Nicole Kidman has admitted she can't stop crying

30 Oct 2008 

Over her daughter Sunday Rose that is. The Aussie actress has revealed she bursts into tears whenever she thinks of her newborn daughter.

But the 41 year-old insists: "They are tears of joy."

Speaking to US magazine Parade, Kidman opens up about her new role - motherhood - and how it has affected her life.

She tells Parade: "(I have) reacted intensely with whatever that primal thing is, the need and desire to keep her protected. People say: 'Oh it would be much easier if you'd just let them get a photo of her'. And I can't. I'm like: 'I don't want to. I want her to stay out of that'. Maybe that will wane as she gets bigger and I'll be easier with it but for now, I'm keeping her in a bubble. I'm raw and emotional. I cry even thinking about her. But they are tears of joy".

"Because I suppose I never thought that I would get to have it. To have been given it so late in life - I'm so ready for it. And I think giving birth to a child, as a woman, is what we're born to do.I don't mean that to sound sexist because so many women don't get to do it an I thought I was one of them. But at the same time, if you are given that gift, it's an extraordinary thing. Well, I'm her mother so she's special. I'm devoted. I'm totally devoted to her."

Kidman may be enjoying motherhood a second time around but one thing she refused to talk to Parade about was her adopted children with Tom Cruise - Connor and Isabella - and how they are raised as Scientologists.

She said: "I just don't talk about it. Bella and Connor are 15 and 13 so we've taken them, Tom and I, almost into their adult life. To then have a birth child that I have to take into adult life, give her her wings, it's a big purpose. I know my place, put it that way. I like knowing my place, though I feel grounded with it."

Kidman also reveals she has cured her adventurous lifestyle since giving birth to Sunday Rose. She has given up jumping out of planes and taking risks, which she did when she was younger.

Kidman told Parade: "It's very bittersweet. Because at 41, I think: 'I want to see her 21st birthday and I want to see her get married. My relationship with death used to be far more ambivalent, I think, and now it's very much about staying in the world. That's why in the past I could jump out of planes and take lots of risks, Strangely enough, I think that when you have children at 25, you still have that 'what will be, will be' attitude".

"It's such a different way of parenting. Bella and Connor were very free and easy, probably because they had parents who were very young and jumping around the world and pretty easy going."

Kidman also praises husband Keith Urban and reveals she is just as devoted to him and she is their daughter.
And she is delighted that she thinks Sunday Rose looks like the country star.
She adds: "I'm glad because when he goes on tour, I say to him that he leaves a little bit of him with me."

But, she admits, separation has always been hard for her, adding: "I was the child who would lie awake at night when my mom went to work and I'd cry, scared she wasn't coming home. It's why, I suppose, in relationships as well, I get very attached and fiercely protective, fiercely loyal. It takes me a long time , and once I do it, that's it."

Kidman tells Parade she became even closer to Urban when he checked into rehab for alcohol addiction not long after they married.

She said: "We were thrown into this alcohol problem three months into the marriage and that was big.
We became the closest we could because we had to bare our souls. We did ten years of marriage in three months. You go to hell and back with this - when the addiction takes control of the life, it's terrifying. But there is hope and we work on it every day and we are in a place of actual peace right now which is a beautiful place".

"I love him so deeply and he has done an amazing amount of work and he is an amazing husband and I am just very very grateful. I think we are both in a place of humility. Now my ability to notice things and respond to things and be here is far more profound. With that comes happiness, with it comes sadness. But it's a beautiful life."