Nicole Kidman Makes Rare Comments About Kids With Tom Cruise, Scientology

Nicole Kidman hardly ever speaks about Connor and Bella Cruise, her two adopted children with ex-husband Tom Cruise, but the actress made a rare exception during a recent interview with Australia’s Who magazine.

“I’m very private about all that. I have to protect all those relationships,” she said. “I know 150 percent that I would give up my life for my children because it’s what my purpose is.”

Though Kidman doesn’t practice Scientology like her ex, their children still do. According to the actress, she’s learned to accept their affiliation with the controversial church organization. “They are adults. They are able to make their own decisions,” she said of her 23-year-old son and 25-year-old daughter. “They have made choices to be Scientologists and as a mother, it’s my job to love them.”

Kidman went on to say that she is an “example of tolerance.” She elaborated, “That’s what I believe — that no matter what your child does, the child has love and the child has to know there is available love and I’m open here.”

The Oscar winner — who plays the mother of a teen struggling with his sexuality in Boy Erased, the new film based off Garrard Conley’s 2016 memoir of the same name — said that offering “unconditional love” is a parent’s most important job.

“I think that’s so important because if that is taken away from a child, to sever that in any child, in any relationship, in any family — I believe it’s wrong,” said Kidman. “So that’s our job as a parent, to always offer unconditional love.”

Kidman’s Who interview comes weeks after she penned an essay for New York magazine, in which she opened up about her marriage to Cruise. In her piece, Kidman said that her marriage to the movie star protected her from sexual harassment in the entertainment industry.

“I married for love, but being married to an extremely powerful man kept me from being sexually harassed,” she wrote. “I would work, but I was still very much cocooned. So when I came out of it at 32, 33, it’s almost like I had to grow up.” 

Kidman and Cruise tied the knot in 1990 after meeting on the set of the film Days of Thunder. They divorced in 2001. Kidman is now married to country singer Keith Urban, with whom she shares daughters Sunday, 10, and Faith, 7.

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