Nicole Kidman

Nicole Kidman reveals all about her first year of marriage and those plastic surgery rumours

It's fair to say that Nicole Kidman has had somewhat of an up-and-down year. First came her joyous church wedding to country and western singer Keith Urban, followed several months later by his startling decision to undergo three months of intensive treatment for alcohol abuse at the Betty Ford Center.

'They say the first year of marriage is the hardest. Please, God!' she says, rolling her eyes. 'It's been hard, but my dad always says, "Just keep walking forward." Keith and I had to test our vows three months into our marriage. It's still very raw. Keith speaks about it a lot more freely than I do. [But] he's the most important person in my life, and I am for him, and that's where we're at. We won't go more than 12 days apart - ever.'

Off-screen, she seems fragile - still wounded by the events of recent years (including her 2001 divorce from Tom Cruise). 'I shed everything when I got divorced,' she says. 'I have an art collection that I put in storage, and that's where it stays.'

But it wasn't just Nicole who was affected - her adopted children with Cruise, Isabella, 14, and Connor, 12, must have found it hard, too. 'My daughter and son, their life is moulded by the way I live,' she says quietly. 'If I wasn't willing to take on that responsibility, I shouldn't have adopted them.'

She looks disturbed, as if hearing criticism, and adds, 'Then it can be argued that I shouldn't have got divorced - and that's true - but sometimes you don't have a decision in that. People fall out of love. If you go through a divorce, it's how you behave within that time that's important for what your son and daughter see.' She confirms that her children 'are being raised as Scientologists', but declines to comment further on the subject.

I can't resist asking whether it's true that she and Urban are hoping to have a baby together. 'I'd call you if I was pregnant,' she quips. Kidman is especially sensitive about this topic because of a recent story in Vanity Fair that garnered international headlines for the revelation that she lost a baby aged 23 while married to Cruise. 'It was wrongly reported,' she says. 'I had a miscarriage at the end of my marriage, but I had an ectopic pregnancy at the beginning of it,' she continues. 'It was incredibly traumatic.' Kidman is hopeful things will work next time, saying, 'What will be will be. It's in God's hands.'

This is an edited version of an interview which appears in the January 2008 issue of Marie Claire, on sale now.