'I love my mom intensely'
2005-07-28 13:49
Sydney - Australian superstar Nicole Kidman said on Thursday a report in a British newspaper in which she was quoted as saying that her mother never told her she loved her or hugged her was a "hurtful beat-up".
Kidman, currently filming in the United States, was quoted in Britain's Mail on Sunday newspaper as saying her mother had pushed her away as a young woman to make her more independent.
"I love my mother so intensely and so deeply," the Oscar-winning actor was quoted as saying.
"When she left the house and hadn't come home by a certain time, I'd be panicked, up at night crying and waiting for her.
"The way she pushed me to be independent did feel like a rejection but at the same time it was so necessary because I was too much of a child that needed the strength and power of that relationship to exist.
Kidman's comments misrepresented
"She'd say, 'Listen, I'm just not the kind of mother who's going to hug you. It's just not me so don't expect it.' That would really hurt.
"She'd say, 'I'm never going to say I love you. We don't say that in our family'."
In the interview, Kidman was quoted as saying she married Hollywood star Tom Cruise when she was 22 out of a need to be loved and to escape her mother's focus on independence.
But Kidman, 38, said the report, which was given wide media coverage in Australia, misrepresented her comments.
"This week's media reports were a hurtful beat-up which grossly misrepresented my relationship with my mother who knows I love her unequivocally," Kidman said in a statement issued from Sydney.
Kidman is known to be close to her family and thanked her mother Janelle during her 2003 Best Actress Oscar speech.