Nicole Kidman moved to Hollywood in the late eighties, three decades before the #MeToo movement saw actresses band together against sexual harassment.

Arriving in Los Angeles in her early twenties, Kidman was a naïve and vulnerable young Australian looking to make it big – a prime target for industry predators.

Despite how rampant sexual harassment has turned out to be in Hollywood, Kidman says she has never experienced it as an actress – and she believes she has her marriage to Tom Cruise at the age of 22 to thank.

“I got married very young, but it definitely wasn’t power for me – it was protection,” she revealed in an interview with New York Magazine.

“I married for love, but being married to an extremely powerful man kept me from being sexually harassed,” she said. “I would work, but I was still very much cocooned.

“When I came out of it at 32, 33, it’s almost like I had to grow up.”

The Big Little Lies star rarely discusses her marriage with Cruise, something she said she does out of respect to her husband Keith Urban.

“I’m married now to the man who is my great love, and it almost feels disrespectful [to talk about her marriage to Cruise],” she admitted.

The Australian icon said she has, like many women, experienced sexually predatory behaviour away from the film industry – “since I was little” – but she declined to elaborate any further.