Nicole Kidman rarely talks about her marriage to Tom Cruise, but she recently made a rare departure by opening up about her work on Stanley Kubrick’s classic film, Eyes Wide Shut.
The 57-year-old Oscar winner, who was married to Cruise, 62, from 1990 to 2001, detailed the relationship the married co-stars had with Kubrick while filming the dark drama in an interview with The Hollywood Reporter. Los Angeles Times.
She opined that the director was “exploiting” her marriage in search of material to develop the film, which was released in 1999 and became a box office hit after grossing $162 million against a budget of $65 million, according to Box Office Mojo.
The Top Gun star and Big Little Lies actress worked for years on the film, which began production in 1996 and wrapped in 1998 before being released in the summer of 1999, giving it the record for longest continuous shooting at 400 days. Kubrick would die at age 70, just days after showing what was purportedly his final version of the film to his stars.
Kidman — whose daughter Sunday had a surprising reaction to a drug-taking scene in Eyes Wide Shut — described how the Clockwork Orange filmmaker would ask her and Cruise questions about their marriage while helping shape their performances.
Nicole Kidman rarely talks about her marriage to Tom Cruise, but she recently made a rare departure by discussing her work on Stanley Kubrick’s classic film Eyes Wide Shut; photographed on June 13 in Los Angeles.
The 57-year-old Oscar winner, who was married to Cruise, 62, from 1990 to 2001, detailed the relationship the married co-stars had with Kubrick while filming the dark drama in an interview with the Los Angeles Times; still from Eyes Wide Shut
“There were ideas that interested him. He asked a lot of questions, but he had a strong sense of the story he was telling,” he recalled.
“I remember him saying, ‘Triangles are tricky. You have to be careful when you’re dealing with a triangle,’ because one person might feel attacked in a group,” she continued. “But he was aware of that and he knew how to handle us.”
Although she clarified that she never felt “attacked”, she did admit that Kubrick treated his actors differently.
“There’s also something to do with being a woman in that equation,” she explained. “And Stanley liked women.”
“She had a different relationship with Tom. They worked more together on her character,” Kidman said.
She added that she brought her “daring” to the role, although she clarified that her character’s forceful statements in a scene where she takes drugs were closer to her natural form and not necessarily related to drugs.
While talking about the scene, he recalled a part of a larger sequence that they spent weeks filming and ended up on the cutting room floor.
“It was the scene with Tom and I where I start smoking a joint in bed and where I laugh and give the long monologue,” he said.
“That took many weeks. A lot of it was rehearsing in the bedroom and then[Kubrick]didn’t like what we’d done. So we ended up redoing it, building it as we went along,” he shared. “There was no need to rush. Stanley never went over budget. What he gained was time.”
He added that the scene evolved through “a lot of conversation” between the three protagonists.
The actress also noted that her work on the film began with a meeting at Kubrick’s house.
“We didn’t even go to the sets at Pinewood (Studios),” he admitted.
She opined that Kubrick was “exploiting” her marriage to help shape his performances.
Kidman said Kubrick (second from left) was careful with “triangles” when working with her and Cruise, and made sure no one felt “attacked”; pictured with Kubrick’s long-time assistant and brother-in-law Jan Harlan (left)
Kidman admitted that she and Cruise had to share a trailer to cut the budget. He had an area to himself where he used to play Minesweeper during downtime; pictured in 1999
“Six or eight weeks went by and we were like, ‘Are we ever going to start?’ And we just didn’t want to start,” he recalls. “We were just getting comfortable with each other, comfortable enough to throw out ideas. For that scene, we improvised the beginning during rehearsals.”
Then, as now, Cruise and Kidman were two of the biggest stars on the planet, and their marriage only heightened the anticipation for Eyes Wide Shut.
But to accommodate the extraordinarily long shooting schedule — which included plenty of time for notorious perfectionist Kubrick to film countless takes of multiple scenes — the pair had to make sacrifices for the sake of budget.
Instead of each having their own trailer, as would have been customary for stars of a major film, they were forced to share a single trailer on set.
“We had a house ten minutes away, but we lived in this trailer,” Kidman recalled. “Tom and I shared it because Stanley said, ‘You’re not going to have a trailer each. We can’t afford it.'”
She added that her then-husband Cruise had a small area to himself in the trailer where he often played video games, including Minesweeper, when they had free time between takes.
In Eyes Wide Shut, Cruise plays Dr. Bill Hartford, whose marriage to his wife Alice (Kidman) hits a rocky patch when he obsessively broods over possible infidelity.
During a brief absence, he wanders the streets of New York City (despite the film being shot entirely in the UK) before becoming embroiled in the dark games of high society elites.
She described weeks of rehearsal with Cruise at Kubrick’s house before filming began, and said several classic lines were developed in rehearsal; still from Eyes Wide Shut
Kidman and Cruise share two adopted children from their marriage: Isabella, 31, and Connor, 29; photographed in 1999 in Venice.
The film includes a famous sequence in which Cruise’s character manages to gain entry to a ball for masked rich men to indulge his sexual fantasies, before realizing he is in great danger.
Kidman and Cruise share two adopted children from their marriage: Isabella, 31, and Connor, 29.
She later welcomed daughters Sunday, 16, and Faith, 13, with husband Keith Urban, whom she married in 2006.
Cruise was married to actress Katie Holmes from 2006 to 2012. They have one daughter, Suri, 18, who reportedly has little relationship with her famous father.
