Meet Nicole Kidman, Mark 2

Yet from the moment the knowledge became public that Tom had requested the divorce that would end their ten-year reign as the A-list's most cachet supercouple, Kidman's brand was re-spun to devastating effect.

The brittle, cool, distant Hollywood wife crumbled. In her place emerged a vulnerable, damaged woman who nonetheless wielded a vengeful streak and a survivor's instinct. It was a vast improvement.

While Tom kept quiet and rode the rumours about new love interest Penelope Cruz, Nicole offered snippets of insight into the darker reaches of her soul. She was 'devastated', she said. 'Heartbroken.' The decision to split came as a complete shock, she maintained.

Tom had offered no reason for it, and was unwilling to do anything to try and make it better. But, she said, 'I refuse to let it make me bitter. I still completely believe in love and I remain open to anything that will happen to me.'

Suddenly, her beautiful, charmed existence was juxtaposed with a genuine passion and terrible pain that made her raw, real, flawed, and infinitely more likeable. Her perfection was tarnished, and became instantly more appealing because of it. She'd had a miscarriage, she revealed. She found it frightening doing a red carpet without Tom, she admitted.

She went a bit wild at Cannes, downed a few cocktails, danced with Norman Cook. She angsted, convincingly, about their children. Tom's silence, on the other hand, was not interpreted as a dignified response but as an expression of the cold, cruel, calculating man he suddenly seemed to be. To compound that, all admiration we'd held for him as a short man secure enough to date a much taller woman, evaporated. When Nicole told David Letterman that the best thing about being single was 'I can wear heels, now', the world applauded.

The financial details of the divorce - which will be revealed in October - are equally loaded with implications for their respective celebrity.

From the moment Cruise first insisted that the marriage had ended before the couple reached their ten-year anniversary, which would entitle Nicole to far less alimony, he was cast as the tight-fisted villain of the piece.

Friends called him Lux, it emerged, short for 'Luxury' Cruise, because of the affluent lifestyle he was desperate to maintain. While he filed for 'miscellaneous jewellery', she wanted 'specific items', said to include her wedding ring, and a pair of matching earrings that he hid under her pillow during a romantic evening at home.

He renamed Sweet Nic - his private jet - after his daughter Isabella, and filed for that too. It was all, apparently, about his greed versus her romantic spirit. That he was considerably wealthier to start with seemed irrelevant. Any material goods that Cruise manages to extricate from the divorce will seem like the spoils of a bad business. Anything that Kidman salvages will seem like mini triumphs.

Equally, the public gestures each made following the divorce decree on 8 August 2001, exploded with significance. Nicole walked out of her lawyer's office after signing the papers, and threw up her arms in celebration.

Even if it was a cynical move intended to titillate the paparazzi she surely knew were hovering in nearby bushes, it didn't matter. It was a public statement of liberation, and it worked.

Tom Cruise's decision to accompany Penelope Cruz to the LA premiere of Captain Corelli a week later, however, seemed rather too soon after the split, and fuelled the speculation that they'd been an item longer than they might admit.

However things develop for Nicole Kidman from here, there can be little doubt that she'll do OK. Those who once speculated that the divorce would end her career have sharply revised their opinions. Beautiful women with perfectly styled lives, who get spurned in the most public way imaginable, are clearly a financial force to be reckoned with.

Celebrated by not-so-glittering non-celebrity women who suddenly find they can relate to this well-coiffed super-being, their heartbreak is a seriously bankable asset.

Kidman's intensely public private life has made her much more believable in a wider variety of roles, and her new popularity has increased her money-spinning potential.

Accordingly, film offers - including the lead in Alan Parker's The Life Of David Gale with Kevin Spacey - have flooded in, as have the begging requests to return to the London stage.

On a personal level, she may or may not be involved with Russell Crowe, with whom she shared a private Fijian island in July. Either way, the high-profile speculation raging around the rumoured affair can only intensify her fame.

Ultimately, this divorce must prove to be the best thing that ever happened to Nicole Kidman. It's only a matter of time before she realises that, too.