The past year and a half have been a rollercoaster ride fo Nicole Kidman. Professionally, the actress couldn't have been doing better, with an Academy Award nomination and a Gloden Globe for her performance in last year's Moulin Rouge! and a megahit with the gothic thriller The Others. But her personal life was another story: Since feb. 4, 2001, when Tom Cruise packed his bags and walked out of the couple's Pacific Palisades home in California and out of their ten-year marriage, it's been a tough journey for Nicole. After all, not so long ago, Nicole's greatest claim to fame was simply being Mrs. Tom Cruise. In the difficult days that followed the curt press release from Tom's spokeswoman that simpy stated " Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman announced today that they have regretfully decided to separate," Nicole garnered strength and support from long distance phone calls with her younger sister, Antonia, and her mom, Janelle, back home in Australia. Moulin Rouge! director Baz Luhrmann remembers: " One day Nicole rang me up: She said , 'There are helicopters around the house, and Tom has left me.' It was a big shock." Tom insisted, "Nic knows exactly why we are getting a divorce," but Nicole has said she's only now beginning to understand why they separated. The second blow came in March, when Nicole suffered a miscarriage. She and Tom had apparently conceived just weeks before the breakup. Nicole confessed: "It was hell. It was dark and deeply lonely. I felt panic and absolute fear about my future. I thought I knew what my future would be, and then suddenly I didn't. So then I went, What is it all about? What is life? Why do you want to live it?" No one would have blamed Nicole is she had run back to her homeland of Australia to lick her wounds. But running away isn't Nicole's style. No, the five-foot-eleven-inch actress dug her high heels in and decided to fully commit herself to her two passions: acting and family. As part of the divorce agreement with Tom, the couple have joint custody of their two adopted children, Isabella, 10, and Conor, 7. Nicole seems to be embracing single parenting: When she isn't working, she's taking Conor to see his favorite basketball team, the Los Angeles Lakers, or she's shopping with Isabella. Although the details of alimony and child support remain private, Tom and Nicole did agree to continue educating their children in a private school when in Australia, to homeschool them when in Los Angeles, and to get tutors for them when they are on movie sets. For the past few months, the children have been in Los Angeles with Tom while Nicole was in Romania making a film. As difficult as the separation has been, Nicole and Tom have decided to be on good terms for the sake of their children. They spend holidays and some vacations together when they aren't working. Clearly, Nicole has emerged from the relationship with enormous dignity. And while there's no doubt that Tom was originally the brightest light behind the star wattage of the Cruise-Kidman marriage, today, with two Oscar- worthy roles about to hit the screens, Nicole had become a star to be reckoned with. This month Nicole's most serious and substantial role to date arrives, in the form of a screen adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize -winning novel The Hours. In the film, co-starring Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore, Nicole transforms herself into the late, great, troubled writer Virgina Woolf. Nicole dove into the role, which required her to play a suicidal, emotionally instable-albeit brilliant-woman. "She told me that she started The Hours right after the separation, and that was a significant part of what enabled her to get into the depth and sorrow of Virgina Woolf," explains The Hours author Michael Cunningham, who became friends with Nicole through the filming. "She looked physically frail when I first met her: She felt delicate. I felt like I should close the windows because a strong wind could blow her over." The initial, and most surprising, element of this role is that the glamorous Nicole is nowhere to be found. In her place is a dowdy and morose woman with a very large prosthetic nose. "My face is so dramarically different from Virgina's "says Nicole. "So we changed my profile and the way my face is structured." The results were so startling, even her friend Renee Zellweger didn't recognize her :"I thought, I know that girl. It was bizarre because I was looking into her eyes and thinking, Who is that? That was how different she looked. The transformation was amazing," she says. Cleary this is a woman who is not afraid to step out of the safe zone and go beyond boundaries. "It was daunting to take on a literary figure of this magnitude," says the actress. " I thought, I could really fall flat on my face doing this." But acccording to cunningham, "Nicole's performance is what the Acadmey Awards exist for: to acknowledge a performance that involves this kind of stretch and this kind of accomplishment." After The Hours, she immediately started filming The Human Stain, with Anthony Hopkins, an adaptation of Philip Roth's acclaimed 2000 novel. Currently she's filming the Civil War epic Cold Mountain in Romania with Jude Law, Renee Zellweger, Donald Sutherland, and Natalie Portman. And in case you thought that wasn't enough, she's also producing In The Cut, an upcoming film starring Meg Ryan. As friend and director Baz Lurhmann puts it: "She embodies, more then anyone I have ever known, the motto of Moulin Rouge!: The show must go on." It's a work ethic that was instilled early on. Growing up in suburb of Sydney, Australia, Nicole was always passionate about dance and theater.At age 17, she informed her parents that she was dropping out of high school to pursue acting full time. After several film and television roles, Nicole caught the eye of a young hunk named Tom Cruise and went on to co-star with him in Days of Thunder in 1990. After a whirlwind courtship stoked by what Nicole called instant lust, they married on Christmas Eve in Telluride, Colorado. While Tom's career soared, Nicole fought to forge her own identity. Critical success finally came five years later in the black comedy To Die For. "Nicole is quite lighthearted and funny," says Anthony Hopkins. "She doesn't take herself too seriously, which is a change because so many people take themseleves too damn seriously in this business. She's a lot of fun." In 1996 the gloden couple were on a roll, and they decided to embark on a movie making adventure called Eyes Wide Shut, an erotically charged film about the disintegration of a marriage. After filming, the couple decamped to their Sydney home. While the kids attended private school there, Nicole shot Moulin Rouge! and Tom made Mission: Impossible 2. A year later, they were separated. Today Nicole has emerged from the shadow of her iconic ex-husband. Is she bitter about the path her life has taken? Not a bit. "Yes, it's strange and bizarre and all those things," she once said. "But it it what it is. Tom and I will be the parents of two children for the rest of our lives, and that is the priority. So with that comes the need to deal with [the breakup] rationally." And what of love? If various gossip is to be believed, Nicole has been keeping company with a panorama of eligible men including fellow Aussie Russell Crowe (a friendship the tabloids insist is hot and heavy); Spider-Man star Tobey Maguire; British pop star Robbie Williams; Italian film producer Fabrizio Mosca; and Counting Crows lead singer Adam Duritz. But pals of the actress say Nicole has not been seriously involved with anyone since she and Tom split. Nicole herself has said, "My kids have seen me alone now. I really wanted that. I'm not sharing my life with anybody at the moment, because I wanted them to have me. My children say, 'Mom, get a new boyfriend, 'but I'm in no rush. I'm beginning to say, "I'm moving gently forward." Here Nicole talks exclusively to Redbook about her kids, her ex-husband, and her future.

You've been quoted as saying that you want to raise your two children, Conor and Isabella, in Australia.
No, the quote is actually incorrect.[laughs] I just want to raise my kids the best way I can, and obviously that means being close to their father. That means keeping us all in close proximity so they have access to both their mother and their father. I mean, obviouslyAustralia is where I grew up, so I need to spend time there because my mother, father, and sister live there, and my nieces and nephews. I get an enormous comfort from going home, and I want my children to be a part of that. But I'm really just working on raising them to feel as though they are close to both their mother and father.

What role do you want Tom to play in their lives?
Well, obviously he's their father, and I want him to be a huge, huge part of their lives forever.

In what ways do you want their childhood to be like your own?
Well, I don't think theirs could ever be like mine. I lived in a small neighborhood, and I got to ride my bike. I had a very protected childhood that was very rich and a lot of fun, too, but in a different way. I want them to have a strong sense of being protected by their mother, and that i'm always on their side. That's what I always got from my mom and dad. No matter what, they were always on my side, and I think it's very important for a child to know that.

What is the one thing you want them to grow up knowing?
That they are adored. I think that as long as a child has that, then they are stepping out into the world with a sense of security. I also want them to have a strong social conscience and to be compassionate and to be caring toward other people.

What have you learned from your children?
I learn something from them everyday. [laughs] I've learned patience, because you have to be very patient around a child. They also remind you to have fun, because just to hear them laughing...they laugh with such strengh and purity that you just say," I want to be able to laugh like that, like a child does, for the rest of my life."

How do you juggle your very busy career with parenting?
It's not easy being a working mother. Bascially, taking care of yourself gets put on the back burner. It's about being selfless, which I think is a very good state to be in anyway. It means you don't get to go to too many parties or do too much by yourslef. But you certainly get to spend time with them and be there for them. I think it's very important for children to know that their mother is there during breakfast and dinner.

What has been the hardest , but most surprising, thing about being single again?
I suppose having a sense of independence and freemdom is surprising. At the same time that's hard, because I very much liked being in a relationship, and I liked that feeling of having a best friend. The hardest thing is losing that and then also having to take care of yourself, by yourself.

What has the public's reaction to you as a single mom been like?
I don't know. [laughs] I never know what the public's reaction is. I sort of do my work and then tend to be quite private, you know. I go to my friends' premieres to support them, because I have a strong community of friends who are very important to me. But a lot if my friends are not actors. I pride myself on being a great friend and being very loyal.

You have such a great relationship with your sister and other female friends. What's your idea of a great girls' night out?
I do very much enjoy the company of women. And I think when you are in your 30's your girlfriends are so, so important. Not that they are not in your teen years, but I think you don't appreciate them as much as you do when you start to get a bit older. A good girl date is hanging out at home, watching a video, ordering chinese, talking, and having a glass of wine.

What issues are you involved with?
My mother had breast cancer. And I do a lot of fund-raising for ovarian cancer because that really affects me. I saw my mother go through an enormous amount if pain[battling cancer]. Now I always respond to seeing of hearing that a woman has cancer. That always affects me very deeply, and I always want to reach out and help.

Do you see yourself getting married again in the future? Do you want more kids?
Yeah, I'd like to have a lot of kids running around ; I love the sound of children. And obviously I would love to get married again and share my love for somebody again. Sometimes you wonder if that's in store for you. But it would be lovely to have four of five kids; I would love that.

What do you consider your greatest achievement?
Definitely being a mother: I take that very seriously, the responsibilty of that. I'm proud I can be dedicated to what I do, and I try to do it the best I can and still be kind and good to people.
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