Nicole Kidman Has A Little-Known Connection To A Fox News Powerhouse

Nicole Kidman has multiple claims to fame, from her Oscar-winning acting career, to her celebrity divorce, which we really didn't see coming, and even the infamous AMC movie ad that became a meme and, sadly, inspired some admittedly tasteless jokes amid Kidman's career pivot to being a death doula. However, while the Aussie A-lister largely lives her life in the spotlight, there are some lesser-known facts about Kidman. Among them is her connection to one of the most influential people in the history of Fox News — as in, the man who founded the company.

Self-described "billionaire tyrant" Rupert Murdoch (we're not kidding, by the way; that was his opening line during a guest appearance on "The Simpsons" in 1999) is one of the most notorious media moguls in the world. One of Murdoch's biggest claims to fame is founding Fox News in 1996, having previously launched the separate FOX Broadcasting Company a decade prior. Murdoch also has six children, two of whom notably call the "Moulin Rouge!" star their godmother.

Murdoch's two youngest kids, Grace and Chloe Murdoch, whom the Australian-born Fox News founder shares with his third wife, Wendi Deng, are connected to Kidman for life. Coincidentally, their godfather is none other than a certain other Australian movie star whose surname also ends in "man:" Hugh Jackman. The Aussie icons, who starred opposite each other in the film "Australia," became godparents to the youngest Murdochs during a baptism ceremony that was held in Jordan in 2010 — when Grace and Chloe were eight and six years old, respectively. 

From what we can gather, Nicole Kidman's status as Grace and Chloe Murdoch's godmother has less to do with any particularly close ties to their famous father, Rupert Murdoch, and more to do with her close friendship with their mother, Wendi Deng. She married Murdoch, who is about 38 years her senior, in 1999 — the very same year the Fox News founder first appeared on "The Simpsons," funnily enough. Just a couple of years later, Kidman's highly-publicized divorce from Tom Cruise was finalized. As the Australian actor explained while being interviewed by British Vogue for a profile on Deng in 2013, these two events ultimately brought the women together. "I think we were both lonely and kind of isolated — Wendi in this big new powerful world, and it was a time in my life where I was very exposed," Kidman recalled. "We just clicked. We understood each other." 

At the time, the "Batman Forever" star also sweetly remarked that, "Wendi is all about friendship between women." This presumably gave Deng someone to lean on when she and Murdoch also got divorced in 2013. Deng was reportedly caught completely off guard when the media mogul served her legal papers, though they continued to work together to raise their two children. "Rupert's a very good father, strict like me," Wendi confirmed during a chat with Vogue in 2016, elaborating, "We attend school conferences together. We both make sure they learn Chinese, do well in math. We make decisions together about how they use social media. We never want them to say, 'Well, Mommy said this' or 'Daddy said that.'" Still, we have to assume that Deng probably got Kidman in the divorce.