Kidman, 39, one of Australia's most famous exports, was born in Honolulu, Hawaii, in 1967, her family finally settling in Sydney. She comes from a close academic family - her father, Anthony, was a biochemist and respected researcher into breast cancer; her mother, Janelle, a nursing instructor and women's rights activist. Her sister, Antonia, three years her junior, has often been described by Kidman as 'my other half.'

While not conventionally maternal (she once told Kidman: 'I'm not the kind of mother who's going to hug you; it's just not me, so don't expect it'), Janelle was happy to let 17-year-old Nicole help nurse her when she successfully battled breast cancer. Janelle has also been credited with giving her eldest daughter her determination to succeed, that 'inner steel' many have noted in the deceptively ethereal, wafer-thin, porcelain-skinned Kidman.

At the same time, her mother worried that Kidman was unsuited, 'too sensitive' for acting, a thought occasionally echoed by Kidman and many who have worked with her, among them, Stephen Daldry, director of The Hours, who speaks of an 'irrational' desire to protect her.

Still, the young Kidman was focused enough to perform at Sydney's Philip Street Theatre (where her work inspired a film student, Jane Campion, to send a personal note of encouragement backstage; in 1996, Campion cast her in Portrait of a Lady). From there, Kidman captured Hollywood's attention in 1989's Dead Calm, where she was spotted by Tom Cruise, and cast in his stock-car racing movie, Days of Thunder. Subsequently she became his wife.

The Cruise-Kidman marriage was under attack from the start. Rumours never stopped circulating that the union, with its two adopted children (Isabelle, 13, and Connor, 11), was nothing but a 'beard' for Cruise's alleged homosexuality. The couple successfully sued for libel when it was claimed that they'd resorted to hiring a sex therapist to coach them for their (admittedly wooden) love scenes in Stanley Kubrick's posthumous 'sexual thriller', Eyes Wide Shut.

Kidman was also subject to spiteful allegations that she entered into the marriage purely for her career, with some industry insiders claiming that her Golden Globe winning performance in To Die For, was, in fact, autobiographical. However, Kidman was openly devastated by the split (later telling interviewers she wore nothing but pyjamas for weeks), frequently asserting that her 'major role' from her early twenties was as Mrs Cruise (adhering to the couple's rule of not being separated for more than two weeks).

When Kidman triumphed on the London stage in The Blue Room (her strip memorably described by one critic as 'theatrical Viagra'), she was accompanied by a somewhat outshone Cruise. Accepting another celebrated (and intense) role in Baz Luhmann's Moulin Rouge, Kidman was later to speculate whether this decision had cost her marriage.