For Nicole Kidman, there's no comparison between her first marriage to Tom Cruise and her current one to Keith Urban.

"I didn't foresee it," the glossy foreheaded Oscar winner reveals in the November issue of Elle (via Us), "that you can meet somebody who you have a deep and more profound love with."

But Kidman, in that trademark classy way of hers, points out that just because the guy-lighted country crooner -- and father of 3-month-old Sunday Rose -- is "the greatest man besides my dad I've ever met," that's no dis on the Katie Holmes-enthusiast pop of her older children, Bella, 15, and Connor, 13, who were photographed with TomKat and the permanently party dressed-bedecked Suri, 2, in New York last weekend.

"I want to be really careful with that because I don't want to take away from 11 years with that man that were really important," she says of her Cruise union, which ended abruptly in 2001. "Really, for our kids -- they were amidst a lot of love. It wasn't bad. And now we're amidst a more evolved love."

Nicole believes her ex has also moved on to a more profound and evolved love with the Broadway-debuting, ever-more-mature-looking Holmes, which would appear to be true if matching short coifs and color-coordinated clothes are indicative of profundity and evolution.

"I would hope that he has the same thing -- I know he has the same thing with Katie," declares the actress. "You move into a stage where you're able to be a more fuller person in your relationship."

And even though she reportedly had her marriage to Cruise annulled by the Catholic Church before saying "I do" with Urban in 2006, she has no regrets about tying the knot with him at the tender age of 22.

"Would I want my kids to get married at that age? No!" allows Nicole. "But that was an extraordinary thing for me. [Tom] taught me an enormous amount -- as a girl into a woman. Absolutely, I would do it again."

(Less diplomatic is Kidman's "Dogville" co-star Lauren Bacall, who has retained all the sauciness she had when she asked Bogart if he knew how to whistle. She says Kidman was "unhappy" on the set of the drama. "Tom had taken off for Penelope Cruz or some g-----n thing -- one of his more ridiculous moves," the film legend frankly recalls to the magazine, before sniping, "Tom Cruise is a maniac. I can't understand the way he conducts his life.")

Right now, Nicole remains domestically blissed out with Sunday, although she admits that "at 41, it's a more painful love."

"I look at that little girl, and I'm like, 'Oh, no, what's going to happen?' It's almost like my heart is stretching," she explains. "I'm feeling all these muscles stretch with emotion. It's a beautiful love, but there's a lot of fear and pain for her life, and for Bella's and Connor's life."

According to Kidman, "When it comes to my kids, I'm just like a lioness. I'm like, 'No one gets near my babies!' That's why we chose not to sell photos of her. We just want to have our little cocoon."

And she gives Urban all the credit for the cocoon they've created.

"He's loyal and he's a soul-searcher," she swoons. "Keith gave me a life. He gave me a home."