Nicole Kidman cried when she won an Oscar in 2003. It wasn't for the reason we thought.

Over 20 years ago, for an outsider looking in, it appeared like Nicole Kidman was on top of the world.

But in reality, the Hollywood icon was dealing with a personal crisis. 

In 2003, Kidman won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of Virginia Woolf in The Hours. As the Australian actor collected her award, she struggled to contain her emotions, as she joked: "Russell Crowe said don't cry if you get up there, and now I'm crying. Sorry."

Watch the speech here. Post continues below.

Kidman has gone on to have one of the most celebrated careers in Hollywood, but looking back at that moment, the actor has admitted it wasn't a happy one. 

She opened up about the toll her 2001 divorce from Tom Cruise was taking on her at the time. 

"I was struggling with things in my personal life, yet my professional life was going so well," she said in an excerpt for Dave Karger's upcoming book, 50 Oscar Nights.

"That's what happens, right?"

At the time of her award win, her divorce from Cruise had just been finalised. The couple were married for 11 years.

"I'm not a big party girl, so I was going to skip the Vanity Fair party, and everyone was like, 'You've got to go. You've got to walk through the party carrying your Academy Award'," she remembered. 

"I said, 'That just feels like gloating, and it doesn't feel humble.' Like, what? You can't walk through carrying the award! That feels really inappropriate. They're like, 'That's what you do'."

Kidman went to the afterparty but didn't enjoy herself. "I literally walked in, carried it around, was completely overwhelmed, emotional, shaking and I didn't enjoy it," she recalled. 

"I was almost apologetic, which is so stupid. I wish I could have enjoyed it more."

The Moulin Rouge star soon left the party and returned to her room at The Beverly Hills Hotel. 

"I sat on the floor of the hotel eating French fries and a burger with my family and went to bed. That's when it hit me. I went, 'I need to find my love; I need a love in my life.' Because this is supposed to be when you go, 'This is ours'."

Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise during The 72nd Annual Academy Awards. Image: Getty. 

"I went to bed alone; I was in bed before midnight. If I ever won again, I'm telling you, I'd be out for 24 hours."

This isn't the first time Kidman has admitted to not having the best time at the 2003 awards. "I have to say, when I won my Oscar, I was not in a great place in my life," Kidman shared on The Late Show in 2017.

"I was sort of flailing emotionally and personally."

For his part, Cruise did not attend the Academy Awards that year. "Tom was not there because she was there, and he did not want a run-in," a source alleged to the Daily Mail. 

Nicole and Tom met in 1990, they got married mere months later and adopted two children together, daughter Isabella in 1992, and son Connor in 1995. 

"I was so young when I got married. I look back now and I'm like, 'What?"' Kidman reflected in an interview with Red magazine in 2016. 

"You look at Taylor Swift, I mean how old is she? She's 26. I had two kids by the time I was 27 and I'd been married for four years. But that's what I wanted." 

After her 2003 award win, Kidman went on to date and become briefly engaged to Lenny Kravitz. 

Then in 2005, she met Keith Urban with the iconic pair getting hitched in 2006 and eventually welcoming daughters Sunday Rose and Faith. 

Feature Image: Getty.