You know, we were always sort of ambivalent when it came to Nicole Kidman. On the one hand, she’s exquisite and talented and appears not to be in possession of sweat glands. But she’s also a bit stiff and seems like she has to be plugged into an outlet and recharged every night. And, seriously, what happened to her red hair?

But then she handled the divorce with such grace. And when Tom Cruise freaked out this year, she had the class to stay mum on the whole thing, not even to offer a smug, “I tol’ you that b-tch crazy.” And how can you not sympathize with someone whose husband starts having threesomes with Jack Daniels a mere four months into the marriage?

So she won us over, but we still didn’t know that much about her. Happily, she goes Vogue-ing this December and submits to a fairly personal interview. No talk about Cruise’s new, possibly sedated bride, or hubby Keith Urban, who’s currently getting wrung out by the Betty Ford Center. But it’s revealing, nonetheless. Interview excerpts below…

On marrying young:
“You get the advice ‘Don’t get married when you’re 22,’ and you just think, They don’t know what they’re talking about! But now I look back and think, Oh, there’s probably some truth to that.”

On marriage:
“Not giving up who you are, I think that’s the big lesson.”

On her marriage to Tom Cruise:
“Honestly, I would have stayed married for the rest of my life. It’s not like I regret who I was in that marriage; I don’t at all. It was eleven years of my life. It wasn’t 50 years; it turned out to be 11.”

On meeting Urban:
“I was very wary, and damaged…It wasn’t that I’d give up hope, I was just…asleep. But now I feel like I’ve woken up again. Rather than living through characters, I’ve learned to be myself.”

On life with her husband:
“We spend an enormous amount of time together, and we’re determined to do that. I’ve spent too much time away from my family, and I just have no desire to live like that.”

On settling in Nashville, TN:
“This is my home now. This is the most time I’ve spent anywhere in years. I wanted to be earthed, and I didn’t feel earthed for so long, maybe not since I was a child…I don’t feel like I’m floating around, which is how it had been for many years, probably because I wasn’t that happy.”

On having more children:
“I’d like to be a mother again. I always thought I’d eventually live on a Fijian island. I love the idea of being in a sarong, with hair down to my bum and kids following my around and hanging out.”