She’s just a raked-over Nicole
Nicole Kidman says her divorce from Tom Cruise was a “major shock” – and that she still loves him.
“To me, he was just Tom, but to everybody else, he is huge. But he was lovely to me. And I loved him. I still love him,” the 38-year-old actress tells Ladies’ Home Journal.
Cruise filed for divorce in February 2001 after 10 years of marriage and two adopted children, citing irreconcilable differences. The divorce was finalized later that year.
Katie Holmes, Cruise’s 27-year-old fiancee, gave birth to their first child last month.
“I always knew the rug was going to be taken out from underneath me at some stage,” Kidman says. “I didn’t think it was going to happen in the way it happened. I had seen my mother battle breast cancer, so I had a fear of my health being jeopardized – that was really where I was thinking mine would come. I knew I was going to get hit with something.
“But I think a divorce, and the demise of what your family is, is a little death in itself.”
Kidman, who stars in the upcoming “Fur,” about photographer Diane Arbus, is reportedly dating country singer Keith Urban.
“I’m pretty careful about who I share my life with,” she says. “I surround myself with truthful, kind people, most of whom are not in the business. It’s the life I want to have when I’m an old woman with long, gray hair.”
Cruise’s ship sinking
Kidman may still love Tom Cruise, but it appears the American public isn’t so sure.
According to a USA Today/Gallup Poll over the weekend, when “Mission: Impossible III” opened, when 1,013 adults were asked their opinion of Cruise, 35 percent were favorable and 51 percent unfavorable.
Last year, when “War of the Worlds” opened on the July 4 weekend, his rating was 58 percent favorable and 31 percent unfavorable.
Many point to Cruise’s antics over the past year – his promotion of Scientology, his feud with Brooke Shields over antidepressants, his couch-bouncing profession of love for Holmes on Oprah Winfrey‘s show – for the dip.
“The mystique is gone,” says Bradley Jacobs, Us Weekly movie editor. “People take offense at his seeming arrogance. He is still the biggest star in the world, but it is different.”
And speaking of synching …
Ashlee Simpson says she wants to wait to get married – unlike her big sister Jessica.
The 21-year-old singer tells Teen People that she’s watched her 25-year-old sister, who filed for divorce in December from Nick Lachey, “go through a really hard time” and that tying the knot “is definitely not on my mind.”
While she’s “absolutely in love” with bandmate Braxton Olita, the younger Simpson says, “There’s a lot of growing you do in your 20s, and I definitely want to wait until my late 20s or 30s or whenever the time is right.”
No cold feet there
At age 32, Tori Spelling apparently has no such qualms, wedding actor boyfriend Dean McDermott in a barefoot ceremony over the weekend on a private island in Fiji.
They met last year while filming the TV movie “Mind Over Murder,” while married to other people, but both have since divorced.
Baby, one more time
Finally, in case you haven’t already heard by now, it’s official: Britney Spears is pregnant with her second child.
“Don’t worry Dave, it’s not yours,” she quipped to David Letterman during a surprise announcement on Tuesday’s “The Late Show.”
Spears and husband Kevin Federline have an 8-month-old son, Sean Preston, who’s been in the news for riding in his mom’s lap – not a car seat – while she fled photographers, and for a fall from his high chair that led to a visit by child welfare authorities.
The birthday bunch
Comedian Mort Sahl is 79. Singer Eric Burdon (The Animals, War) is 65. Actress Shohreh Aghdashloo (“24”) is 54. Former MTV VJ Martha Quinn is 47. Actress Natasha Richardson is 43. Actor Coby Bell (“Third Watch”) is 31. Actor Jonathan Jackson (“Tuck Everlasting,” “General Hospital”) is 24.