The Australian star won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her portrayal of writer Virginia Woolf in The Hours.
But when she collected the Oscar in 2003, she was single, having divorced her first husband Tom Cruise two years earlier.
Kidman – who has since married fellow Aussie Keith Urban, with whom she has a two-year-old daughter, Sunday Rose – tells The Hollywood Reporter: 'I realised how alone I was, because I had no one to share it with. Those moments are about sharing.
'I had my mum and I had Bella, who was 10 years old, sitting in the front row – but that's different. I'm talking about a love, a life partner. It's my thrust to have that. That's always been me.'
In addition to Isabella, now 18, Kidman also has a son Connor, 15. She adopted both her older children with Cruise.
In her latest film Rabbit Hole, Kidman plays a woman who has lost her daughter.
But in real life, the Moulin Rouge! star says her toddler keeps her on her toes and reveals that before she left her house that morning, her little girl was moments away from an accident.
Kidman says: 'I'm in the shower and I look out, and Sunday has climbed up the little stepladder in my dressing room. I'm like, 'Sunday, freeze'.
'I said to Keith, 'We're just barely getting by every day without some massive accident.’'