Nicole Kidman recently remembered the painful moment when she received the news of her mother Janelle Ann Kidman’s death.
For those unaware, Janelle passed away on September 7, 2024, at the age of 804. It was told that she was fighting a long battle but the exact cause of her death has not been revealed yet. Kidman was attending the Venice Film Festival when the tragic news of her mother’s death reached her.
On Saturday, April 18, The Perfect Couple actress sat down with Hoda Kotb at History Talks in Philadelphia, where she admitted she was overjoyed at the time she took home the festival’s Best Actress award for her performance as Romy. Baby girl.
She shared, “I was about to go on stage and I found out my mother had died and I immediately went back to Venice’s room, lay down on the bed and completely broke down and thought, ‘I don’t know how I’m going to go on or function anymore.'”
Kidman said, “She was a huge part of my existence. So, the idea of being there in that particular moment was like parole.”
When she was able to think, she tried to leave Venice in the middle of the night to be with her family during the most difficult times.
Kidman recalled, “I remember literally sitting on a boat in the canal at night trying to find my way to the airport and then turning around and saying, ‘I can’t even do this.'”
“Then I went back to bed. And I was alone. My husband wasn’t there, my kids weren’t there. I was there to win an award, which should have been a beautiful thing. It’s the paradox of life,” scarpetta the star recalled, pointing to her now ex-husband Keith Urban.
It’s worth mentioning that Nicole Kidman, who learned “resilience” from that traumatic experience, announced her separation from Urban in September 2025.
The couple, who tied the knot in 2006 and gave birth to two daughters, Sunday Rose and Faith Margaret, filed for divorce citing irreconcilable differences, which was finalized in January 2026.
