Kidman as a Single Mom

By Stephen M. Silverman

04/23/1998 at 12:00 AM EDT

While estranged hubby Tom Cruise was very much in evidence at Sunday's Oscars, where he presented the best director award, Nicole Kidman is saying that she has apprehensions about being a single mother now that she and Tom have split after 10 years of marriage. "It's amazing the way my life has twisted and turned," the Australian-born actress, 33, tells Marie Claire magazine. "Obviously, my children have a father who is going to be completely involved, but in terms of doing it alone, that's scary." Kidman and Cruise have two adopted children, Isabella, 8, and Connor, 6. Kidman and Cruise, 38, have blamed the pressures of working apart for the breaking up of their marriage. As PEOPLE reported in its Feb. 26 cover story, a bitter property fight is considered likely. "I used to say, 'Wow, I take my hat off to a single woman who has to do it herself,' "Kidman tells Marie Claire, "and now I'm a single mother." Elsewhere in the interview, Kidman notes that one time she and Cruise did work together, in the late perfectionist director Stanley Kubrick's long-gestating 1999 "Eyes Wide Shut," the experience was "extraordinary." She says, "People asked me if it was hell. I told them it was exactly the opposite. It was an honor." Even so, she also admits, she has yet to see the picture.