MARCUS GRAHAM 'I CRIED FOR A LONG TIME'

A two-year romance ended in tears for the actor, who hasn't given up on love and finding his perfect match

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It’s been 34 years since handsome actor Marcus Graham burst onto our TV screens, playing wheelchair-bound Stanley “Wheels” Kovac in E Street, in a role that catapulted him to heartthrob status and propelled him to Hollywood.

Marcus was just 25 and had the world at his feet. But just as his star was rising in 1989, his private world was falling apart – because the woman he adored, Nicole Kidman, who had spent two years by his side, left him for Tom Cruise after they met and fell in love on the set of Days Of Thunder.

“I don’t have anything bad to say about Nicole,” Marcus says in an exclusive interview with Woman’s Day. “We were both in our early 20s and young and ambitious. A brilliant, gorgeous, talented actress meets big Hollywood movie star and he says, ‘Come with me.’ I think you say, ‘Go, are you mad?’ It must have been wonderful for her.

“I was devastated and heartbroken, but that’s the way it goes, isn’t it? Why would I want to keep her in Australia and lock her away?!

“I don’t have any bad feelings there and I understand. At the time I cried for a long time. I was really hurt and confused, but I had lots to learn about the world.”

HOLLYWOOD HEARTBREAK 

Marcus, 59, has never spoken about the heartache of that break-up before, but the wounds healed long ago, and it pales compared to the pain of a miscarriage 11 years ago, and his “lonely childhood” with a famous actor dad who abandoned him, and a mum who never really wanted him.