Nicole Kidman should have been having one of the best nights of her life last Saturday as she was honoured at the AFI Life Achievement Award Gala. 

 And while the two daughters she shares with husband Keith Urban – Sunday Rose, 15, Faith Margaret, 13 – made their red-carpet debut to celebrate the occasion, it was no doubt a bittersweet moment for the actress and producer, whose two eldest children were absent from the event.

 Nicole, 56, is thought to have extended invites to daughter Bella, 31, and son Connor, 29, who she adopted with ex-husband Tom Cruise during their 11-year marriage in the 1990s, but neither showed up or have spoken publicly about the event.

 Tom and Nicole met of the set of Days of Thunder in 1989, tying the knot the next year – and she alluded to their marriage in a rare moment as she accepted the award over the weekend. Discussing her peers in Hollywood, Nicole said, “Some of them you may never meet again and some of them you do meet again. Some of them you have incredible laughter and jokes with and you cry with. Some of them you fall in love with, some of them you marry.”

 She added, while shouting out her daughters Sunday and Faith, “This is all because of you and I love you so much.”

Nicole said ahead of the ceremony, “It’s beautiful to have a family to be able to go and want to share this with you, because you don’t get to do that a lot of the time. The idea of being able to have your family come to something like this is really exciting.”

Although it has never been confirmed why Nicole’s relationship with her adopted children has seemingly become estranged since her and Tom’s 2001 divorce, many believe her ex-husband and their children’s involvement with the Church of Scientology could be to blame.

Following their split, Nicole was declared as a “suppressive person (SP)” by the church – somebody who is considered to be an “enemy” after leaving the religion.

While Bella still follows the religion, Connor has taken things a step further and has reportedly reached the same level as his dad within the controversial church’s hierarchy, Operating Thetan Level 8.

He is believed to work at the church’s “spiritual headquarters”, the Flag Service Organisation, which is a 10-minute walk from the gated compound he lives in, which is owned by the church and described as a “religious retreat”. Connor is said to “worship the ground his father walks on,” apparently leaving little room in his life for his mum Nicole.

A source tells Closer, “There’s still love and respect between Nicole and the kids, but the bottom line is she rarely ever sees them.”

In fact, Nicole hasn’t been photographed in public with her children since 2007, the same year that she revealed in an interview, “My kids don’t call me mommy – they don’t even call me mom. They call me Nicole, which I hate and tell them off for it.”

Prior to this, Bella and Connor would regularly accompany their mum to awards ceremonies, with them sat beside her in 2003 when she received the American Cinematheque Award.

Later that year, Bella was Nicole’s guest at the Oscars, alongside her mother Janelle and father Antony, who passed away in 2014.

Paying tribute to Bella during her acceptance speech as she picked up the award for Best Actress for her work in The Hours, she said, “My whole life I’ve wanted to make my mother proud, and now I want to make my daughter proud.”

The source adds, “The big issue is that they’re both still attached to Scientology, while Nicole is considered an SP because she left the church. Plus, their loyalty is first and foremost to their dad, who raised them after Nicole filed for divorce. She would have loved to share custody, but she wasn’t able to make it happen.

“Now, poor Nicole really has no choice to but to accept the way things are, even though it’s pretty painful for her. She worries that they’ve drifted to a point where she’ll be lucky if she’ll ever get to see them. It would help if Tom were to encourage it, but that’s not likely.”

Nicole has discussed the relationship in the past, saying in 2018 of Bella and Connor, “They are able to make their own choices. They have made choices to be Scientologists and, as a mother, it’s my job to love them. And I am an example of that tolerance and that’s what I believe – that no matter what your child does, the child has love and the child has to know there is available love, and I’m open here. I think that’s so important because, if that is taken away from a child, to sever that in any child, in any relationship, in any family, I believe it’s wrong. So, that’s our job as a parent – to always offer unconditional love.”

Although she was not present at Bella’s 2015 wedding to husband Max Parker, which took place in London, despite Nicole living in the city and working on the West End at the time, it seems they do still have some kind of a relationship.

Ahead of receiving the award, Nicole took to Instagram to look back on some of her famous roles, uploading a clip from her very first movie, Bush Christmas, which was released in 1983, when she was just 16.

She wrote alongside the clip, “This 14-year-old girl could have never have predicted all the talented people she would get to work with and the many different characters she would get to play! So excited to celebrate with so many friends and peers on Saturday with the @AmericanFilmInstitute.”

And one of the first people to like the post was Bella – who still goes by the surname Kidman Cruise, while Connor refers to himself just as Cruise – which was said to leave Nicole “absolutely ecstatic.”