Nicole Kidman is pregnant

After a week of adamant denials, Nicole Kidman's publicist finally confirmed yesterday that the 40-year-old actress is pregnant. She and her husband, country singer Keith Urban, are thrilled, said Catherine Olim in a brief statement. The pending birth explains why Kidman dropped out of her latest film, The Reader, just before shooting was to begin this month.

Kidman, who's suffered multiple miscarriages, is said to be worried about the well-being of her unborn child, and wants to put her career on hold. "I'm yearning to have one," she told Vanity Fair magazine recently. "I think I would be very sad if I wasn't able to have a baby." This would be her first child with Urban; she adopted two children with former husband Tom Cruise.

The news comes after a rough year professionally for Kidman, with three movies in a row that have performed poorly at the box office: The Invasion, Margot at the Wedding and blockbuster The Golden Compass.

She recently finished filming Australia, the Baz Luhrman production, co-starring Hugh Jackman and set Down Under just before WWII. But the makers of The Reader are now looking for a new leading lady. Directed by Stephen Daldry, the film is adapted by David Hare from Bernhard Schlink's bestselling novel set in post-war Germany about a man whose affair with an older woman - to have been played by Kidman - leads him to discover that she is a Nazi war criminal.