Vanity Fair

Nicole Kidman says her marriage to Tom Cruise was "intoxicating," but calls her current husband Keith Urban her "great love."

"I was so young," Nicole Kidman, 46, told December's Vanity Fair magazine about her first marriage to Cruise when she was 23 years old. "And you know, with no disrespect to what I had with Tom, I've met my great love now."

"And I really did not know if that was going to happen. I wanted it, but I didn't want it for a while, because I didn't want to jump from one relationship to another. I had a lot of time alone, which was really, really good, because I was a child, really, when I got married. And I needed to grow up," Kidman said.

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Kidman, who was married to Cruise from 1990 to 2001, said her divorce to the Hollywood superstar coincided with her Academy Award-winning performance as Virginia Woolf in "The Hours." The Aussie actress recalled shooting Woolf's suicide scene at the lowest point in her marriage.

"Walking into the river with those stones in my pockets - I chose life," she told Vanity Fair. "At the time, I was at a low point, and by playing her, it put me into a place of appreciating life."

Kidman also described the surreal level of fame she experienced while married to Cruise.

"There is something about that sort of existence that, if you really focus on each other and you're in that bubble, it's very intoxicating, because it's just the two of you," she said. "And there is only one other person that's going through it. So it brings you very close, and it's deeply romantic."

"I'm sure Brad and Angelina have that - because there's nobody else that understands it except that person who's sleeping right next to you," she added.

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Kidman's life with country singer and "American Idol" judge Urban, 46, is much more low key. The couple live in Nashville with their two daughters. Kidman said she doesn't miss Hollywood either.

"The whole business side of it - it's too present. It doesn't suit me," she explained to Vanity Fair about life in Hollywood. "There's an enormous amount you have to give up if you want to have a family. You can have a certain career, but you can't be living in Hollywood, [where] absolutely everything, everything revolves around it. That wasn't my choice. I'd rather revolve around somebody else's career and then still find my own."

"I have stepped away from the fame part of it," she continued. "I didn't find what I was looking for in fame. So I went, O.K., this is not for me. And it was such a blessing that I found somebody who said, 'Well, are you willing to move to Tennessee?' And I was 'Oh, am I willing to move!'"

Kidman calls her marriage to Urban "very, very peaceful," but admits that she struggles between "giving my life to my lover and my children" and "giving my life to my artistic desires."

"It's a push-pull. It's uncharted," she said. "My husband and I are in uncharted territory because we're trying to find artistic expression but also we're incredibly connected as a family - we're very, very tight, very, very close, and I have a very, very primal protection of my family."

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