Nicole Kidman was "very lonely" before she met Keith Urban.

Nicole Kidman

Nicole Kidman

The 51-year-old actress married Keith in 2006, five years after divorcing first husband Tom Cruise, and has said she felt so lonely before meeting the country star, that she made it her mission to "try and meet her partner".

She said: "In my case, I went and met somebody and fell in love and had a whole different path in terms of what I wanted to do.

"I was very lonely and I didn't want to be. So I went, 'Okay, I'm going to try and meet my partner', and that takes time. It can't be working all the time and flitting around the world."

The 'Big Little Lies' star now has daughters Sunday Rose, 10, and Faith, seven, with Keith, and couldn't be happier with her "unbelievable blessings".

Nicole - who is also mother to Isabella, 25, and Connor, 23, whom she adopted during her marriage to Tom - added: "I managed to meet a wonderful man and I now have two children out of that marriage which has given me incredible nourishment and unbelievable blessings to have them.

"It highlighted to me the idea that I needed to go and have more of a real life because I had an incredible artistic life, I just didn't have the balance there."

Nicole says she even considered quitting Hollywood when she settled down and started a family with Keith, but after her mother said she would "want to keep" her job, she realised she didn't want to quit her career completely.

Speaking at her 'Life in Pictures' talk at Bafta in London, she said: "I'd had my daughter who's now 10 and I was living in Nashville on a farm and I'd had the whole pregnancy growing vegetables.

"I said to my mother, 'I'm done'. She was like, 'Hmm, I think you're going to want to keep your job', and it was fantastic advice because as a woman, yes, you're in this place now but it's best to keep your toe in your career because I think you're going to want to be able to go back to it.

"I'm so glad I have a very opinionated and strong mother who's very wise. I bristle but I do listen to her."