Actress Nicole Kidman has opened up about her role in Stanley Kubrick’s final film, Eyes Wide Shut, in which she starred with her then-husband Tom Cruise.
In an article for The Hollywood Reporter, Nicole Kidman says she had to be “coaxed” into doing the kinky sex scenes with Tom Cruise.
Nicole Kidman – now a mother of two with husband Keith Urban – says she struggled with some of the sexual aspects of the movie – and revealed some of the more extreme footage was left on the cutting room floor.
The actress described how Stanley Kubrick had to “coax” her into some of the sexuality in the film in the beginning, but says she never felt it was “exploitive or unintelligent”.
Nicole Kidman wrote: “He [Stanley Kubrick] was very different with women than he was with men. He has daughters, so he was very paternal with me.”
She explained how the director tried to base the sexual thriller about a troubled married couple on her real-life relationship with Tom Cruise.
Nicole Kidman concedes he effectively failed in getting them to do so – saying while they realized that was his intention, the characters they played were “not really us”.
She also denied that the 1999 film contributed to the demise of her marriage to Tom Cruise. The couple divorced just two years after the movie was released.
Nicole Kidman writes: “People thought that making the film was the beginning of the end of my marriage – but I don’t really think it was.
“Tom and I were close then, and it was very much the three of us.”
Explaining how Stanley Kubrick tried to base the characters, Alice and Bill Harford, on her marriage to Tom Cruise, she explained: “Onscreen, the husband and wife are at odds, and Stanley wanted to use our marriage as a supposed reality.
“That was Stanley: He used the movie as provocation, pretending it was our sex life. Which we weren’t oblivious to, but obviously it wasn’t us.
“We both decided to dedicate ourselves to a great filmmaker and artist.”
Nicole Kidman admits, though, that not even she really fully understands the film, even to this day.
She writes: “People have asked me if Stanley ever told us what Eyes Wide Shut was about – and the answer is no. He didn’t believe in interpretation.”
Stanley Kubrick died aged 70 in March 1999, just four days after screening his final version of the film.
The actress also revealed she almost called him the night before his death, recalling how she was concerned over how frail he was.
Nicole Kidman went on: “If I were more intuitive I would have realized that he was not well. One of the worst things… was, I was going to call him and I didn’t. Instead I got a phone call [the next day] saying Stanley was dead. It was one of my great regrets that I didn’t call him that night.”
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