Nicole Kidman and husband Keith Urban appeared in public together for the first time since the country music star started rehabilitation treatment for drug dependency, Australian media said on Thursday.

Television channels and newspapers showed a smiling Urban, casually dressed in jeans and a loose, blue striped shirt, holding hands with his Oscar-winning wife at a private movie screening in Kidman's home town of Sydney on Wednesday.

Kidman appeared relaxed and was wearing flowers in her hair.

Urban held two bottles of water and the couple did not speak to the paparazzi as they left in a black luxury car.

Urban, who won the best male vocalist of 2006 at the Country Music Association awards in Nashville, checked into the Betty Ford Clinic for alcohol abuse in October.

New Zealand-born Urban has acknowledged he has struggled with cocaine and alcohol.

The Sydney outing was the first time Kidman and Urban have been seen together in Australia since the couple's lavish June wedding at Manly.

Editor: Donald