'It's a huge, aching yearning' Nicole Kidman opens up about ectopic pregnancy and suffering a miscarriage

Hollywood actress Nicole Kidman has spoken out about the pain she still suffers 20 years after suffering from a miscarriage.

The Nine Perfect Strangers star endured an ectopic pregnancy during her 11 year marriage to fellow actor Tom Cruise.

Nicole, now 50, explained that the ‘enormous amount of pain’ the couple experienced, led them to adopt their now grown-up children Isabella and Connor.

Speaking during an interview with Tatler magazine, Nicole said: 'I know the yearning. That yearning. It's a huge, aching yearning. And the loss! The loss of a miscarriage is not talked about enough. That's massive grief to certain women.’

The Australian star was only 23-years-old when she lost her first child, shortly after marrying Tom in 1990.

Nicole suffered an ectopic pregnancy - a condition in which an embryo starts to develop in a fallopian tube instead of in the womb.

She finally managed to get pregnant again but suffered a miscarriage around the time Top Gun star Tom filed for divorce in 2001.

Speaking about their decision to adopt, she explained: 'There's an enormous amount of pain and an enormous amount of joy on the other side of it,' Nicole said as she described the feeling of becoming a mother.

'The flipside of going through so much yearning and pain to get there is the feeling of "Ahhhh!" when you have the child.'

Nicole has always been very honest about the fact she wanted to start a family early on.

'From the minute Tom and I were married, I wanted to have babies,' she told Marie Claire magazine in 2007.

'And we lost a baby early on, so that was really very traumatic. And that's when it came that we would adopt Bella.'

She continued: 'My mother has an adopted sister, so it's been part of our family and I knew it would probably play out somewhere in mine. I didn't think it would happen so early but it did.'

Nicole has since gone on to have two daughters with her husband Keith Urban, whom she married in June 2006.

The couple's first daughter Sunday Rose was born in 2008, in Nashville, and in 2010, they welcomed their second daughter Faith via surrogacy at Nashville's Centennial Women's Hospital.

Words by Kirsty McCormack