Say what you like about Nicole Kidman, but she’s not one of those women who has a ‘type’.

Her long marriage to actor Tom Cruise – an intense, disciplined, Scientologist – was succeeded by a 19-year-long marriage to a man his polar opposite: free-spirited former drug addict, country singer Keith Urban.

Now though, eight months after their divorce, comes another pivot in her love life – Michael Reinstein, a controversial multi-millionaire businessman whose long and varied career has seen him connected to scandals over telemarketing, unpaid fashion models and soap that ‘cured cancer’.

Indeed, the telemarketing ‘scam’ led to his company being issued with a $2.4million (£1.8million) fine by the regulator.

Reinstein was also the subject of a wildly entertaining lawsuit in 2022 from a disgruntled former employee who was himself accused of embezzlement and fraud.

That employee told the courts Reinstein had a ‘penchant for punishment and manipulation, often untethered to any legitimate business objective and more closely aligned with [his] glee at others’ suffering.

‘Without exaggeration, and only the slightest of paraphrasing, Reinstein has referred to himself as “the Joker [of Batman fame] sitting atop a pile of cash, f*g with whoever I want”.’

The employee went on to allege that Reinstein also referred to ‘himself as the “Emperor [Palpatine] from Star Wars”, revelling in his control and manipulation of others, his ability to bend people to his will through wealth and power.’

Nicole Kidman was married to free-spirited former drug addict country singer Keith Urban for 19 years before their divorce in January

Michael Reinstein was seen picking up Kidman from the airport in LA in his black Ferrari last week

Clearly, Kidman has picked herself quite a character.

The handsome 54-year-old was seen collecting the actress from the airport in LA in his black Ferrari on Thursday last week. Before that they were pictured together around the Hotel Belmond Splendido in Portofino, Italy, a former monastery which is one of the grandest hotels in Europe, with only 53 rooms.

Previously, it has played host to Liz Taylor, Ava Gardner and Humphrey Bogart, and today has a Dior spa to die for in its pretty gardens. Rooms start at around £3,000 a night, rising to £8,000.

To underline the apparent seriousness of the relationship, 59-year-old Kidman’s two daughters, Sunday Rose, 18, and Faith, 15, were also on the trip.

Kidman and Reinstein looked relaxed lying under sunshades on neighbouring loungers, each with a frosty Aperol spritz within arm’s reach. Undoubtedly, her new beau lives a lifestyle Kidman would be comfortable with, residing in a home in the heart of the 90210 zip code in Beverly Hills.

Worth an estimated £12million, his grand pad was built in 1933, is over 11,000 square feet and has 11 – yes, 11 – bathrooms.

He has numerous connections to the world of showbiz, including a link to Kidman’s old friend George Clooney, who may even have played Cupid. Nobody was willing to brief whether that was the connection this week, but certainly Nicole has been Clooney’s friend for decades, and Reinstein has been at events put on by the tequila brand, Casamigos, which Clooney co-founded.

Reinstein seems never to have married. As for other social connections, Reinstein’s social milieu is a world of heiresses and billionaires.

A couple of years ago he was pictured at a Halloween party with branding strategist Lara Shriftman, whose then husband was Juan Bacardi of the Bacardi rum family.

After her marriage ended, Shriftman began dating William Lauder, of the Estee Lauder family, who is worth £1.6billion.

A spokesman for Reinstein says: ‘Lara Shriftman has been a friend of Mr Reinstein’s for 30 years’ and adds that their relationship has never been romantic.

In the world of fashion, where long-serving Chanel ambassador Nicole is a fixture on the front row in Paris, Reinstein is known as a ‘junkman’, meaning someone who buys up ailing brands, then either makes them profitable – or kills them off after extracting all possible value from the inventory and name. Recent acquisitions include Bally, Petit Bateau and Escada.

A friend tells me: ‘I’ve only met him socially and he seems like all the other tech bro rich guys I’ve met. Confident and ambitious.’

Lauren Sherman, fashion journalist from the online newsletter Puck, was a little more acerbic.

She wrote this week: ‘Those who know Reinstein described him to me as a sort of caricature of a 1980s private equity raider. “A big bad wolf in a suit”, said one person who worked with him.’

Sherman adds that his private equity firm Regent has a reputation for waiting to pay outside vendors for ‘up to 120 days, if ever’. The models at Bally’s final fashion show were infamously unpaid. A spokesman denied that vendors go unpaid.

Kidman was seen with Reinstein around the Hotel Belmond Splendido in Portofino, Italy

Reinstein has several connections to the world of showbiz, including George Clooney

She concludes: ‘Reinstein seems like one of those rich guys who thinks it’s glamorous to own a fashion brand.’

A spokesman for Mr Reinstein counters that he’s spent his career buying distressed and failing companies and adds: ‘Judging a distressed asset buyer by the condition of what he buys is like judging an ER doctor by how sick their patients are when they first see them.

‘The relevant question is what happened after he took over. Most of the companies he has bought are restored to health, saving both jobs and the businesses.’

Born in 1971, his father Fred is a serial entrepreneur and mum Patti a philanthropist. Interviewed by the LA Times in 1985, patriarch Fred was described as an ‘all-American hustler’. Saying he made $100million (£74million) in sales a year from flogging gadgets, Fred recounted the story of how he lost $100,000 on a handheld garden trimmer because people kept on deliberately slicing their fingers and then suing him.

Reinstein graduated from the University of Southern California and the Pepperdine University School of Law, a Christian university based in Malibu.

He took an internship with the Reagan administration in the 1980s and then started to work at the giant talent agency ICM, representing actors.

An early venture was the telemarketing company Promenade. Set up around 1999, it was fined the equivalent of £1.8million by the Federal Trade Commission in 2004 after complaints led them to conclude customers had been scammed.

Consumers were charged £70 to £185 in fees after being allegedly misled by telemarketers to believe they were being contacted by their credit card company to be offered free trial memberships in a club that would give them discounts on travel and other purchases. It was not disclosed that fees would apply at the end of the trial period, according to the FTC.

A spokesman for Mr Reinstein says he founded the company, sold it, and then reacquired it when it was in serious difficulty.

He added there had been no ‘admission of liability’ or ‘finding of wrongdoing’ and Mr Reinstein was not a defendant. He conceded there had been a judgment against it for £1.8million, suspended except for a payment of £84,000.

A next venture for Reinstein was USN, a home shopping network which sold jewellery and clothes directly to consumers, aiming to be a more upmarket QVC.

One employee, Sanetta Gipson filed a lawsuit against USN alleging racial discrimination.

Ms Gipson, an African-American, joined as a technical director and wanted to work as an on-camera host, but was never given the job and claimed only caucasians were given on-camera jobs. She later requested to dismiss the lawsuit and is believed to have settled out of court in 2006.

Reached this week, Ms Gipson said: ‘What I remember about Mike was he wasn’t well-liked at USN. He came off as very elitist to me, as if the people who worked for him were well beneath him. He wasn’t approachable, and if most of us needed something, we would talk to his business partner instead of him.

‘I don’t remember one time when this man said “Hello” to me. He was an a**hole.’ She added: ‘Nicole Kidman is a star, so I’m sure he won’t treat her like a second-class citizen.’

A spokesman said that the lawsuit ended with no proof of the allegations and denied that USN had ever ‘authorised or approved any racial criterion in (advertisements) seeking talent’.

At this time Reinstein was also involved with a UK direct-to-consumer TV company, Deal TV. Records at Companies House show he was a director in 2006. The company handed back its licence in 2007, shortly after being criticised by the Advertising Standards Authority for giving airtime to a TV evangelist selling so-called ‘miracle’ spring water and soap claiming to cure serious illnesses, including cancer and Aids. It went bust in 2008.

His spokesman points out he was an investor in the company and a director of it for a ten-week period. He adds that the channel’s broadcast licence, and thus responsibility for regulatory compliance, was held by another company which was nothing to do with him.

Reinstein then founded private equity company Regent in 2013, and set about buying distressed brands. Around four years ago he found himself in dispute with employee David Steinhafel, the man who would compare him to the Joker from Batman and Star Wars’s evil Emperor Palpatine.

Kidman and Urban finalised their divorce in January this year – and eight months on the actress has seen a new pivot in her love life

The first shots fired were by Reinstein, who accused Steinhafel – via his company Regent – of fraud, embezzlement and breach of contract in 2022. The lawsuit described Steinhafel and his wife Stephanie, also an employee, as a ‘Bonnie and Clyde’ who had shamelessly enriched themselves at the expense of their employer, including charging Regent for £37,000 in gardening costs, £18,000 for an oil painting and a steakhouse birthday dinner which cost £2,500.

Steinhafel, in turn, filed his own lawsuit against Reinstein, claiming he failed to pay his wages, instead giving him perks to make sure he could not leave such as staying at his mansion.

His suit went on to allege Reinstein had ‘hostility towards women’, saying: ‘Reinstein has explicitly stated in front of Steinhafel and others that he prefers not to hire women because they end up getting pregnant and taking maternity leave.

‘On multiple occasions, Reinstein has expressed sentiments that women cannot do the job as well as men because of motherhood and other circumstances that are, or are viewed to be, unique to women.’

Extraordinarily the claim was further made – without evidence – that after Steinhafel and his wife were sacked they were ‘stalked’ by unnamed individuals employed by Reinstein.

The lawsuit says: ‘In one harrowing instance, Steinhafel’s wife pulled over at a gas station while being tailed by Reinstein’s agents so that she could await police assistance. The police instructed her to flee . . . Steinhafel and his family truly feared for their safety.’

The suit was dismissed in December 2022 when Regent filed a request.

A spokesman for Reinstein says Steinhafel’s allegations are ‘demonstrably false’ and were filed as ‘leverage’.

He added: ‘When it came time to stand behind those claims, the Steinhafels, not having any evidence to back up the allegations, paid Regent $250,000, abandoned every one of their allegations, and agreed to a dismissal with prejudice, meaning they can never be refiled. People do not usually pay a quarter of a million dollars and permanently walk away from claims that are true.’

He added that the Steinhafels had been living rent free in a home owned by Reinstein as part of the job, and when the job ended they were told to leave. The ‘agents’ following them were, he says, ‘licensed process servers attempting to serve her and her husband with legal papers, including the lawsuit and tenancy notices, which they were evading’. This was, he said, ‘routine’.

A lawyer for the Steinhafels said last night that they stand by every allegation, adding: ‘They settled for one reason: the financial and personal toll on their growing family was unsustainable.’

As an actress at the pinnacle of her career, Nicole Kidman must be offered many interesting scripts to read.

The question is, do any of them match up to the dramas that have surrounded her fascinating younger man in his career so far?

Additional reporting: Daniel Bates