Usually it’s the red carpet gowns, the speeches, presentations, snubs, accolades, even the very public slaps that dominate proceedings at the Academy Awards.
But on Sunday evening it was less about who attended and more about who didn’t as guests filed into Dolby Theatre ahead of the star-studded ceremony’s 95th annual presentation.
Posing for photographers outside the cavernous Los Angeles venue, Nicole Kidman, one of numerous celebrity guests on the night, looked typically glamorous while sharing a prolonged kiss with country star Keith Urban, her second husband and father of her two biological children.
But where was her first? With roaring box-office success Top Gun: Maverick nominated for no less than six awards, one could be forgiven for assuming a tuxedo-clad Tom Cruise and his famous grin would be present and correct for the acting community’s biggest night of the year.
Not so. Instead, the man grandly credited for ‘saving Hollywood’ by reviving the high-flying pilot he first played in 1987 was curiously absent, an absence DailyMail.com has since learned was caused by his ex-wife’s attendance.
All over: Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman divorced in 2001, reportedly due to her refusal to join him in the Church of Scientology (pictured together in 1999)
Happier times: Cruise and Kidman (pictured in 1992) divorced in 2001 after 12 years of marriage amid rumours his commitment his Scientology drove a wedge between them
First meeting: Cruise and Kidman first met while filming cult racing drama Days Of Thunder in 1990 (pictured), during which they played lovers
Cruise and Kidman divorced in 2001, reportedly due to her refusal to join him in the Church of Scientology, and the actor is understood to have have swerved the Oscars after discovering she was on the guest list.
A source told DailyMail.com: ‘Tom was not there because she was there, and he did not want a run-in.’
But where did it all go so horribly wrong?
For a while at least, Cruise and Kidman appeared to find the sort of marital longevity one associates with very few Hollywood couples.
Golden Age veterans Humphry Bogart and Lauren Bacall spring to mind, twice-married Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor perhaps, even Paul Newman and Joanne Woodward – all survived decades of media scrutiny and enjoyed committed, lasting marriages.
Recurring theme: The couple would also play lovers in 1992 western epic Far And Away
Here we go: In Stanley Kubrick’s 1999 thriller Eyes Wide Shut they play a sexually adventurous married couple
Old times: A beaming Cruise and Kidman attend the 72nd Annual Academy Awards in 1999 – two years before their shock divorce
