It’s been three months since we reported that the Oscar-winning actress Nicole Kidman and her country music star husband Keith Urban had finalized their divorce. This came after 19 years of marriage and two daughters together.
Now, Kidman has announced that she’s making a major change in her life in the wake of this split. Much to the shock of her fans, she’s training to become a death doula!
Kidan To Become A Death Doula
Kidman, 58, dropped this bomb while speaking at the University of San Francisco last weekend.
“As my mother was passing, she was lonely, and there was only so much the family could provide,” Kidman told her audience.
Kidman is the mother of four children. Her 55 year-old sister Antonia, with whom she is very close, is a mother of six.
“Between my sister and I, we have so many children and our careers and our work, and wanting to take care of her because my father wasn’t in the world anymore, and that’s when I went, ‘I wish there was these people in the world that were there to sit impartially and just provide solace and care,'” Kidman explained.
“So that’s part of my expansion and one of the things I will be learning,” she added.
Death doulas provide support to people and their loved ones during the end of their life. It’s also known as an end-of-life doula. According to the International End-of-Life Doula Association, “An end-of-life doula advocates self-determination and imparts psychosocial, emotional, spiritual, and practical care to empower dignity throughout the dying process.”
Kidman’s father, Dr. Antony Kidman, passed away in 2014. Her mother Janelle later died in September of 2024. Kidman has long been open about the immense grief that she felt over both of her parents’ deaths. The actress was at the Venice Film Festival for her movie Babygirl when she learned of her mother’s death.
Halina Reijn, the film’s director read out a letter from Kidman at the time which would have been the Oscar-winner’s acceptance speech for Best Actress. In the letter, Kidman revealed that she’d traveled to Venice, only to learn “shortly after that my beautiful, brave mother, Janelle Ann Kidman, has just passed.”
Kidman’s Divorce
This comes after a difficult time for Kidman. Less than a year after her mother’s death, Kidman and Urban separated in June of 2025. Urban was the one who initiated the split. He then immediately moved out of the family home and into his own residence in Nashville.
Kidman then spent the summer desperately trying to save their marriage. The actress finally gave in and filed for divorce on September 30. It was only then that her fans learned that they had secretly been separated for months.
“She didn’t want this,” a source told People Magazine after Kidman filed. “She has been fighting to save the marriage.”
Another insider told US Weekly that Kidman “had faith they could work it out.” Indeed, she still had hope despite being “quietly separated for a while.
“This wasn’t Nicole’s decision, and she is devastated,” the source lamented. “Her trust was lost, and it was too far gone. Nicole had been trying to get them to work on their marriage and did not want this to get out to the public. She didn’t tell many friends what was really going on with them and was holding this in for months.”
Yet another insider told Page Six that “sometimes relationships just run their course.” This source added that Kidman “did not want the separation and was trying to save things.”
It appears that Kidman has been suffering from one tragedy after another as of late. As she continues to grieve the loss of both her mother and her marriage, it comes as no surprise that she’d want to take on a new role in the form of a death doula. In the end, Kidman’s reasoning behind taking on this new job seems to be a noble one. We can only imagine how much she can help others with their grief in the future.
God bless you, Nicole Kidman!