July 23, 2007 12:00am
ONE year on from their fairytale wedding, Nicole Kidman's role as wife to country singer Keith Urban is what she treasures the most.
The actress says being at home, having her husband around and working once again with Baz Luhrmann makes for a happy treble.
In her most revealing interview since filming the outback epic Australia, Kidman has opened up about the important things in her life.
As she talks from her Harbour-side home at Darling Point, the conversation is accompanied by the strains of a piano being played by Keith that fills the house with an easing warmth.
"It's beautiful to have music in the house," says Kidman, whose road to fame began as a flame-haired teenager in BMX Bandits 24 years ago. "I have enormous reverence for his artistic strength. He is extraordinary."
Since April, Kidman has immersed herself in her role of English aristocrat Lady Sarah Ashley, starring opposite Hugh Jackman in Australia. It is her first work on home soil since Moulin Rouge! six years ago.
For Kidman, the combination of realising her childhood dream of making an all-Australian film and spending valuable time with Urban is blissful.
"It is just beautiful for me to be making a film here and him (Urban) touring here at the same time . . . that's a pretty big deal for us," she says. "We were looking at each other going 'Wow, this is a sweet spot now'."
The pair celebrated their first wedding anniversary in the North Queensland town of Bowen last month.
In a a double celebration, Urban surprised his wife with a romantic fireworks display for her 40th birthday, which was five days earlier.
"It was sweet . . . we are both very intertwined," Kidman says. "We are just so into each other.
"It's just lovely that coming from the same country gives you so much to draw from and bonds you in a way that people just don't understand. When you come from different countries you really don't bond in the same way."
There is no doubt musically-gifted Urban feels the same way. In a recent interview with Nashville's Tennessean, he shed light on his three-month stint in a Californian rehabilitation clinic for alcohol addiction.
The Grammy award winner described how Kidman "really took the reins" when he needed help. "There's no doubt that what it's done for our marriage has been truly divine," he said. "Not going would have cost me my career at the very least and my marriage would have been gone."
Dividing their time between their homes in Tennessee and Sydney, Kidman admits she's uncertain if they will live in Australia permanently in the future.
"We're not sure . . . a lot of his work is touring and stuff and we are only a year married," she said. "We are just trying to work out our rhythm still."
Kidman is filming at Sydney's Fox Studios for the next two weeks, before heading to Western Australia's Kimberley region. She is relishing family time, especially younger sister Antonia.
"We love riding together," Kidman says. "She is a much better rider than me, a beautiful rider. It's a really nice thing to do with your sister, to be able to have that hobby together."
In March, TV presenter Antonia gave birth to her fourth child with now estranged husband Angus Hawley. "My niece has just been born, so it's nice to be around and seeing my sister and her four kids and mum and dad,is great," Kidman said. "Everyone is so close and Keith's parents came and stayed with us up in Bowen, so our big extended family gets to share in some of the work, which is nice."
Kidman also says working with Luhrmann and his creative partner and wife, Catherine Martin, is also special to her.
"We have been wanting to make this film for so long and I think in my heart of hearts I have wanted to make a film for my country since I was little.
"To be doing it with Baz, who is probably the director I adore the most . . . I just love him and I understand him and he understands me."
Kidman has also been able to experience for the first time the breath-taking landscapes of the Australian Outback.
"I have never been to Darwin or parts of Queensland like Bowen. We went to Kakadu as well. These are the things you talk about and at this stage in my life I am so glad to be getting to do them."
After more than two decades in the spotlight, Kidman says it's the simple things in life that thrill her most.
"It's more the moments and the things that have happened in my life in terms of having children and going through so much and the journey of it.
"I remember that more than I do . . . the years."