Before Tom Cruise became a Scientologist who liked to jump on Oprah's coach, he and Nicole Kidman were the power couple of the '90s. Over time, however, she became famous for her relationship with another man — Oscar — and her illustrious career surpassed even the worst tabloid headlines.

While she began her career as a teen in Australia, Nicole achieved her first critical breakthrough in the U.S. with Gus Van Sant's To Die For (1995), where she played a seductive fame-crazed housewife with deadly comedic timing. She received a Golden Globe and several critics' awards for the performance and went on to wow audiences with her transformation as Virginia Woolf in The Hours, for which she received an Academy Award in 2002.

While her private life has had its ups and downs, the 42-year-old has found bliss with country star (and fellow Aussie) Keith Urban, whom she wed in 2006. The couple has a daughter, Sunday, in addition to Nicole’s two kids, Isabella, 16, and Connor, 14, with Tom Cruise.

Not just an actress who can sink her teeth into dramatic roles, Nicole can sing and dance, as she showed in Moulin Rouge, and now in her new film, Nine, in which she plays Claudia, a Swedish movie star — a role that screenwriter Anthony Minghella penned specifically for her. Want to know more about Nicole? Read on.

1. Warren Beatty was the unintentional matchmaker between her and Tom Cruise.
When Nicole was up for the part of Tess Trueheart in Dick Tracy, Warren Beatty, who was directing and starring in the film, decided she was too young. But, as Nicole told Elle, “He said, 'I do have somebody you should meet.' And he picked up the phone and called Robert Towne, who was writing Days of Thunder [the movie in which she met and fell in love with Tom Cruise]. So Warren changed my life." Nic and Tom married in December 1990, adopted two kids, Isabella and Connor, and divorced in 2001.

2. She has no regrets about her first marriage to Tom Cruise.
Nicole married Tom at the age of 23. Looking back now, does she think she married too young? "Um, no," she says. "Would I want my kids to get married at that age? No! But that was an extraordinary thing for me. [Tom] taught me an enormous amount — as a girl into a woman. Absolutely, I would do it again."