Tom Cruise praised his ex-wife Nicole Kidman and recalled what it was like filming “Eyes Wide Shut.”
The actor explained his excitement at speaking for the first time with filmmaker Stanley Kubrick and suggesting the perfect candidate for the role of Alice.
More than two decades after the release of Eyes Wide Shut , Tom Cruise recalled what it was like to film the intense movie directed by Stanley Kubrick alongside his then-wife, Nicole Kidman.
In a recent interview with Sight and Sound magazine , the Top Gun: Maverick actor discussed how Kidman came to the project that became one of the most enigmatic works of the late 20th century.
“We were basically just getting to know each other. And that’s when I suggested Nicole play Alice, because she’s obviously a great actress ,” he said.
Eyes Wide Shut , released in 1999, was Kubrick’s last film before his death that same year. The plot follows a married couple—played by Cruise and Kidman—going through a marital crisis, which unleashes a chain of events fraught with eroticism, secrets, and obsession.
In real life, the actors had been married since 1990 and shared the upbringing of two adopted children, Isabella and Connor.
“I thought the film was very interesting, and I wanted to have that experience,” Cruise said in the same interview. “ When I’m going to make a film, I do detailed research and spend a lot of time with people before committing, so they understand what I need and want, and I understand what they need and want, to really create something very special.”
The filming, which spanned almost two years, was an intense and collaborative process.
“It wasn’t a big crew,” the actor recalled. “We arrived in the summer and basically started auditioning… the script was just an idea. We were constantly rewriting scenes , shooting, and then reshooting to really find the tone of the film.”
Kidman, for her part, has spoken on multiple occasions about her experience working with Kubrick and her husband. In a 2020 interview with The New York Times , she recalled how, despite the intensity of the scenes they filmed, they both found ways to ease the tension.
“We would go kart racing after those scenes ,” he said. “We would rent a place and go racing at three in the morning.”
In 2024, during an interview with the Los Angeles Times , Kidman was asked whether Kubrick used her real-life relationship with Cruise as material for the film. “I suppose he did,” she replied. “ There were ideas that interested him. He asked a lot of questions. But he had a strong sense of the story he was telling.”
The actress also recalled the long rehearsal periods before filming began. “When Tom and I started with Stanley, it was at his house, and we didn’t even go to the sets at Pinewood Studios. Six or eight weeks went by, and we were like, ‘Are we ever going to start?’ We were just building trust with each other, enough to bounce ideas off each other. For that scene [when their characters smoke marijuana in the bedroom], we improvised the beginning during rehearsals.”
Regarding rumors linking the filming of Eyes Wide Shut to the deterioration of her marriage, Kidman was categorical in an essay published in The Hollywood Reporter in 2012.
“People thought making the movie was the beginning of the end of my marriage, but I don’t think that was the case. Tom and I were close back then, and it was very much the three of us—Stanley, Tom, and me,” the actress wrote.
Cruise and Kidman announced their separation in February 2001, citing the difficulties of their respective careers as one of the main reasons.
Since then, the two have pursued separate personal and professional paths. Cruise married Katie Holmes in 2006 and had his daughter Suri, before divorcing in 2012. Kidman, after a brief engagement to Lenny Kravitz, married country singer Keith Urban in 2006 and they have two daughters: Sunday and Faith.
