me when I was driving 185 miles an hour, and at the end of it she said, ‘Let’s do another lap!’” Soulmates, indeed.

The Daunting Romance of Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman

If there was ever anything that could get the pair’s blood running, it was finding a partner as striking as each other who also happened to harbor an equal magnitude of affinity toward high-adrenaline sports. Cruise’s inextinguishable love for extreme adventures finally found reliable compatibility in Nicole Kidman. The Mission: Impossible actor later admitted:

“I knew she was it for me. I absolutely knew—I just knew it. I thought, This is the person to be able to share all of who I am with, and her with me. There was a freshness to life, and a mutual soul I was looking for. I just knew I couldn’t live without her. [Marrying her] is the best decision I ever made.”

Tom Cruise with then-wife Nicole Kidman

This was way before his couch-jumping confession of love for Katie Holmes on Oprah. At the time Cruise and Kidman crossed paths, both were relatively young, although Tom Cruise was already coming out of his marriage to Mimi Rogers. By the end of his saga with Rogers, Cruise had infamously announced that he was done with all matters of the heart – that is until he met Nicole Kidman, and both of them hurtled toward their inevitable destiny at 185 miles per hour.

Source: Vanity Fair