In an interview with the LA Times, Kidman reveals that Kubrick asked “a lot of questions” over the two years she worked on his final film with her ex-husband: “There were ideas he was interested in.”
Life imitates art. Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise apparently learned this firsthand over the two years they spent working on the 1999 cult classic Eyes Wide Shut with iconic director Stanley Kubrick. In an interview with the LA Times to mark Eyes Wide Shut’s 25th anniversary, Kidman revealed that Kubrick was directly inspired by her marriage to Cruise as he shaped the story of Bill and Alice, the central couple in the psychosexual drama: “I suppose he was mining it.”
Kidman married Cruise in December 1990, and Cruise filed for divorce in February 2001. As Hollywood’s It couple of the ’90s, they sparked intense speculation and scrutiny around their relationship. Toward the end of their marriage, Kidman and Cruise signed on to star in what would wind up being the final film from the legendary Kubrick, director of 2001: A Space Odyssey and The Shining. Eyes Wide Shut stars Kidman and Cruise as a married couple trapped in a psychosexual pas de deux, complete with a masked ball, a secret society, and, infamously, orgies.
Kidman told the Times that she believes Kubrick used aspects of her actual relationship with Cruise to shape Bob and Alice. “There were ideas he was interested in,” she said in the interview. “He’d ask a lot of questions.” At the same time, Kidman maintained that Kubrick “had a strong sense of the story he was telling.” “I do remember him saying, ‘Triangles are hard. You have to tread carefully when it’s a triangle,’” she said. “Because one person could feel ganged up on. But he was aware of that and knew how to manage us.”
Cruise and Kidman shared a trailer during filming. “We had a home 10 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,’” said Kidman. She noted that Cruise had the smaller part of the trailer and would often be rehearsing or unwinding by playing video games. ”That was when [Minesweeper] was big. So there was a lot of that,” she said.
And there was a lot of work. According to Kidman, Eyes Wide Shut was largely shaped in the rehearsal process, because they rehearsed for an awfully long time. The film would ultimately take two years to complete. “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],” she said. “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.”
When asked what aspects of her actual personality blended with Alice’s, Kidman was clear: her boldness. “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.” So was Kidman Method acting by lighting up while filming Eyes Wide Shut? Not quite. “Oh, I smoked when I was younger. But it definitely wasn’t of interest then,” she told the Times. You don’t have to go Method when you can rely on sense memory.
There were more moments in Eyes Wide Shut drawn from Kidman’s actual life and personality. “I suppose that was why he cast me. That mischief, that provocative nature, he found that out and it got more imbued into Alice,” said Kidman. Another prime example is when Alice slips out of a dress standing up, leaving her standing in the buff in black heels. “The scene where I drop the dress…that was me. That wasn’t written. That was my dress from my closet,” said Kidman. “‘This is how I take off the dress, Stanley.’ Because I had a lot of clothes, we weren’t paying to buy clothes. And Stanley had come over and I was showing him all these beautiful dresses. That’s how that happened.”
Kidman admitted that she hasn’t seen Eyes Wide Shut in full since its first screening. (Kubrick died of a heart attack six days after showing the final cut of the film.) But during her recent AFI tribute, which she attended with her husband, Keith Urban, and their teenage daughters, Sunday and Faith, she watched the scene in which Alice gets properly stoned. While Kidman was quick to say that she wouldn’t be watching the full movie with her kids anytime soon, she was happy with Sunday’s reaction to the scene.
“She said, ‘Mom, that was good,’” Kidman said. It was so good that Kidman may even join the scores of fans who have turned Eyes Wide Shut into an unofficial holiday movie: “Maybe I’ll watch it at Christmas,” she said with a laugh. Ho ho ho!
