Things were far less complicated for Cruise and Kidman when they met during casting for Days of Thunder in 1989. Raised in Glen Ridge, N.J., by his mother, Mary Lee, after his father, Thomas Cruise Mapother, left when Tom was just 12, Cruise was coming off the megasuccess of 1988's Rain Man and in the process of splitting from his first wife, actress Mimi Rogers (Austin Powers). Enter Kidman, the stunning 22-year-old Aussie newcomer who would make a splash in the 1989 stranded-at-sea thriller Dead Calm. At her audition for the stock-car-racing drama Days of Thunder, "there were five men in the room," Kidman recalled to a BBC reporter in 1998. "I walked in and (Tom) was the one that stood up and shook my hand. And I just remember . . . electricity going through me." A little more than a year later she became his bride in a small private ceremony held in a woodsy rented home in Telluride, Colo., on Christmas Eve, 1990. "I was lucky at 22," Kidman said later, "that I met somebody who fascinated me, amazed me, who could keep me interested."

Within months the pair moved into a sprawling ranch in Billings, Mont., to film Ron Howard's Irish adventure Far and Away, which failed to capture the offscreen chemistry the newlyweds were apparently generating. "When they were together there was a lot of kissy face," local resident Terry Keating said at the time. "They carried on like a couple of teenagers." Open displays of affection became a staple of their high-profile romance. "He is the best husband," Renée Zellweger, Cruise's love interest in Jerry Maguire, said after observing them on-set. "I mean, you see him with his wife and they are so in love."

Yet rarely did they let their marriage get in the way of careers. When Kidman signed up to go naked in the London and New York stage productions of the racy drama The Blue Room in 1998, Cruise turned up at several performances in both cities, beaming and telling friends how proud he was of his wife. What's more, the couple survived the test of shooting Eyes Wide Shut for nearly two years under the probing direction of Stanley Kubrick, the reclusive filmmaker who became a close friend. In fact, Cruise told Vanity Fair last July, "our marriage is stronger because of it. And our friendship is deeper."

Still, they were both constantly mindful of the destructive effects that one high-profile career, much less two, can have on a marriage. Making 12 movies in the 1980s had helped sink Cruise's three-year marriage to Rogers; the couple divorced in 1990. "The first 10 years, that was it, work, work, work," Cruise told Vanity Fair in 1996. "And then I met Nic, and it was like, 'Oh my God.' "