Nicole Kidman says Stanley Kubrick was 'mining' her marriage with Tom Cruise while filming 'Eyes Wide Shut'
LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Nicole Kidman is recalling the time she spent making her 1999 film ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ with legendary director Stanley Kubrick.
The 57-year-old actress shared that the veteran director was “mining” her relationship with her then-husband Tom Cruise, 62, who was also her co-star in the film.
In a recent interview with The Los Angeles Times, Kidman shared that Kubrick used elements of her former marriage to incorporate in the film.
Nicole Kidman opens up about filming ‘Eyes Wide Shut’
Kidman recently opened up about the filming process while highlighting that Kubrick was essentially fascinated with her romance with the ‘Mission: Impossible’ actor.
"I suppose he was mining it," Kidman said, before adding, "There were ideas he was interested in. He’d ask a lot of questions."
She continued, "I do remember him saying, ‘Triangles are hard. You have to tread carefully when it’s a triangle'," and added, "Because one person could feel ganged up on. But he was aware of that and knew how to manage us."
She recalled working in the film, and shared, "When Tom and I first started with Stanley, it was at his home, and we didn’t even go over to the sets at Pinewood [Studios].”
In the cult classic, she played the role of Alice, while Cruise essayed the character of Bill.
She continued, "Six, eight weeks passed, and we’re wondering, 'Are we ever going to start?' And we just wouldn’t start. We were getting comfortable with each other, comfortable enough to throw out ideas."
She shared that during this time, she started noticing elements of their lives getting intertwined in the film’s narrative.
The ‘Moulin Rouge’ actress shared, "I’m quite up-front, and Alice becomes quite up-front, particularly when she was stoned…although that wasn’t me when I was stoned. I was just naturally like that. Up-front.”
She recalled, "I smoked when I was younger. But it definitely wasn’t of interest then."
"I suppose that was why he cast me. That mischief, that provocative nature, he found that out and it got more imbued into Alice,” Kidman reminisced.
She explained, "The scene where I drop the dress…that was me. That wasn’t written. That was my dress from my closet. This is how I take off the dress, Stanley.’”
“Because I had a lot of clothes, we weren’t paying to buy clothes,” noted the Australian actress, before asking, “And Stanley had come over and I was showing him all these beautiful dresses. That’s how that happened."
Nicole Kidman shared a trailer with Tom Cruise
Though the actress and the ‘Top Gun’ actor’s marriage fell apart in 2001, as they were filming the movie, they were still a couple.
During the same interview with the outlet, the ‘Big Little Lies’ star shared that Kubrick was adamant for them to share a trailer on set.
She explained, "We had a home ten minutes away, but we lived in that trailer. Tom and I shared it because Stanley would say, ‘You’re not each getting a trailer. We can’t afford it.'"
