Nicole Kidman has opened up about her life not turning out how she expected, hinting at her divorce with Keith Urban.

The Aussie actress is featured on the September cover of British Vogue with a bold fashion spread.

The twice-divorced star spoke about failing and getting back up, trying to move on and embracing love while keeping her “heart open”.

The mum of four said it had not been easy.

“But at the same time I’m like, ‘OK, I didn’t expect this. I had a different view of what my life was going to be, but this is what it is now,’ she said.

“You make all these plans and you have all these ideas of what it’s all going to be like and then it’s… not.

“You have to adjust. You adapt. The future, it’s completely unknown to me right now…strange.”

Kidman admitted there was a point where she was “very fearful and deeply vulnerable”.

“And then at the same time [I’m] going, “Well, I can either really not confront it and just curl up, or I can just go forward with an enormous amount of hope.”

“It requires time and I have had so many older women in my life who are incredible mentors.

“I had my mother and then I have another woman who sort of helped raise me since I was 16.

“Part of the way they approach life was sometimes [to say to me]: ‘Nicole, you just got to take it on the chin.’ Once you accept that, instead of going, ‘Well that’s not fair or it’s unjust,’ you go, ‘Well, yes, actually it isn’t fair. Because things are not fair.’”

“I know my character. I know my talent. I know who I am. If I make a mistake and it doesn’t connect, or something goes wrong in my life where it’s humiliating, it’s OK. Other people have had that and that’s OK. Take the onus off it.”

Kidman filed for divorce from Urban last September after they announced their shock separation, and it was all over by January.

She told British Vogue she processed the experience with a “feelings-first approach”.

“That’s just who I am. I don’t overthink things and I’m probably not that analytical.

“I’m far more feeling-centred and I lead with my heart. I just go, ‘OK, what do I feel here?

“I’ll give it a go.’ It throws people, because I think they think I’ll be far more measured and I’m not.”

Kidman also touched on her first marriage to Tom Cruise and the warnings people gave her.

“Yeah, I got married so young,” she said of her decade with the Mission: Impossible star.

“Suddenly I was 22, 23 years old and I had this huge movie star husband. But it just seemed completely natural. We just fell madly in love and it was that simple.”

“I remember people saying to me, ‘OK, well this is really going to affect your career.’ I’m like, ‘I don’t care. I’m in love. I want to be married.’

“And then I was his ‘wife’ and they were like, ‘See, we told you.’ I’m like, ‘So what?

“I wasn’t meant to marry the man I love? Of course I’ll throw my career away. I don’t care.’”