By HARRIET ALEXANDER, US SENIOR FEATURES WRITER and EMMA POWELL, EXECUTIVE SHOWBUSINESS EDITOR and RUSS WEAKLAND, US SENIOR SHOWBIZ REPORTER
Nicole Kidman seemed completely in control. Poised and professional, she sat on stage on September 22 to discuss filmmaking in her adopted hometown of Nashville, Tennessee, sharing her thoughts in a talk entitled 'Where Art Meets Home'.
Unbeknownst to the audience, her home life was in flames.
Just two weeks before that Nashville Film Festival appearance she had signed a custody agreement detailing the terms of the separation from country music star Keith Urban.
Kidman's husband of 19 years had moved out on their house, leaving her with their two daughters Sunday Rose, 17, and 14-year-old Faith Margaret.
The Oscar-winning actresses' carefully curated world was falling apart. Yet she acted as though the show must go on.
That all changed this week - seven days which sources close to Kidman, 58, have described as her week from hell - with thanks to Urban, 57.
'Keith looks as if he's out to try to publicly embarrass and hurt Nic,' a source closed to Kidman told the Daily Mail. 'He's always been the quieter one but now that seems to have changed.'
This week has been described by sources close to Kidman, 58, as her week from hell - with thanks to Urban, 57.
While Kidman has been hunkered down at the seven-bedroom mansion they shared on the outskirts of Nashville, in an exclusive gated community, Urban has been on stage with his band, including guitarist Maggie Baugh, 25.
With insiders claiming that Urban has met 'a younger woman in the music industry,' some have suggested that 'other woman' is Baugh.
In April, Urban sang 'I was born to love you' while gazing at the feisty and ambitious brunette less than half his age; last week, he switched Kidman's name in an ode to her to Baugh's. The move shocked those who know him.
'The fact that he changed the lyrics in the song he wrote about Nic and made it a dedication to his young guitarist Maggie Baugh says so much about how he's dealing with their separation and how he feels about Nic,' the source said.
'This is a total 180 from the Keith I know. It seems like a switch has gone off in his head to awaken this vitriol he appears to have for her.'
The Daily Mail reached out to representatives of Kidman and Urban and did not receive comment on this reporting.
The root of Urban alleged ill will is hard to fathom, Kidman herself seems dumbfounded and has reportedly been telling friends that she wanted to fight to save their marriage.
One source told the Daily Mail: 'I feel so bad for Nic and what she's going through. It's like she's reliving her split from Tom [Cruise] all over again when she was shamed in front of the world.'
Indeed, for friends of the actress, this is all so horribly similar to 2001, when then-husband Tom Cruise reportedly blindsided Kidman by filing for divorce shortly after their tenth wedding anniversary.
'I thought our life together was perfect,' said Kidman a decade later. 'It was a shock to my system. It took me a very long time to heal.'
Cruise, meanwhile, cryptically declared: 'She knows why, and I know why.'
A second source noted: 'She wanted to still be with Keith, but here we are. It has been a very sad and frustrating week. With a very heavy heart she is going through all the emotions right now and realizing that it is actually over.
The life that she has known for the last two decades has suddenly halted - and it isn't going to be overnight where she is going to feel great again.'
The public nightmare started on Monday, when TMZ began reporting that the couple had separated. The site confirmed they had been living apart since the early summer but suggested they might reconcile.
On Tuesday, Kidman put an end to any such hope, pulling the trigger and filing for divorce. In documents seen by the Daily Mail she cited, 'irreconcilable differences' as the cause.
Neither were seeking spousal support: the New Zealand-born Australian singer is worth an estimated $75 million; the Hawaiian-born Australian actress has earned over $250 million.
It then emerged that the pair had signed a parenting agreement over the summer, in which Kidman was granted primary custody of their teenage daughters - 306 days a year compared to a mere 59 days for Urban.
He is entitled to have the girls from 10am on Saturday until 6pm on Sunday, every other weekend. The holidays were also divided up: he gets every Father's Day; she gets every Mother's Day and Easter. Thanksgivings and Christmas switch from year to year.
He signed the contract on August 29; she inked the deal a week later, on September 6.
By Wednesday, the strain of being indoors with her thoughts became too much and Kidman went out for a hike with her journalist sister Antonia, 55. The pair were pictured in animated discussion on the streets close to Kidman's Nashville home.
Urban on Thursday landed in Hershey, Pennsylvania - notably not wearing his wedding ring. He performed that night for the first time since the split was made public. Baugh sat the concert out.
Currently on his 'High and Alive' tour, on Friday he was performing in Connecticut, and on Saturday night in Virginia. This stretch of his world tour wraps up on October 17 in Nashville.
And then what? After all, Urban has had his demons. He's spoken openly about his addictions. Urban began taking cocaine in the early 1990s while still based in Australia and developed severe alcohol problems too.
When he married Kidman in 2006, a year after meeting at the G'Day USA gala in Los Angeles, a model claimed they had an affair throughout his engagement - something Urban's representatives vehemently denied.
Shortly after their June wedding, Urban began drinking again and Kidman, who was working in Rome at the time, flew back to the States and rounded up his friends to stage an intervention.
He was shipped him off to the Betty Ford clinic for his third stint in rehab in eight years.
'He isn't going through a midlife crisis,' another source close Kidman said. 'He is going through changes in his personal and professional life, and they just happen to be happening all at once.
'He is just going through a rough patch, and this will eventually pass, and he will make it on the other side.
'He's just fallen out of love with Nicole, and the decisions that have had to be made are ones that were and are important to him, as he knows that they aren't getting back together.'
Now, Kidman has her work to take her mind off things. Current projects include producing the thriller 'The Silent Wife,' and developing the film 'Love, Pain and the Whole Damn Thing.'
She has also recently optioned a TV series.
The title: 'A Good Marriage.'