For 12 years Nicole Kidman has been happily married to Keith Urban, which is why she doesn’t often talk about her previous marriage to Tom Cruise.

But this week, during her Life In Pictures talk at Bafta in London, the actress spoke of the loneliness she felt after her marriage to Cruise ended in 2001 – after he filed for divorce.

“In my case, I went and met somebody and fell in love and had a whole different path in terms of what I wanted to do,” Kidman said, referring to meeting her now husband, Urban.

However, in doing so, the actress admitted she had to consciously make time in her life to do so. At the time, Kidman had just won an Oscar for her performance as writer Virginia Woolf in The Hours.

“I was very lonely and I didn’t want to be. So I went, ‘OK, I’m going to try and meet my partner’, and that takes time,” Kidman explained. “It can’t be working all the time and flitting around the world.”

Kidman was only 23 years old when she married Cruise, admitting: “I fell in love very young and got married very early.”

A recent study found that 34% of 25-34 year olds are lonely ‘often or very often’ while 36% of 34-44 year olds felt the same.

Nicole Kidman recalls feeling “very lonely” after her divorce from Tom Cruise