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Eyes Wide Shut at 15: Inside the Epic, Secretive Film Shoot that Pushed Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman to Their Limits

Kubrick’s obsession with secrecy so infected his cast and crew that no one has ever spoken about it in detail. The day-to-day life on set can only be inferred from facts and hints. The most major fact: Eyes Wide Shut was exhausting. Kubrick had asked Cruise and Kidman to commit to six months. When they landed in London in the fall of 1996, the couple fully expected to return to Hollywood by spring. Instead, they stayed on through the summer, fall, and another Christmas. Filming wrapped in January of 1998, but in May they were summoned back for more months of reshoots. Altogether they’d spend 15 months on Eyes Wide Shut, the Guinness World Record for the longest continual film shoot.

“Stanley had figured out a way to work in England for a fraction of what we pay here,” explained Sydney Pollack, who joined the cast as the corrosive tycoon Victor Ziegler after the extended shooting forced original actor Harvey Keitel to cry uncle and drop out. “While the rest of us poor bastards are able to get 16 weeks of filming for $70 million with a $20 million star, Stanley could get 45 weeks of shooting for $65 million.” Though every six months Cruise spent in London cost him another $20 million film he wasn’t making—plus he had the fledgling Cruise/Wagner production company to oversee—he swore to the press he had no qualms about his extended art house sabbatical.

“I remember talking to Stanley and I said, ‘Look, I don’t care how long it takes, but I have to know: are we going to finish in six months?’” said Cruise. “People were waiting and writers were waiting. I’d say, ‘Stanley, I don’t care—tell me it’s going to be two years.’”

Kubrick is legendary for his perfectionism—to reconstruct Greenwich Village in London, he sent a designer to New York to measure the exact width of the streets and the distance between newspaper vending machines. But his approach to character and performance was the opposite. Instead of knowing what he wanted on the set, he waited for the actors to seize upon it themselves. His process: repeated takes designed to break down the idea of performance altogether. The theory was that once his actors bottomed-out in exhaustion and forgot about the cameras, they could rebuild and discover something that neither he nor they expected. During The Shining, he’d put Jack Nicholson and Shelley Duvall through 50 takes to figure out what he wanted, causing Duvall to have a nervous breakdown. For Eyes Wide Shut, given his stars’ extreme pliancy and eagerness to please, Kubrick went further, once insisting that Cruise do 95 takes of walking through a door.

“In times when we couldn’t get it, it was just like, ‘Fuck!’” admitted Cruise. “I’d bring it upon myself because I demand a lot of myself.” But what he never asked—at least, not openly in the press—was if there was an “it” Kubrick wanted him to get. After all, a director who demands 95 takes could be exacting—or conversely, he could be ill-prepared and uncommunicative. Cruise’s overpreparation had served him well in the past. Not here. He got an ulcer, and tried to keep the news from Kubrick. At its core, the Cruise/Kubrick combination seems cruel: an over-achieving actor desperate to please a never-satisfied auteur. The power balance was firmly shifted to Kubrick, yet to his credit, Cruise has never complained.

Kubrick defenders—Cruise included—insist the legend was fully in command. “He was not indulgent,” Cruise insisted to the press. “You know you are not going to leave that shot until it’s right.” Yet it’s hard not to see indulgence when even small roles demanded prolonged commitment, like starlet Vinessa Shaw’s one-scene cameo as a prostitute, which was meant to take two weeks and ended up wasting two months. Adding to the peril, Kubrick also refused to screen dailies, a practice Cruise relied on. “Making a movie is like stabbing in the dark,” the actor explained. “If I get a sense of the overall picture, then I’m better for the film.” Cruise couldn’t watch and adjust his performance to find his character’s through line—a problem exacerbated by the amount of footage the director filmed. For most of the cast, who appeared only in one or two moments, they had only to match the timbre of their character’s big moment. But Cruise alone is in nearly every scene and had to spend the shoot playing a guessing game. Not knowing which of his mind-melting number of takes would wind up in the film, he still had to figure out how to shape a consistent character from scene to scene. Given Kubrick’s withholding direction and the exponential number of combinations that could be created from his raw footage, it’s understandable if the forever-prepared actor found himself adrift.

Adding to the actor’s peril was the part’s personal and emotional risk. Kubrick decided to find his story through psychoanalyzing his stars, prodding Cruise and Kidman to confess their fears about marriage and commitment to their director in conversations that the three vowed to keep secret. “Tom would hear things that he didn’t want to hear,” admitted Kidman. “It wasn’t like therapy, because you didn’t have anyone to say, ‘And how do you feel about that?’ It was honest, and brutally honest at times.” The line between reality and fiction was deliberately blurred. The couple slept in their characters’ bedroom, chose the colors of the curtains, strewed their clothes on the floor, and even left pocket change on the bedside table just as Cruise did at home.

“As an actor, you set up: there’s reality, and there’s pretend,” explained Kidman. “And those lines get crossed, and it happens when you’re working with a director that allows that to happen. It’s a very exciting thing to happen; it’s a very dangerous thing to happen.” Added Cruise, “I wanted this to work, but you’re playing with dynamite when you act. Emotions kick up.” At least the two actors had an auditory cue to distinguish fact from fiction: on camera, Kidman changed her Australian accent to American. But there was also external tension pressing down on their performances as both actors—especially Cruise—were media savvy enough to recognize that audiences would project Bill and Alice’s unhappiness on their own marriage, which was already a source of tabloid fodder. Even during the course of filming, the couple had to successfully sue Star magazine for writing that they hired sex therapists to coach them.

Kubrick’s on-set wall of secrecy even divided Cruise and Kidman. To exaggerate the distrust between their fictional husband and wife, Kubrick would direct each actor separately and forbid them to share notes. In one painful example, for just one minute of final footage where Alice makes love to a handsome naval officer—an imaginary affair that haunts Bill over the course of the film—Kubrick demanded that Kidman shoot six days of naked sex scenes with a male model. Not only did he ask the pair to pose in over 50 erotic positions, he banned Cruise from the set and forbade Kidman to assuage her husband’s tension by telling him what happened during the shoot.

Co-star Vinessa Shaw would eventually admit Kubrick had exhausted the once-indefatigable actor, confessing that compared to Cruise’s “gung ho” first months of shooting, by the end, “He was still into it, but not as energetic.” Still, when gossip columnist Liz Smith wrote that the Eyes Wide Shut set was miserable, Cruise quickly fired back a letter insisting that his and Kidman’s relationship with Kubrick was “impeccable and extraordinary. […] Both Nic and I love him.” Added actor and director Todd Field, on set for six months to play the pivotal role of the piano player Nick Nightingale, “You’ve never seen two actors more completely subservient and prostrate themselves at the feet of a director.” However, Cruise’s devotion to Kubrick’s massive mystery masterpiece would prove damaging to his screen image.

Good vs. Right

It’s hard to love Cruise’s character, Dr. Bill Harford. He’s closed off and slippery, a cipher whose choices don’t make consistent sense. What personal history screenwriter Frederic Raphael had included in the original drafts—Harford’s strained relationship with his father, his guilt over his prurient interest in female anatomy—Kubrick had purged from the script, leaving Cruise to play a shallow voyager who only serves to lead the audience on an odyssey of sexual temptation. Also on the page but deleted from the final film is Bill’s explanatory voice-over that invited the audience to understand his feelings. Worse, Kubrick deliberately shunned including the Tom Cruise charisma fans expected in his performance, raising the question of why he cast Cruise at all. Why ask the biggest star in the world to carry your film and then hide his face under a mask for 20 minutes?

Though this is a story of sexual frustration—an emotion Cruise had played with conviction in Born on the Fourth of July —and jealousy, which is just the darker twin of Cruise’s signature competitive streak, his performance in Eyes Wide Shut feels flat. He’d done vulnerability better in Jerry Maguire and had captured neutered paralysis a decade and a half before in Risky Business. Yet in nearly all of Eyes Wide Shut ’s key emotional moments—his wife confessing to her first and second psychological “betrayals,” his patient’s daughter professing her love over her father’s corpse, nearly kissing a call girl’s corpse in the morgue, being unmasked at the orgy—Cruise’s face is stiff and visibly unfeeling, almost as if he never took the mask off at all.

Cruise’s blankness makes Eyes Wide Shut take on an element of kabuki theater, the art form where emotional perception—not projection—is key. The whole film feels like an exercise in theatricality, as though Dr. Bill is not a person but a prop. This isn’t a movie about a human possessed with distrust and jealousy—it’s a movie about distrust and jealousy that simply uses a human as its conduit. With Cruise hidden in a mask and robe, the intention is to hide his individuality in the service of a larger ritualistic machine. Even in his scene with the impossibly sweet prostitute played by Vinessa Shaw, their conversation about how much cash for which physical acts doesn’t spark with lust but limps along like the characters themselves are merely performers recognizing that this is the negotiation that is supposed to take place. “Do you suppose we should talk about money?” he asks—it’s as if their whole conversation is in air quotes.

To critique Tom Cruise’s performance in Eyes Wide Shut, it’s important to distinguish between good and right. Measured against any of his previous screen roles, his acting reads as terrible. It’s artificial, distant, and unrelatable. However, the terribleness of his performance translates into a tricky logic puzzle. On-screen, we’re given only one take of the 95 attempts that Cruise shot. If Kubrick was a perfectionist who demanded Cruise repeat himself 95 times on the set, and in the editing room rejected 94 of those takes, then the “terrible” take Kubrick chose must be the take that Kubrick wanted. What feels flat to the audience must have felt correct to the director, so even though it’s hard to appreciate Cruise’s performance, at least one person must have thought the chosen take was perfect: Stanley Kubrick. And for Cruise, a perfectionist himself who was determined to make his master happy, we’re forced to defend the “badness” of his performance by recognizing him as an excellent soldier following orders.

Yet critics under the sway of thinking that the great Kubrick could do no wrong and Cruise, the popcorn hero, could do little right, blamed the actor for the director’s choices and groaned that “Our forever boyish star just can’t deliver.” The irony, however, is that in 45 years of filmmaking, Kubrick had never asked his actors to deliver. His films had earned Oscar nominations for their acting only twice: Peter Sellers in Dr. Strangelove (1964) and Peter Ustinov in Spartacus (1960). In his much shorter career, Cruise himself had earned as many Oscar nods. That fact alone speaks to the limited value the director placed on acting—to Kubrick, his cast was merely a tool for his vision and individual performances subservient to his intimidating authorial style. Kubrick’s disinterest in actors is evident even in *Eyes Wide Shut’*s credits, which despite including two directors (Pollack and Field) and two great character actors (Alan Cumming and Rade Serbedzija) filled the rest of its cast with new faces and 10th-billed TV actors. As much as Cruise wanted Eyes Wide Shut to prove, yet again, that he could act, Kubrick clearly had scant interest in giving him the opportunity.

Cruise made himself vulnerable before Kubrick and his devotees, but instead of being rewarded for his emotional and financial sacrifice, audiences dismissed his performance as callow. He couldn’t even ask his by-then dead-and-buried director for support. Eyes Wide Shut ’s fallout wasn’t flattering: he was blamed for the film’s failure, and the tabloids took a savage interest in his marriage, which would last only two more years. Yet Cruise continues to defend his two years of hard work. “I didn’t like playing Dr. Bill. I didn’t like him. It was unpleasant,” admitted Cruise a year later in the only public criticism he’s ever given. “But I would have absolutely kicked myself if I hadn’t done this.”

Tom Cruise’s Vanity Fair Covers

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Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

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A man becomes obsessed with pursuing a sexual adventure after his wife reveals her fantasies to him

After Alice, doctor Bill Hartford's wife, reveals to him that she had intense sexual fantasies about a naval officer she met on vacation the previous year, he becomes consumed by the need to explore the darker realms of desire and sexuality. But he soon finds he's bitten off more than he can chew after infiltrating a secret society's exclusive masked orgy.

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Far and Away

• A young Irish couple flee to the States, but subsequently struggle to obtain land and prosper freely.
• Joseph (Tom Cruise) and his landlord's daughter, Shannon (Nicole Kidman), travel from Ireland to America in hopes of claiming free land in Oklahoma. The pair get sidetracked in Boston, where Joseph takes up boxing to support himself. When he loses a pivotal fight, the two are left penniless. Now faced with poverty, the two must find new ways to scrape by. As their affection for each other grows, Joseph questions whether he is truly what Shannon needs in her life.
• A young man leaves Ireland with his landlord's daughter after some trouble with her father and they dream of owning land at the big give-away in Oklahoma ca. 1893. When they get to the new land, they find jobs and begin saving money. The man becomes a local bare-hands boxer and rides in glory until he is beaten, then his employers steal all the couple's money and they must fight off starvation in the winter and try to keep their dream of owning land alive. Meanwhile, the woman's parents find out where she has gone and have come to the U.S. to find her and take her back. — Ed Sutton <[email protected]>
• Joseph Donnelly, a young Irish man facing property eviction after his father's death, decides to take revenge on Daniel Christie, his landlord. In an attempt to kill Christie, however, he is injured and sentenced to a duel with Christie's arrogant manager, Stephen Chase. Meanwhile, Shannon, Daniel's daughter, is growing dissatisfied with the traditional views of her parents' generation and longs to be modern. She makes her plans to leave for the U.S. and with her help, Joseph is able to escape. Upon arriving in Boston, they find jobs and begin saving money. Joseph becomes a local bare-hands boxer, while Shannon works in a chicken processing plant and then as a dancer at the social club. All goes well until Joseph loses a boxing match, after which their money is taken away. Joseph and Shannon are left to starve in the winter cold. Shannon's parents, still in Ireland, face a devastating loss and decide to come to America to be with her. Chase, who joined them, has begun a campaign to find her, but his efforts are unnecessary Joseph brings Shannon to them after an accident. Joseph then heads west to work on the railroad. After many months, Joseph is confronted by his father in a dream and is reminded of his desire to own his own land. Joseph decides to join the wagon trains and arrives in Oklahoma Territory just in time for the big land race, upon which his fate will lie. — Amy Jentoft <[email protected]>
• Joseph Donelly (Tom Cruise),a young Irishman facing property eviction after his father's death, decides to take revenge on his landlord, Daniel Christie (Robert Prosky). In his attempt to kill him however, he is discovered by Daniel's daughter, Shannon Christie (Nicole Kidman) and is injured by her when he tries to escape. While injured he continues his plans to kill his landlord, but his weapon malfunctions and blows up in his face. Held captive while they treat his wounds (planning to subsequently have him hanged for attempted murder), Joseph tries to escape the house and is caught by Stephen Chase (Thomas Gibson), Daniel's arrogant manager. Joseph spits on Stephen in anger and, disgraced, Stephen challenges Joseph to a duel of pistols at dawn. Meanwhile, Shannon, also Stephen's love interest, is growing dissatisfied with the traditional views of her parents' generation and longs to be modern, even going as far as to disgust her mother and their friends by playing American music on the piano. She makes plans to leave for America to claim land that's being given away for free, and with her help, Joseph is able to escape. Shannon pays for Joseph's passage and he pretends to be her servant. This way, a single young woman is able to travel without question, and Joseph, now aware of the reality of the free land, can reach America to claim land. Shannon meets and talks to a kindly man on the ship about the promise of land and her money issues. He informs her that to claim the free land, she must travel to Oklahoma and race for it along with others. Concerned with the expense of travel, she explains to him that she has no money, only expensive silver spoons. He tells her he will help her find a shop to whom she can sell her silver to. Upon arriving in Boston, the man who provided advice steals her spoons and is shot by men who seem to have previous trouble with him. The spoons are scattered in the street and stolen by passersby. Calling for help, Shannon is rescued by Joseph, who manages to save her bag and get her out of the streets. Taking charge of their situation, Joseph is led to the community of Irish living in the area and speaks to the man in charge. Through him, they find a room to live in and jobs in a chicken processing plant. Due to Shannon's wealthy background, which is hated by the lower class Irish they find themselves surrounded by, Joseph lies and tells everyone that she is in fact his sister, to save her from being exiled or hurt. Time passes and it becomes obvious that Joseph and Shannon have become attracted to each other, but both keep up a front of hostility. One night, after peeking at Shannon undress, Joseph finds himself sexually frustrated and rushes out and joins in a barehanded boxing match. Winning the match provides Joseph with newfound wealth and becomes somewhat of a local celebrity. Meanwhile back in Ireland The Christie house is burned down by unhappy taxpayers, and they and Stephen announce that they will go to America to find their daughter. Temporarily, Joseph seems to forget about his goals of obtaining land and spends his money on suits and hats, in a thinly veiled attempt to impress Shannon. Shannon however, continues her work at the plant and mocks Joseph's prized hats. At one point, the pair have a spat and it becomes obvious that Joseph is extremely upset that he's not managed to gain Shannon's approval or admiration. Shannon begins to question Joseph about his plans to get land and his lack of money the night before the largest fight of his career. He replies angrily that he easily earns money and will continue to do so. He spitefully tells her that he earns more money than she could ever dream to. She retorts that she could earn just as much and disappears into their room. Later, right before the big fight, Joseph searches for Shannon, but is unable to find her. He's directed to his fight, told by others that she is there. Rushing to the site, he discovers she has become a dancer at the social club, demeaning herself to earn more money. He attempts to ignore the men pushing him towards the ring and covers Shannon with his jacket, demanding that she stop dancing. Before he can finish with her, the men around plea with him to fight. The Irish men backing Joseph offer him a small fortune ($200) for this one last, great fight. Shannon, who previously scorned boxing, urges him to do it, since it would be enough money to fulfill his wish of traveling to get land. Joseph agrees and begins to fight a large Italian fighter. All goes well until Joseph witnesses one of his backers (a member of the city council) forcing Shannon into his lap and groping her. Completely forgetting the fight, Joseph pushes his way through the crowd to free her. As he is pushed back into the ring his foot crosses the line, signalling he is ready to begin fighting, the Italian then beats Joseph. Because Joseph lost the fight he is then thrown out of the club. When Joseph wakes up he runs out of the alley he woke up in and runs into Stephen Chase asking drunkards if they've seen Shannon. Joseph then runs to his room to find the backers searching the room for their money. When they find it they take it, and throw Joseph and Shannon out into the snow covered street and tells the owner of the "whorehouse" that if she let them stay one night, it will be shut down. During a very cold night with no food, they become desperate enough to enter a seemingly abandoned house of luxury. Joseph shows signs of sadness at the beautiful things, knowing Shannon has suffered and deserves a better life than she currently has. He encourages her to pretend the house is hers, and offers to serve her. She's moved by this, but begs him to join her instead, and pretend with her, that they are married and the house is theirs. During the tender moment they declare that they 'pretend' to love each other and kiss. At that moment the owners of the house returns and chases them from the property, shooting Shannon in the process. Joseph brings Shannon to Christie's for help after she is shot. Stephen continuously scolds him and ridicules the state Shannon is in. Deciding Shannon will be better cared for here, with her family and wealth, Joseph leaves Shannon with her family, despite his obvious feelings for her. He then heads west to work on the Trans-Continental Railroad, seemingly abandoning his dream of owning land. After many months, Joseph is confronted by his father in a dream, and is reminded of his desire to own land. Joseph decides to join the wagon trains and arrives in Oklahoma Territory just in time for the Land Run of 1893, which will enable him finally reach his goal. Through chance he discovers Shannon, now healthy and obviously well taken care of, has also arrived. Confronting her, he discovers she arrived on train, riding the very rails he built. She offers him luck, but is rather cold and Joseph leaves disheartened. Stephen, who witnesses the exchange, warns Joseph that he will kill him if he goes near Shannon. Arriving late to the event, Joseph is forced to choose between two horses the unruly stallion or the broken slow horse. He choices the broken horse that gets killed that night he then is forced to ride the unruly horse. Shannon attempts to give him advice, but is quickly ushered away. During the race, Joseph chases after Shannon and Stephen, knowing that Stephen has broken the law and already found a very rich spot of land to claim. During the race, Shannon falls off her horse and Joseph rushes to her aid. Angered by this, Stephen races back towards them, instead of his goal, the land, and attempts to shoot him. They have a brief fight but Joseph manages to knock the gun from him. Shannon encourages Joseph to continue the race. He races Stephen to the land but then Stephen comes along and they have another fight in which Joseph falls to the ground, hitting his head on a rock, mortally wounding him. Shannon rushes to his side and finally rejects Stephen when he questions her actions. Stephen leaves and Shannon is left to try and keep Joseph alive. As he dies, Joseph finally confesses that he loves her, and without her, the land that was so important to him means nothing. He dies, and Shannon mourns, crying over his body. She tells him that she always loved him, from the first moment she saw him. This suddenly revives him, similar to an earlier scene involving his father, and together they happily drive their flag through the ground and claim their prized land.

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Nicole Kidman ＆ Tom Cruise: What Movies Were They in Together?

Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise were once one of Hollywood’s most iconic couples. Their chemistry on and off the screen captured the hearts of millions of fans worldwide. Throughout their relationship, which lasted from 1990 to 2001, the two talented actors shared the screen in several memorable films. In this article, we will delve into the movies that brought this dynamic duo together .

1. A Love Story that Started on Set

Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise first met on the set of the 1990 film “Days of Thunder.” Directed by Tony Scott, this action-packed romantic drama starred Cruise as a talented race car driver and Kidman as his love interest, a neurosurgeon. Their on-screen chemistry was undeniable, and soon, their love blossomed off-screen as well. The couple’s whirlwind romance took Hollywood by storm, and they became one of the industry’s hottest couples.

2. Far and Away (1992)

The second film that brought Kidman and Cruise together was “Far and Away.” This 1992 epic romantic adventure, directed by Ron Howard, is set in the late 1800s and follows the journey of two Irish immigrants seeking a better life in America. Kidman played Shannon Christie, a wealthy woman escaping her privileged upbringing, while Cruise portrayed Joseph Donnelly, a poor tenant farmer with dreams of land ownership. The film showcased their ability to portray passionate and deeply emotional characters, solidifying their status as a Hollywood power couple.

3. Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

Arguably one of the most controversial and talked-about films in their joint filmography, “Eyes Wide Shut” was directed by the legendary Stanley Kubrick. Released in 1999, this erotic drama delved into the dark and mysterious world of a Manhattan-based doctor (Cruise) who becomes obsessed with a secret society after his wife (Kidman) confesses to having sexual fantasies. The film’s provocative themes and intense performances by the two actors sparked immense media attention and added to their on-screen legacy.

4. The Impact of their Real-life Relationship on Screen

Throughout their collaborations, audiences and critics couldn’t help but speculate about the influence of their real-life relationship on their performances. Many believed that the depth of their connection and the emotions they shared translated seamlessly onto the screen, making their on-screen romances feel authentic and captivating.

Celebrity Status and Media Attention

As two of the most bankable stars in Hollywood, Kidman and Cruise’s personal lives were often under intense scrutiny by the media. Their relationship and subsequent divorce made headlines worldwide, which, in turn, generated significant interest in their movies . While their off-screen drama attracted attention, it also brought more viewers to theaters to witness their chemistry on-screen.

Life After Divorce

After their highly publicized divorce in 2001, Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise went on to have successful careers individually. Both actors continued to thrive in Hollywood and received critical acclaim for their diverse roles. Kidman won an Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance in “The Hours” (2002), while Cruise continued to lead blockbuster franchises like “Mission: Impossible.”

Revisiting the Collaborations

As time passed, fans and film enthusiasts revisited their collaborations with a fresh perspective. Some viewed their movies with newfound appreciation, while others pondered how their real-life relationship impacted the narratives of the films they worked on together.

Kidman and Cruise’s Chemistry

One of the defining features of their joint filmography was undoubtedly the undeniable chemistry between Kidman and Cruise. Whether portraying a passionate couple in love or navigating the complexities of troubled relationships, their ability to connect on screen was a testament to their acting prowess.

Speculations and Rumors

Over the years, various rumors and speculations emerged regarding the reasons behind their divorce and the dynamics of their relationship. These rumors often intersected with their work together, further fueling interest in their movies and the behind-the-scenes dynamics.

The movies that Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise starred in together remain timeless classics that showcase their talent and the remarkable chemistry they shared. From “Days of Thunder” to “Eyes Wide Shut,” each film adds a unique chapter to their on-screen legacy. Their collaborations serve as a reminder of the power of love and connection, both on and off the silver screen. As two of Hollywood’s most talented actors, their influence continues to shape the film industry, leaving an indelible mark on cinema history.

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Far and Away

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Handsome and simplistic, Far and Away has the beauty of an American epic without the breadth.

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Eyes Wide Shut, 20 years on: how does Stanley Kubrick’s last testament stand up?

Of all Stanley Kubrick’s films, his swansong remains the most divisive. After a production shrouded in secrecy, the Tom Cruise-Nicole Kidman erotic drama Eyes Wide Shut opened to mixed reviews. Was Kubrick ahead of the times, or behind them?

As 1999 approached, what little was known about Eyes Wide Shut was almost indecently tantalising. Here was Stanley Kubrick, for many the world’s greatest living filmmaker, returning with his first finished project in 12 years – a sexually provocative adult drama, utterly shrouded in secrecy, starring pre-eminent Hollywood power couple Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. Kubrick’s sudden death in March 1999, six days after delivering his final cut to Warner Bros, only served to intensify anticipation for what would now, alas, be the master’s final gift to cinema.

But while the pre-release marketing campaign, which Warner Bros claimed was executed in accordance with Kubrick’s wishes, teased a steamy, erotic thriller, the final film was a complex, confounding, intimate epic. Relocating the events of Arthur Schnitzler’s 1926 psychosexual novella, Dream Story, from early 20th-century Vienna to eve-of-the-millennium Manhattan, it depicts an extraordinary chapter in the life of Dr Bill Harford (Cruise), who embarks on a dreamlike nocturnal odyssey after his wife, Alice (Kidman), confesses, while intoxicated, to having had intense fantasies about another man. Bill’s wanderings offer him an enticing glimpse of a murky, sexual underworld, and ultimately lead him to a ritualistic masked orgy in an opulent mansion. But despite encountering a wealth of potential partners, Bill finds his opportunities to taste forbidden fruit thwarted at every turn.

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Come to the film expecting a salacious romp, then, and you may find it to be a profoundly frustrating viewing experience, all foreplay and no penetration. Indeed, some early detractors were annoyed to have been so flagrantly misled by the titillating trailer. “Eyes Wide Shut turns out to be the dirtiest movie of 1958,” quipped the Washington Post’s Stephen Hunter.

But while it’s often talked of as a critical flop, the film had its fair share of early champions. Roger Ebert called it a “mesmerizing daydream of sexual fantasy”, Michael Wilmington of the Chicago Tribune proclaimed it a “masterpiece”, and, perhaps predictably, it was widely praised by French cinephile journalists. It was also far from a commercial disaster, ultimately grossing over $162m worldwide: underwhelming for a Tom Cruise star vehicle, but really rather respectable for a near-three-hour existential art film about sexual dysfunction.

Come to terms with the lack of thrusting and you’ll discover a film of myriad other perverse pleasures. It’s more wryly amusing than many of its detractors would have you believe – though your mileage may vary depending on how tickled you are by the notion of one of Hollywood’s most handsome movie stars roaming the streets of America’s most densely populated city with the express purpose of cheating on his wife, and still somehow failing to get laid.

Kubrick seems to take immense delight in subverting Cruise’s virile man-of-action image – Bill is almost pathologically passive, unable to acknowledge, let alone explore, his sexuality. He’s also cringe-inducingly bourgeois, introducing himself as a doctor to everyone he meets, as if this automatically grants him moral authority in any situation. And the film is punctuated by moments of unexpected absurdity: a grieving daughter confesses her undying love for Bill, despite barely knowing him; the orgy sequence, entrancingly sinister at first, collapses into florid melodrama as soon as the menacing masked figures begin to speak. Appearing on the Charlie Rose show in 2000, Steve Martin revealed that Kubrick approached him for the lead role in a Dream Story adaptation back in 1980, and it’s not too much of a stretch to imagine Eyes Wide Shut as a full-blown sex farce.

But that’s not to suggest a lack of serious intent on Kubrick’s part. The film excels as an unflinching examination of a long-term relationship unravelling at the seams as a result of mutual suppressed desire and emotional dishonesty. Pivotal scenes in which Alice confesses her contempt for Bill and her interest in other men are given an extra jolt of authenticity by the fact that the actors were a married couple. These sequences are even more compellingly uncomfortable today, now that we know that Cruise abruptly filed for divorce from Kidman in 2001. In a 2014 Vanity Fair article, Amy Nicholson explains: “Kubrick decided to find his story through psychoanalyzing his stars, prodding Cruise and Kidman to confess their fears about marriage and commitment to their director in conversations that the three vowed to keep secret.”

There’s also a sense of art mirroring reality in the way that Bill’s sexuality is repeatedly called into question – explicitly in one scene by a group of homophobic frat boys, implicitly by the character’s general reticence around women. Persistent rumours about Cruise’s orientation are an integral part of the star’s biography, and Kubrick seems keen for viewers to keep these in mind throughout Eyes Wide Shut.

But while this blurring of fiction and reality is enthralling to behold in the finished film, it would seem that the production process, and the media circus surrounding it, was personally damaging to Cruise in particular. Ahead of the film’s release, US magazine Star alleged that Kubrick hired sex therapists for the couple after they proved unable to act amorously with one another. This came hot on the heels of an Express article suggesting that their marriage was a business arrangement, perhaps conceived to cover up their homosexuality. In both cases, the pair successfully sued, but Cruise has never since managed to quash intense speculation about his private life.

Eyes Wide Shut ultimately broke the star’s uninterrupted run of major box office hits since 1992’s A Few Good Men. To add insult to injury, Cruise was singled out by some early critics as the film’s weak link, his all-too-convincing performance as a haunted, repressed individual written off as merely wooden. It’s surely no coincidence that after the controversies and perceived failure of the film, the star became considerably more risk-averse in his choice of roles. Despite the widespread acclaim that he received later, in 1999, for his explosive turn as a monstrous sex guru in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia, he swiftly retreated back into his comfort zone as an actor and continues to this day to mostly play wholesome, unwaveringly heterosexual heroes in bombastic action blockbusters. This might ultimately be the most lamentable aspect of Eyes Wide Shut’s legacy, as the vulnerability he displays under Kubrick’s tutelage is often thrilling to behold.

While the initial critical response was mixed rather than hostile, the tide has continued to turn in the film’s favour, with a steady stream of reappraisals positioning it as a misunderstood masterpiece. But it remains perhaps Kubrick’s most divisive major work. For me, it’s great but with a few significant shortcomings. The strange middle ground it occupies between reality and dreamscape is unquestionably a high barrier to entry. As a psychologically probing relationship drama, it often comes across as illogical and overwrought; as a surreal psychosexual thriller, it’s less transportive and transgressive than David Lynch’s Lost Highway (1997) or Mulholland Dr. (2001). Where the film really soars is in its assured handling of dramatic tonal shifts, but that’s far more of a niche proposition than the high-minded visceral horror of The Shining (1980) or the trippy sci-fi spectacle of 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968).

The film suffers a little by sticking so closely to the narrative of Schnitzler’s Dream Story. The central notion of a man being shaken to his core by the revelation of his wife’s inner sexual life makes perfect sense in a story written when psychoanalysis was a nascent practice. But it’s much harder to buy into the idea that a modern urban sophisticate like Bill would be so taken aback by Alice’s confessions. Kubrick’s decision to lift dialogue straight from the book also backfires; the final scene sees the protagonists ruminate on the film’s themes in a disappointingly heavy-handed manner, with Alice questioning whether “the reality of one night… can ever be the whole truth”, and Bill postulating that “no dream is ever just a dream”.

It’s perhaps inevitable that some of the film’s musings on sex and sexuality would have aged poorly, but the way in which a prostitute’s HIV diagnosis is used as a cheap plot twist is inexcusably crass. The inference here seems to be that Bill has dodged a metaphorical bullet by not sleeping with the girl in question. As such, the film ends up propagating the harmful and offensive notion of HIV as a grave punishment for aberrant or immoral behaviour.

And there are occasional moments that seem uncharacteristically clumsy for a perfectionist of Kubrick’s calibre. The use of voiceover to draw an explicit connection between an orgy attendee and a girl lying dead in a morgue feels particularly hokey. It’s tempting to imagine that, had the director lived longer, he would have continued to tinker with the film after delivering his final cut, as was his habit, and that such rough edges would have been smoothed out. But this question of authorship holds some admirers back from fully embracing the film as it stands. In an MSN chat with fans in 2001, David Lynch declared: “I really love Eyes Wide Shut. I just wonder if Stanley Kubrick really did finish it the way he wanted to before he died.” And in a 2017 interview on MTV ’s Happy Sad Confused podcast, Christopher Nolan explained: “I started looking at the reality of how the film was finished – he died before the scoring sessions were complete. So, even though I think the studio appropriately put out the film as his version, knowing where that happens in my own process… it’s a little bit early… (the film) is an extraordinary achievement, but it is a little bit hampered by very, very small and superficial, almost technical flaws that I’m pretty sure he would have ironed out.”

And yet, as with Kubrick’s more widely adored films, Eyes Wide Shut has proven powerfully prescient, often in enjoyably unexpected ways. In its depiction of sex as a ritualistic power game presided over by the ultra wealthy, the film foreshadowed the most unlikely literary phenomenon of recent years,  E.L. James’s Fifty Shades trilogy. Though the softcore screen adaptations, which chart the romantic adventures of Jamie Dornan’s BDSM -fixated billionaire and Dakota Johnson’s demure girl next door, are about as far from Kubrickian as you can imagine, director James Foley tips his hat to Eyes Wide Shut in Fifty Shades Darker’s most memorable set piece, a masked ball in a sprawling mansion that treads a fine line between sexy and sinister.

The film has also exerted an influence on high-society hedonism beyond the realm of fiction. In 2010, Vogue celebrated its 90th anniversary with an Eyes Wide Shut-inspired party, while, thanks to sex-positive enterprises like Killing Kittens, upscale orgies are today a relatively mainstream nightlife option in cities like London and New York.

In its ominous references to decadent elites pulling society’s strings, the film also anticipates an obsession with secret societies and conspiracy theories that has become a defining trait of 21st-century popular culture – from the shadowy religious sects at the centre of Dan Brown’s unfathomably popular Robert Langdon novels, to the grotesque farce of the Pizzagate scandal in the run-up to the 2016 US presidential election. Indeed, the internet is today rife with outlandish tales asserting that Eyes Wide Shut was inspired by the clandestine activity of a real-world Illuminati, and that Kubrick was murdered for attempting to expose their scandalous practices. This may not quite be how Kubrick aficionados would ideally want their idol to be remembered, but it’s testament to Eyes Wide Shut’s idiosyncratic, enigmatic brilliance that the film continues to inspire such unpredictable responses.

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Rotten Tomatoes® Score

There's something flat and unfulfilling about Far and Away, as though Mr. Howard bit off more than he could chew.

It is filled with characters willing to work, fight, pluck chickens and do anything to achieve their dream. Seldom will you find a film that portrays such values in positive terms.

A fun epic spectacle movie they don't make much today

Not a bad movie in spite of its corny premise...

[Howard] has cast two actors -- Cruise and Nicole Kidman -- who simply do not have the scope or abilities to carry an epic. And he does not have a strong enough support team to fill in the gaps.

Far and Away... is the director's attempt to step into the cinematic shoes of directors John Ford and David Lean. And, certainly, he's stepped into something with this sprawling, old-fashioned melodrama.

A little irreverence and some revisionist strokes would have lent some welcome spice to this bland meat-and-potatoes serving of U.S. history.

What is a surprise is that Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman are almost entirely credible in their roles.

Howard's lifelong ambition to make a film about his Irish ancestry results in a light confection, full of sweeping overhead shots and predictable pulp-fiction intrigue.

This time the concept of TV-for-a-very-big-screen comes out silly.

Additional Info

• Genre : Drama
• Release Date : May 22, 1992
• Languages : English, Spanish
• Captions : English
• Audio Format : 5.1

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The Ending Of Eyes Wide Shut Explained

1999 was a busy year for a lot of reasons. Facing the centennial, there was a lot to look forward to, and a lot to leave behind. For director Stanley Kubrick, there was one film idea that he just had to finish before the year was over, and that was "Eyes Wide Shut." The movie is based on a German novella from 1926 called "Traumnovelle," or "Dream Story," which focuses on a man in Vienna who finds out his wife has fantasies of other men, and goes on a two-day journey dealing with personal realizations about sex, individualism, and morality.

For Kubrick's film, he transferred the story from early 20th century Vienna to New York City, Greenwich Village specifically, in the 1990s. The director cast Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman , husband and wife at the time, as the main couple in the story named Bill and Alice. The movie began filming in November 1996 and ended in June 1998, holding the Guinness World Records for longest constant movie shoot at over 15 months, with 46 weeks of unbroken shooting.

The film is a confounding story, and even two decades later, fans and critics alike continue to debate the meaning behind "Eyes Wide Shut" and whether the final cut was what Kubrick really wanted.

The themes and meaning of Eyes Wide Shut

While Kubrick's other films explore topics like free will, conformity, and class privilege, "Eyes Wide Shut" takes on society's dehumanization of sex. For Bill and Alice, sex and temptation is all around them, but they only have eyes for each other. But one night Alice admits that she considered having an affair with a handsome naval officer a year earlier, and Bill's whole world is turned upside down. He then begins a night-long journey to explore and possibly give in to his own temptations, stumbling upon a secret society participating in a masked orgy.

The story is strange and winding, adding to the dreamlike quality of filmmaking that takes influence from the original "Dream Story." Throughout the night, Bill meets various strangers who attempt to engage him in sex. While he almost gives in a few times, he makes it through the encounters unscathed until he gets to the main event, the secret society's weird orgy. With this film, Kubrick is taking on "the causes and effects of depersonalized sex." One early review of the film describes the orgy scene as "the fulcrum" of "Eyes Wide Shut," saying, "sex is normally the most intimate means of human interaction, yet here it is reduced to a ritualistic, almost creepy form of gratification ... There is freedom in anonymity, but also isolation and a complete dearth of emotion" ( Reel Views ).

After this encounter, Bill finally realizes the dark side of this world of sex and anonymity, returning to his wife Alice's side. She is still open with him about her past sexual fantasies, but in the end they stay loyal to each other, happy that their marriage and mutual sexual attraction have survived this long.

The crazy process to make Kubrick's last movie

It's safe to say that Kubrick had a reputation for being quite the demanding and unusual filmmaker. Although many people are familiar with his abuse of Shelley Duvall on the set of "The Shining," some might not know just how crazy it was to make "Eyes Wide Shut," the director's last film.

Along with how long it took to film the movie, Kubrick put his main two actors through a lot of intense experiences. The director took take after take of the same scene, but not because he had a detailed vision in mind. According to a  Vanity Fair article detailing the film's production, his "theory was that once his actors bottomed-out in exhaustion and forgot about the cameras, they could rebuild and discover something that neither he nor they expected." Kubrick also never let his actors see any daily footage, and this inability to track his own performance across the film gave Cruise an ulcer, which he hid from Kubrick.

The director also thoroughly blended fact and fiction, creating a feeling of distrust between Cruise and Kidman by choosing to "direct each actor separately and forbid them to share notes. In one painful example, for just one minute of final footage where Alice makes love to a handsome naval officer—an imaginary affair that haunts Bill over the course of the film—Kubrick demanded that Kidman shoot six days of naked sex scenes with a male model ... He banned Cruise from the set and forbade Kidman to assuage her husband's tension by telling him what happened during the shoot." The emotional abuse he put his actors through was apparently worth it for them, but it's up to debate whether or not it improved the final product.

Debate and censorship for Eyes Wide Shut

"Eyes Wide Shut" is Kubrick's final film before his death. According to the documentary "Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures," Kubrick was in the middle of post-production when he showed what Warner Bros. executives claim was a relatively final cut of the film on March 1, 1999. The director died six days later, on March 7, 1999, at the age of 70. "Eyes Wide Shut" opened on July 16, 1999, and did well at the box office and with critics. It currently holds a 75% on Rotten Tomatoes . But that doesn't mean that there isn't any controversy attached to the film's release. 

Firstly, the movie had to be censored to hit the R-rating, with the orgy scene taking a large hit. According to a 1999 New York Times article, "65 seconds of the movie were digitally altered. Essentially, shrouded digital figures were placed in front of couples engaged in sex, partly blocking the audience's view." At the same time, some people argued that "Eyes Wide Shut" was an unfinished film, and the final product was not the one Kubrick intended to release. A frequent collaborator of Kubrick, writer Michael Herr, revealed in a Vanity Fair piece that Kubrick called him shortly before he had to show the Warner Bros. executives a cut the film, saying that "there was looping to be done and the music wasn't finished, lots of small technical fixes on color and sound; would I show work that wasn't finished?" He was forced to show the executives due to contractual reasons but didn't want to, and this was likely the cut that later became the final product.

While there's a lot of interesting history and questions revolving around "Eyes Wide Shut," unfortunately Kubrick isn't around to clarify anything. Still, the director's final film impresses as an unforgettable story about morality and sexuality, no matter what way you look at it.

Inside Tom Cruise's Relationship With Nicole Kidman

They were the Hollywood "it" couple of the 1990s. When A-list actor Tom Cruise decided to make a movie about a race car driver called "Days of Thunder," the recently divorced star quickly fell in love with his little-known love interest, Australian actress Nicole Kidman. The year was 1990, and both the film and her newfound relationship with Cruise turned Kidman into an instant Hollywood starlet who eventually forged a career in her own right. But, before that, she was Cruise's loving wife and mother of his two adopted children.

By the time 1990 came to a close, Cruise and Kidman were married. This was 28-year-old Cruise's second marriage, as he had previously been wed to actress Mimi Rogers. It was 23-year-old Kidman's first marriage (via Parade ). For a time, Kidman even tried to become a Scientologist like her husband, but grew weary of it and even got her husband to leave the Church of Scientology briefly, according to The Daily Beast . 

However, their marriage wouldn't last much more than a decade, and there's still no real answer to why it suddenly ended.

Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman seemed like the perfect couple

During the time they were wed, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman fascinated Hollywood and dominated magazine covers. They even made two more acclaimed movies together: 1992's "Far and Away" and 1999's "Eyes Wide Shut" (via Parade ). In 2002, after their marriage had ended, Kidman described the beginning of her romance with Cruise to Vanity Fair . 

"He basically swept me off my feet. I fell madly, passionately in love," Kidman said. "And as happens when you fall in love, my whole plan in terms of what I wanted for my life — I was like, 'Forget it. This is it.' I was consumed by it, willingly. And I was desperate to have a baby with him. I didn't care if we were married. That's what I wish I'd done."

Although Kidman did marry this man who swept her off her feet, instead of having his babies, the pair chose to adopt. They added Isabella to their family in 1993 and Connor in 1995. 

"I was willing to give up everything," Kidman told Vanity Fair. "I now see that as part of me. I'm willing to do that — I do it when I do a movie too. I'm willing to go, 'Yeah, bring it on, consume me, intoxicate me.' I want to feel alive — I want to reel, basically. I was reeling with Tom and I loved it and I would have walked to the end of the earth."

Nicole Kidman describes one of the happiest times in her marriage to Tom Cruise

When Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman made "Eyes Wide Shut" with legendary director Stanley Kubrick, the couple and their two children moved to England and were there for two years, living in a trailer and making spaghetti dinners with Kubrick as their frequent guest. It was rumored that the problems in the marriage began when they shot that dark film, but, in 2020, Kidman told The New York Times that was the furthest thing from the truth, at least in her eyes.

"That fits the narrative that people came up with, but I definitely didn't see it like that," Kidman said. "We were happily married through that. We would go go-kart racing after those scenes. We'd rent out a place and go racing at 3 in the morning. I don't know what else to say. Maybe I don't have the ability to look back and dissect it. Or I'm not willing to."

Nicole Kidman was stunned when Tom Cruise filed for divorce

In 2001, Tom Cruise shocked the world and his wife when he suddenly filed for divorce. Later that year, Cruise wished Nicole Kidman well in an interview with Vanity Fair  but would not reveal why they split up.

"She knows why, and I know why," he said. "She's the mother of my children, and I wish her well. And I think that you just move on. And I don't say that lightly. I don't say that with anything. Things happen in life, and you do everything you can, and in every possible way, and there's a point at which you just sometimes have to face the brutal reality."

Kidman described that time in her life as tumultuous. She couldn't believe her marriage was over, and she wasn't sure what would happen next, telling Vanity Fair that she was so distraught that she was crying in the fetal position when her parents had to come over and convince her to move on with her life. "At the time, it felt like the work was going to be taken away from me," she said. "I had more things that I wanted to give, do, participate in." 

Luckily, her career has only flourished since then, with Kidman now having an Oscar win and three noms under her belt — as well as a happy 15-year marriage to Keith Urban.

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'Days of Thunder' at 30: Nicole Kidman looks back at racing film that introduced her to ex Tom Cruise

Nicole Kidman was bound to make the move overseas. After working steadily in Australian film and television for six years, beginning with 1983 movies like BMX Bandits and Bush Christmas , the fledgling actress drew international acclaim for her role as a grieving mother whose boat trip with her husband (Sam Neill) turns treacherous after an encounter with a stranded man (Billy Zane) in Philip Noyce’s Hitchcockian 1989 thriller Dead Calm .

Among those enamored with Kidman’s performance was Hollywood superstar Tom Cruise , who handpicked her to costar with him in the 1990 NASCAR drama Days of Thunder , which followed an incredible consecutive string of critical and commercial successes for the actor (1986’s Top Gun and The Color of Money , 1988’s Cocktail and Rain Man , and 1989’s Born on the Fourth of July ). The film turns 30 on Saturday.

“I just remember being amazed that I was in America, and suddenly I had this role in this huge Tom Cruise movie,” Kidman, who has since become one of the most revered actors of her generation, told Yahoo Entertainment during a 2014 Role Recall interview (watch in full above, with Days of Thunder chat starting 38 seconds in).

In the Tony Scott-directed Thunder , Kidman plays Dr. Claire Lewicki, a neurosurgeon who enters into a romance with Cruise’s racing star Cole Trickle after he’s hospitalized with a major injury. “I went and worked in a hospital for a couple of days,” Kidman said about the project, in which she used her native accent. “I’m a researcher. I’m a geek.”

Life imitated art as Cruise and Kidman entered into a tabloid-frenzied relationship, marrying six months after the film was released and adopting two children together.

"I moved here because I fell in love and got married… I always make choices for love, and everything kind of had to fall in place around that, Kidman (who’s earned four Oscar nominations, including one win for The Hours ) told Variety in 2018 .

“Being married to Tom Cruise at 22 is something I’m always reluctant to talk about, because I’m married now to the man who is my great love [Keith Urban], and it almost feels disrespectful,” Kidman shared with The Cut in a Women and Power profile that same year.

The marriage, Kidman says, offered her some protection in a dangerous industry still 17 years away from Hollywood’s #MeToo reckoning.

“I got married very young, but it definitely wasn’t power for me — it was protection. I married for love, but being married to an extremely powerful man kept me from being sexually harassed. I would work, but I was still very much cocooned. So when I came out of it at 32, 33, it’s almost like I had to grow up.”

After Days of Thunder , Kidman and Cruise made two more films together — the 1992 immigrant love story Far and Away and Stanley Kubrick’s long-in-the-making 1999 swan song Eyes Wide Shut . They divorced in 2001.

Buy the new Days of Thunder 4K UHD release on Amazon .

Read more on Yahoo Entertainment:

'St. Elmo’s Fire' turns 35: Andie MacDowell reflects on her awkward relationship with Demi Moore

'Blues Brothers' at 40: Dan Aykroyd on how working with late soul greats James Brown and Aretha Franklin 'venerates African American culture'

'Jaws' at 45: Richard Dreyfuss admits he thought Steven Spielberg's classic thriller would be a failure

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Nicole Kidman opens up about making 'Eyes Wide Shut' with ex-husband Tom Cruise

Kidman starred in the Stanley Kubrick film alongside then-husband Tom Cruise.

Nicole Kidman is reflecting on the making of "Eyes Wide Shut" as the movie celebrates its 25th anniversary this year.

Released in 1999, the erotic psychological drama centers on the twisted relationship between Kidman's character, Alice Harford, and Tom Cruise's character, Dr. Bill Harford. Kidman and Cruise were married at the time.

Nicole Kidman and Keith Urban joined by teenage daughters for 1st time on red carpet

Looking back on the film, the last from trailblazing filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, who died four months before its release, Kidman told the Los Angeles Times she's only "seen bits of it" and has "never watched it all the way through."

When she does watch it, it's unlikely she'll watch with her two young daughters, Sunday and Faith, whom she shares with now-husband Keith Urban: Kidman told the outlet the film is "definitely not" for them.

"At the AFI [Life Achievement Award] tribute, they saw the scene where I get stoned. They showed that and I was like, 'Ooooh. Golly. OK.' I sat next to my daughter, Sunday, watching that," she recalled. "She said, 'Mom, that was good.'"

Read on to see what else Kidman said about "Eyes Wide Shut."

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On the infamously long production.

Kidman and Cruise shot "Eyes Wide Shut" for nearly two years, but the Australian actress said she doesn't have any complaints.

"I would have stayed a third year," she said. "Does that mean I'm crazy?"

Kidman said she and Cruise spent so much time on set that they "lived" in the trailer they shared due to the production not being able to afford two separate trailers, despite living 10 minutes away.

"Tom had a smaller area because he was running stuff," she recalled. "And he'd play video games. That was when ['Minesweeper'] was big. So there was a lot of that."

On Kubrick "mining" her marriage

Kidman said she believed Kubrick was "mining" her marriage with Cruise.

"There were ideas he was interested in. He'd ask a lot of questions. But he had a strong sense of the story he was telling," she noted. "I do remember him saying, 'Triangles are hard. You have to treat carefully when it's a triangle.' Because one person could feel ganged up on."

The Oscar winner said Kubrick "was aware of that and knew how to manage us," saying he never ganged up on her.

"But there's something about being a woman in that equation, too. And Stanley liked women," she stated. "He had a different relationship with Tom. They worked more closely together on his character."

On what she brought to the role

Kidman said she brought her own "boldness" to playing Alice.

"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," she said. "I was just naturally like that. Up-front."

The "Big Little Lies" star also took credit for a scene in which Alice drops her dress -- and claimed ownership of the dress itself.

"The scene where I drop the dress ... that was me. That wasn't written. That was my dress from my closet," she recalled, noting how she showed Kubrick her personal wardrobe and they drew from that. "That's how that happened."

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The 1999 Eyes Wide Shut Premiere Was a '90s Moment with Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman and More — See the Photos

Everyone from Katie Holmes to Martin Scorsese came out to see director Stanley Kubrick's posthumous final film

Dave Lewis/Shutterstock 

Twenty-five years ago today, Eyes Wide Shut hit U.S. theaters. Director Stanley Kubrick’s sumptuous, menacing film wowed audiences and critics with its moody examination of a couple ( Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman ) dealing with a crisis in their marriage, and with its frank depiction of explicit sexuality.

The Academy Award-nominated director of Dr. Strangelove , 2001: A Space Odyssey and A Clockwork Orange reportedly considered the film his “greatest contribution to the art of cinema,” and Eyes Wide Shut is notable not only as Kubrick’s final film — he died just three months prior to the movie's release — but also as Cruise and Kidman’s final appearance together onscreen . The couple ended their 11-year marriage less than two years after the movie’s debut.

Needless to say, with its A-list married stars and legendary director, Eyes Wide Shut was perhaps the most anticipated film release of 1999.

On its 25th anniversary, take a look back at the film’s star-studded premiere, when some of the biggest celebrities of the ’90s turned out to see it for the first time.

Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise

Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise set the tone for a surprisingly casual red carpet at the July 13, 1999, premiere of Eyes Wide Shut in Los Angeles.

Katie Holmes

Jim Smeal/Ron Galella Collection via Getty Images

Years before she would marry Tom Cruise in 2006 , Dawson's Creek star Katie Holmes made an appearance on the Eyes Wide Shut red carpet.

SGranitz/WireImage

Cruise's Top Gun co-star Val Kilmer was on hand to celebrate the film.

Adrien Brody

Not long after the July 2 release of his own summer 1999 movie, Summer of Sam , Adrien Brody looked characteristically dashing on the red carpet.

Jodie Foster

Equally dashing: Jodie Foster in a menswear-inspired look.

Salma Hayek

Barry King/Getty Images

Wild Wild West star Salma Hayek turned up in a wild — and very '90s — look.

Winona Ryder

Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic

Winona Ryder , another '90s icon, walked the red carpet too.

Melissa Etheridge and Julie Cypher

Melissa Etheridge and then-girlfriend Julie Cypher posed for a photo on the red carpet.

Stephen Baldwin and Kennya Baldwin

Stephen Baldwin hit the red carpet with wife Kennya .

Neve Campbell

A '90s film premiere just wouldn't be complete without an appearance by Neve Campbell .

Milla Jovovich

Milla Jovovich turned heads in one of the night's more glamorous ensembles.

Kate Hudson

Kate Hudson , meanwhile, went for a more effortlessly elegant look.

Even Tara Reid was on hand to see what Kubrick had in store in the much-talked-about film.

Denise Richards

The same went for a fresh-faced Denise Richards .

Martin Scorsese

David Keeler/Online USA, Inc./Instagram

Director Martin Scorsese was also there to salute the late Kubrick.

Chris Isaak

David Keeler/Online USA, Inc./Getty

"Wicked Game" singer Chris Isaak flashed some interesting bling.

The celebration of Eyes Wide Shut continued at Beverly Hills restaurant Chasen's, where legendary singer Diana Ross was all smiles.

Anne Heche and Ellen DeGeneres

Barry King/WireImage

Also, at the Chasen's party: Anne Heche with then-partner Ellen DeGeneres .

Andie MacDowell

Andie MacDowell was there as well, striking a fetching pose.

Maxwell and Debi Mazar

Yet more very '90s faces at the afterparty: singer Maxwell and actress Debi Mazar !

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Class of 1999

The Year Tom Cruise Gave Not One but Two Dangerously Vulnerable Performances

Twenty-five years ago, the superstar starred in “Eyes Wide Shut” and “Magnolia,” and opened himself up for the camera in ways he rarely has since.

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By Amy Nicholson

Amy Nicholson is the author of “Tom Cruise: Anatomy of an Actor,” examining 10 signature performances.

“Eyes Wide Shut” had a blunt sales pitch: Cruise. Kidman. Kubrick.

The poster didn’t need much more. Audiences already knew plenty. At the peak of his clout, having just earned his second Oscar nomination, for “Jerry Maguire,” and publicly launched his production company with “Mission: Impossible,” Tom Cruise and his wife at the time, Nicole Kidman, ditched Hollywood to quietly make a dirty movie in England with the legendary director Stanley Kubrick. The shoot was supposed to last six to eight months. It took 15.

‘’People say: ‘You’ve lost 40, 60, 80 million dollars. You’ve lost all this money. You’ve lost all this time,” Cruise told The New York Times a year before its anticipated release. “To have a chance to work with Stanley Kubrick,” he added, “that’s worth it for me.”

Talk about risky business. The second half of 1999 would prove to be the diciest period of Cruise’s career with the release of two back-to-back films that dared him to expose his private vulnerabilities. The first, “Eyes Wide Shut,” released 25 years ago this summer, was a cerebral and slippery tale about a husband named Dr. Bill Harford who wanders Manhattan for two nights as vague vengeance upon his wife for fantasizing about another man. It was hawked as Cruise after dark — the movie star and his spouse, the ascendant Kidman, inviting people into their bedroom to see how they slept, smooched and argued .

Cruise sacrificed a year and a half of his life for what he hoped would be his major contender, the film that might finally earn him an Academy Award. But ironically, it was the other role that got him an invite to the ceremony: an outrageous supporting bit as the seduction guru Frank T.J. Mackey in Paul Thomas Anderson’s ensemble drama “Magnolia” that Cruise had shot in just three weeks. Of the two performances, it’s by far the most personally revealing.

At that time, Cruise was a promiscuous director-gatherer, rarely working with the same filmmaker twice. He aimed for heavyweights: Martin Scorsese, Oliver Stone, Rob Reiner, Ron Howard, Brian De Palma, breaking his ronin inclinations only to make “Top Gun” and “Days of Thunder” with Tony Scott. On “Thunder,” he had fallen in love with Kidman and made another film with her, too — “Far and Away” — and neither had been critically acclaimed.

Cruise hoped Kubrick would change their ho-hum streak, disregarding the hard-won wisdom he’d learned more than a decade earlier when he dinged his post-“Risky Business” momentum to play a forest imp in Ridley Scott’s “Legend.” That flop also suffered from a metastasizing shooting schedule (four months turned into 12) and an auteur more focused on style than emotional substance. After returning from Britain, he told Rolling Stone that he felt like merely “another color in a Ridley Scott painting.”

“I’ll never want to do another picture like that again,” he vowed. Well, he had. He’d even gone back to Pinewood Studios in London.

KUBRICK WAS NEVER an actor’s director. His staggering filmography included only two performances nominated for an Academy Award: Peter Ustinov in “Spartacus,” and Peter Sellers in “Dr. Strangelove” (only Ustinov won). Kubrick’s genius was the star. On “Eyes Wide Shut,” a passion project since the 1960s, his casting priority wasn’t talent — it was convincing a married couple to enlist. (His first choice was Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger.) Tabloid scrutiny was what Cruise and Kidman believed they’d gone to the great master to escape, only to have Star magazine allege that Kubrick had to hire on-set erotic experts to teach them how to make love. (Cruise not only denied the accusation, but sued over it.)

Fans expecting nudity should have known better. Despite earning the title People’s Sexiest Man Alive in 1990, Cruise disliked pitching himself as an object of desire, refusing to let marketers promote his first blockbuster, “Top Gun,” with shirtless photos of him playing volleyball. In four decades, he has filmed only one genuinely erotic scene — his first-date clinch with Renée Zellweger in “Jerry Maguire” — and a couple of giddy tone-benders that combine sex with death ( torturing a victim in “Interview With the Vampire”) or sex with musical comedy ( duetting with Malin Akerman in “Rock of Ages”).

But Cruise bore the blame when the peek into his life fans had been promised turned out to be a pent-up study of male insecurity. (At an early screening of “Eyes Wide Shut,” LA Weekly reported walkouts and one viewer huffing an expletive.) Critics expecting a charismatic performance at least were also disappointed, with many dismissing Cruise as flat and out of his depth.

“Stanley was not that specific about what he wanted,” Kidman told Time Out London. Yet, Cruise, who developed an ulcer during the film, never said a word against Kubrick, even after filming 95 takes of walking through a door. To this, let me add that it seems difficult for any actor to build a character when they’ve got no idea which one of a hundred versions their director wants — and there’s reason to question whether Kubrick was even using Cruise’s best takes. As the editor Gordon Stainforth said of splicing together “The Shining,” good performances were often rejected in favor of “the most eccentric and rather over-the-top.”

WHILE IN LONDON, CRUISE watched “Boogie Nights” and learned that its director, Anderson, also happened to be in town. Cruise invited him to the set and afterward, Anderson pledged to write him something “un-turn-downable,” as he explained to The New York Times. Six months later, Anderson sent him a script with another sexually frustrated character: a self-proclaimed “master of the muffin” who never even touches a woman onscreen (and the women he knows find him obnoxious). Humping the air for his rowdy male acolytes, Frank might just be a locker-room faker, a try-hard hysteric, an immature blusterer who tries (and fails) to impress a female TV journalist by vaulting into a mostly naked backward somersault with his pants bunched around his ankles.

Cruise was 36 and, for the first time in his career, he would be older than his director — a new-school ’90s Sundance darling. Still, he was determined to impress Anderson, too.

“He’s like, ‘Do you want me to stand on my head, do you want me to do back flips? I’ll do it, I’ll do anything you want,’” Anderson recalled to Rolling Stone .

Cruise’s Frank Mackey is an electric performance — a huckster Elvis roiling with hostility — and in my opinion it should have won him an Oscar. (I say this with zero offense to Michael Caine, who took home the supporting actor prize for “The Cider House Rules” and joked affectionately that the prestige would have lowered the mega movie star’s price tag.) Statuette aside, Cruise deemed it “the perfect character to play after Bill Harford.” Kubrick bottled him up; Anderson cut him loose.

Yet, Bill and Frank share key points of connection. Bill learns that sex is danger, with missed connections involving one sex worker with H.I.V. and another who ends up possibly murdered. Frank’s mission statement is “Seduce and destroy” — and he seems most passionate about inflicting pain. Neither character enjoys the raunchy thrills people imagine he’s enjoying, and both of them hide their real selves under masks (the wealthy doctor literally) as they set out to convince the world of their success and power.

Bill stalks the East Village believing he wants to even the score with his wife, but he’s just piqued there’s an even richer and more powerful crowd that hasn’t yet invited him to their secret orgies. And Frank has buried his entire past — the years caretaking for his late mother, the rage and hurt he feels toward his estranged father, his own last name — to resurrect himself as a carnal superhero whose mind-control powers appear to work only on other men.

The films even share two identical scenes. The first is a long, mute stare as Cruise’s characters discover themselves completely emasculated by women they’ve underestimated — a crucial pivot point in both movies. The second comes in a climactic collapse before the family member who cut them so deeply that they’ve dreaded coming home. Both men stumble toward the unconscious body of their bittersweet beloved — Bill’s sleeping wife, Frank’s dying father — struggling to keep their emotions in check. Then they burst into sobs.

Cruise’s own father, Thomas Cruise Mapother III, was “a bully and a coward,” he told Parade magazine in 2006. Like Frank, Cruise lopped off his dad’s surname to build his reputation on his own. The elder Mapother died of cancer just before his son flew to London for “Legend.” Cruise visited him on his deathbed. It was the first time they’d seen each other in years, but they didn’t talk about the past. Cruise just held his hand.

Not long after, he opened up about that last goodbye. “It cleared up a lot of kind of fog that I had about the man,” Cruise told Rolling Stone in that 1986 interview. “It’s all sort of complex. There wasn’t one thing I felt.”

“I don’t know what I would have done without my work,” he continued. “It gave me a place to deal with all those emotions.”

And “Magnolia” gave him a place to honor them. That two-minute take in which Mackey breaks down at his father’s bedside is the most naked Cruise has ever been onscreen — an authentically heart-rending moment of release.

I believe that the first two decades-plus of Cruise’s career, from that famous sunglasses-and-socks skid in 1983 to that infamous ( and overblown ) couch jump in 2005, is one brilliant, underestimated performance after another, a superstar dominion so dazzling that audiences missed the subtle acting underneath. Yet, even amid this rarefied winning streak, the films he released in 1999 stand tall as testimonies to his courage. Today, Cruise is more acclaimed for braving risky stunts, not risky roles. I hope he dares himself to bare it all for the camera again.

• Entertainment

Eyes Wide Shut: What you never knew about the Stanley Kubrick movie starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman

FIFTEEN years ago Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman starred in Eyes Wide Shut. But they weren’t the director’s first choice to star in the film. Here’s what you never knew.

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FIFTEEN years ago Stanley Kubrick’s final film, Eyes Wide Shut, opened around the world.

Setting records for the longest shoot in movie history, it was an excruciating labour of love for lead stars Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman — one that would often be traced back to the alleged start of their marriage’s decline. Throughout the process, cryptic reports implied that Kubrick’s obsessive perfectionism had reached peak levels, which was especially eyebrow-raising given the film’s sexual explicitness. The director, who won an Oscar for Best Visual Effects for 2001: A Space Odyssey , died of a heart attack in March 1999, days after screening the final cut. Had he lived, perhaps we’d have more perspective on the movie’s production — or perhaps not, as Kubrick was notoriously reclusive.

An excerpt from Amy Nicholson’s book, Tom Cruise: Anatomy of an Actor , printed in Vanity Fair , offers details about the project’s goings-on. Coupled with a 1999 Entertainment Weekly article pegged to the film’s release and a Los Angeles Times report about its box-office expectations, the passage reveals some things you may not know about Eyes Wide Shut .

1. Kubrick always intended to cast an actual married couple as the movie’s leads, but Cruise and Kidman weren’t who he had in mind. The initial pair he thought of was Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger.

2. Sydney Pollack’s role first went to Harvey Keitel, who dropped out due to scheduling conflicts.

3. Jennifer Jason Leigh was originally tapped to play Marion Nathanson but left mid-production due to scheduling conflicts. Marie Richardson wound up playing that part.

4. When Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise arrived in London in the fall of 1996 to shoot the movie, they expected to be wrapped and back in Los Angeles by the following spring. Instead, the production didn’t conclude until January 1998, making it the Guinness World Record’s longest-running film shoot in history. (Kidman and Cruise reportedly signed open-ended contracts that stated they’d stick with the project no matter how long it took to complete.)

5. To say Kubrick is a perfectionist is an understatement: His intent was to film scenes so many times that it would wear down his actors and they’d forget the cameras existed. During the course of shooting Eyes Wide Shut , the director filmed 95 takes of Cruise walking through a door.

6. Cruise was so anxious about giving the legendary director what he wanted that he developed an ulcer. He never told Kubrick.

7. Frenzied tabloids ran reports that Cruise and Kidman’s marriage was crumbling in late ‘90s. If anything, that notion was only enhanced by their Eyes Wide Shut dynamic. Kubrick coaxed the couple into sharing their personal reservations about the marriage with him, in turn transferring those troubles onto their characters, Bill and Alice. Kidman called it a kind of “brutally honest” anti-therapy, as no one asked how they felt about each other’s criticisms.

8. Director Todd Field ( Little Children , In the Bedroom ), who starred in the movie as piano player Nick Nightingale, said of Kidman and Cruise: “You’ve never seen two actors more completely subservient and prostrate themselves at the feet of a director.”

9. Kubrick was terrified of flying, so instead of travelling to New York City to shoot in Greenwich Village, he built a top-secret replica of the neighbourhood at England’s Pinewood Studios. A set designer was sent to measure the exact width of the streets and distance between newspaper stands.

10. Kubrick allowed only a skeleton crew to remain on the set throughout filming. One rare outsider permitted to watch the action unfold was Boogie Nights director Paul Thomas Anderson. Cruise was in talks for the lead role in Anderson’s Magnolia and had to sneak him past security. ‘’I asked [Kubrick], ‘Do you always work with so few people?’ Anderson recalled. “He gave me this look and said, ‘Why? How many people do you need?’ I felt like such a Hollywood a**hole.’’

11. Cruise isn’t the only actor who filmed dozens of takes. Vinessa Shaw, who played the prostitute Domino, recalled having shot about 90 takes for a single scene.

12. Had Kubrick not died before the movie opened, he may still be making adjustments to it today, like he did with The Shining after its release. “I think Stanley would have been tinkering with it for the next 20 years,” Kidman said. “He was still tinkering with movies he made decades ago. He was never finished. It was never perfect enough.”

13. Warner Bros. wanted a $20 million opening weekend to consider the movie a success. It surpassed that, grossing $21.7 million across 2,400 screens. Marketing tracking studies for the film showed it had an awareness level of 78 but lacked the first-choice status among moviegoers that other summer fare like Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me and Big Daddy saw.

This article originally appeared in the Huffington Post .

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“Because one person could feel ganged up on”: Stanley Kubrick Was Worried About Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman’s Love Story in Eyes Wide Shut

Nicole Kidman talked about how Eyes Wide Shut had Kubrick studying her and Tom's relationship!

• Stanley Kubrick was very concerned with the love story that was written for Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman.
• The director asked a lot of questions, and wanted the three of them to be on the same level inside the production.
• There is a lot of debate whether Kubrick's final film is actually considered complete, given that the director died before the film was properly released.

Stanley Kubrick’s final film, Eyes Wide Shut , seemed to have owed a lot to the marriage of Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise, the two leads of a film that revolved around the themes of infidelity and unfaithfulness.

While there has been a lot of discourse around the film’s completion and the changes that it made to the source material, Nicole Kidman revealed to the Hollywood Reporter how Kubrick was quite concerned with how the relationship looked on screen.

Stanley Kubrick was ‘mining’ Tom Cruise’s marriage to Nicole Kidman

Nicole Kidman , in a conversation with the Los Angeles Times , revealed how Stanley Kubrick handled dealing with their marriage and depicting them as a couple with designs for an affair out of wedlock. Kubrick was very attentive to the answers that the duo presented to her. She said:

I suppose he was mining it. There were ideas he was interested in. He’d ask a lot of questions. But he 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.’ Because one person could feel ganged up, but he was aware of that and knew how to manage us.

Eyes Wide Shut is a film that depicts Tom Cruise as a doctor who is tormented by his wife’s wish to have an affair, something that seeps into his daily life as he finds himself embroiled with a secret society that routinely engages in orgies. This plot of film called for the portrayal of a strained marriage, with a slew of external moving parts. Kubrick made a great point of managing the due, without either party feeling very wronged by it.

Stanley Kubrick wanted Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, and himself on the same level while filming

Nicole Kidman revealed that Kubrick did not want any bootlickers on his set, instead wanting to have a more open and creative conversation with his two leads.

Nicole Kidman’s Candid Confession About Playing a Domestic Abuse Survivor in ‘Big Little Lies’ is Especially Piercing After Blake Lively’s ‘It Ends With Us’ Debacle

Given that the director was already legendary in Hollywood, it would be important for him to set that boundary, given that it would be expected that there would not be a lot of pushback to his ideas. Kidman revealed:

He didn’t want sycophants. … And everyone has to wait at least 10 seconds before they say no to an idea. I heard that, and I’m in my 20s, and I’m like, ‘OK. It’s on. It was experimental, like making student films in Australia.

There has been a lot of debate about the status of the film, given that Kubrick passed away mere days after presenting his final cut to WB. There was still some sound mixing and color correcting that needed to be done, and the 2001: A Space Odyssey director was notorious for editing his film to the last minute.

Nicole Kidman Stanley Kubrick Tom Cruise

Written by Anuraag Chatterjee

Anuraag Chatterjee, Web Content Writer With a passion for writing fiction and non fiction content, Anuraag is a Media Science graduate with 2 year's experience with Marketing and Content, with 3 published poetry anthologies. Anuraag holds a Bacherlor's degree in Arts with a focus on Communication and Media Studies.

Copyright © 2024 FandomWire, LLC. All rights reserved.

Nicole Kidman Felt Stanley Kubrick ‘Mined’ Her Marriage With Tom Cruise for Iconic Film

It has been 25 years since legendary director Stanley Kubrick's swansong Eyes Wide Shut was released. However, the lead actress of the film, Nicole Kidman , has not forgotten how the project seemingly caused irreversible damage to her and her then-husband Tom Cruise 's marriage. The 57-year-old actress reflected on the process of making the film with Kubrick and Cruise as her co-star in a conversation with the Los Angeles Times , revealing intimate details that were not previously known to the public. 

“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 told the outlet, referring to a scene where Cruise and Kidman have an intimate talk while smoking in their bedroom. “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. For that scene, we improvised the beginning of it through the rehearsals.”

When asked if Kubrick was using her real marriage to Cruise to drive forward the characters in the film, Kidman remarked, “I suppose he was mining it. There were ideas he was interested in. He’d ask a lot of questions. But he 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.’ Because one person could feel ganged up on. But he was aware of that and knew how to manage us."

          View this post on Instagram                       A post shared by Nicole Kidman (@nicolekidman)

“But there’s something about being a woman in that equation, too. And Stanley liked women. He had a different relationship with Tom. They worked more closely together on his character.” she further clarified. For those who may not know, the high-profile former couple of Hollywood were married from 1990 to 2001; Kubrick filmed his final feature film between 1996 and 1998.

Later on, in a 2017 interview with Deadline , Kidman expressed how grateful she was to have a 'slightly zen approach to things' during the lengthy shoot of Eyes Wide Shut . “Because I was married and I had my kids there. It wasn’t like I was rushing to get finished, to get somewhere else. I was there, with Stanley, and I didn’t care. Whatever,” she told the outlet. Unfortunately, just a few days after the screening of the film's final cut, Kubrick passed away from a heart attack at the age of 70 on March 7, 1999.

Stanley Kubrick and Tom Cruise on the set of Eyes Wide Shut, 1999. pic.twitter.com/Io3ZCrh2KO — Kubrick Universe (@KubrickPoint) May 23, 2024

In February 2001, Cruise filed for divorce from Kidman, citing irreconcilable differences as reported by US Weekly ; in 2022, former Scientologist Mike Rinder made a scathing claim that the Scientology Church played an important role in separating the couple. According to the New York Post , when Kidman won the Academy Award for her role as Virginia Woolf in The Hours, she could hardly hold back her tears. “I was struggling with things in my personal life, yet my professional life was going so well,” she told author Dave Karger in his book 50 Oscar Nights , referring to her split with Cruise.

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NEWS... BUT NOT AS YOU KNOW IT

Nicole Kidman’s masturbation and ‘cat licking’ aren’t even her wildest moments in hardcore new film

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Nicole Kidman ’s new erotic thriller Babygirl goes all out with its sex scenes, depicting the Oscar winner on screen in a bolder and racier way than ever before – yes, even than in Eyes Wide Shut 25 years ago .

As Babygirl, in which the Australian star, 57, plays a tech CEO who embarks on a torrid affair with a new young intern (played by 28-year-old Harris Dickinson), premieres at Venice Film Festival , it’s one of several films upping the stakes in terms of its bold explicit content .

We appear to be in a new era of unashamed carnality as the film sees Kidman lapping milk from a dish, masturbating furiously and acting in the throes of climax multiple times – and that’s just for starters.

Written and directed by Halina Reijn, the Dutch actress and filmmaker said she wanted to address the orgasm gap between men and women in her film, as well as explore the complexity of female desire and sexuality as Kidman’s character Romy struggles with her urge to be dominated.

Also in the cast are Antonio Banderas and Bafta nominee Sophie Wilde , who play Romy’s husband Jacob and assistant Esme, respectively.

The Moulin Rouge star said ahead of the premiere that she was ‘frightened’ at the thought of people watching it because of how ‘vulnerable’ she felt making it, putting herself and her body out there, right from the beginning.

However, Kidman also stressed that she never felt ‘exploited’ during filming as it was ‘a story that I wanted to be a part of’ and ‘enormous care taken by all of us’ when it came to intimate scenes.

Without further ado, here’s a taste of Babygirl’s raunchiest scenes, with small spoilers ahead… It should go without saying, probably one best not to watch with your parents or family (if you didn’t learn that lesson from Saltburn ).

Babygirl opens with Nicole Kidman orgasming

In case you were in any doubt over the nature of this film, the breathy, easily identifiable sounds of Kidman building to an orgasm are played over the credits as the film begins.

It then immediately cuts to her face as she’s seen riding her husband (Banderas) in a passionate bout of lovemaking, panning down to show both of them during the act.

Although extremely intimate and sexual, this sequence doesn’t actually depict any nudity until Kidman strides through their home after, fully naked and shown from behind, as she pulls on a slip.

The film shows the Oscar winner masturbating to S&M porn

Experienced actress Kidman is also shown indulging in a bit of self-stimulation, which reveals her sexual kink to be the idea of being dominated.

As she watches a couple engage in light S&M , she climaxes quickly by her own hand, lying on the floor.

Probably one of the most vulnerable things you can perform as an actor, Kidman nonetheless gives it her all – and even shows a clear distinction between this orgasm and one she admits to faking.

Her character fantasises sexually about a dog 

This one is rather more unexpected, but another way Kidman’s character Romy’s desire is piqued is when she first sees Samuel (Dickinson) as he manages to tame and quiet an aggressive, barking dog in the street.

Although it’s shown at the time to have had some impact on her, it’s a visual she returns to more than once, fantasising about being the dog and being called ‘good girl’ by the young intern.

Romy also appears to get off on the idea, as it’s something she later thinks about during sex, inserting it into a memory of one of her and Samuel’s encounters.

She gets on all fours for Harris Dickinson

As Romy and Samuel hash out the nature of their relationship once they succumb to temptation, he acts on his instincts that she likes ‘being told what to do’.

Although his boss is at first reluctant to do so, when he insists she be honest, Romy gives in – and one of the first things he demands she does, after standing in the corner with her face to the wall, is get on all fours.

She also eats a sweet out of his palm and then spits it back out under instruction while on her hands and knees.

It doesn’t sound especially sexual on paper, but with chemistry as hot as Kidman’s with Dickinson, it is.

Kidman laps milk from a dish like a cat

Again, this doesn’t sound especially erotic, but as a not-unusual associated act with the S&M kink, Kidman and Dickinson are wringing this out for any and all related sexiness.

During this domination scenario with Samuel, Romy eagerly laps up milk from a dish like a cat on the floor before turning her face up to his.

Dickinson as Samuel then promptly starts to lick clean her face before kissing her deeply.

Hey, whatever works for you.

An intense climax from the Australian star is a rare mainstream cinema depiction of this sex reaction 

Romy and Samuel’s first full sexual encounter sees her enjoy a particularly intense orgasm – it’s clearly different from those she does (or doesn’t) experience with husband Jacob, or alone.

However, we go particularly hardcore with the implication that Romy is having such a powerful climax that her reaction becomes almost involuntary and she experiences female ejaculation.

More commonly known as ‘squirting’ , and a popular trend in porn (although previously banned in the UK), this isn’t something that’s often ever alluded to in cinema and mainstream TV shows.

Of course Sex and the City tackled it back in 2001’s season four, but other than that we’re looking more at comedies like I Love You Man and American Pie Presents: Beta House.

In Babygirl, it’s suggested by Kidman as Romy’s panicked warning that she’s ‘gonna pee’ and doesn’t want to.

She nearly bares all in full-body nudity

Although Babygirl relies more on suggestive dialogue, tension and facial reaction to ignite its sexual charge than nudity, there is still one major scene with it.

Romy is seen stripping for Dickinson at his request, removing her dress after he already had her to remove her underwear and spread her legs in a very Basic Instinct-esque moment .

Although Kidman initially uses her hands to cover herself as she turns back around to camera, Dickinson’s Samuel praises her beauty and encourages her to show herself fully to him, which briefly reveals Kidman’s nipples.

B abygirl premieres on August 30 at Venice Film Festival ahead of releasing in UK cinemas on January 10, 2025.

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Nicole kidman dishes on sex-positive thriller ‘babygirl’ in venice: “this definitely leaves me exposed and vulnerable”.

The steamy A24 drama, directed by Halina Reijn and co-starring Harris Dickinson and Antonio Banderas, has already become one of the most talked about movies at the 2024 Venice Film Festival.

By Patrick Brzeski

Patrick Brzeski

Asia Bureau Chief

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Filmmaker Halina Reijn’ s sex-positive erotic thriller Babygirl , starring Nicole Kidman in a characteristically bold performance, may have just changed the, errr… mood… at the Venice Film Festival . 

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Babygirl stars Kidman as a high-powered CEO who puts her career and family on the line when she begins a torrid affair with her much younger intern, played by Harris Dickinson ( Triangle of Sadness ,  Iron Claw ). Without revealing spoilers, the playful and propulsive film’s real themes are power dynamics, female gratification and the importance of open communication around intimacy. Playing against the sex-god image of his early career with considerable wit, Antonio Banderas co-stars as Kidman’s sweet, age-appropriate husband, Jakob. 

As the film’s press materials sum it up: “In its deliciously playful provocations, Babygirl explores the tender, the wickedly funny, and the unexpectedly romantic places that a certain kind of repression can lead to, and where someone will go to find release.”

Reijin and her cast appeared in Venice for a press conference Friday afternoon to jointly discuss the film’s creation for the first time.

“This definitely leaves me exposed and vulnerable and frightened, and all of those things when it’s given to the world,” Kidman said of the experience of debuting the film before an audience. “But making it with these people here, it was delicate and intimate and very, very deep.”

She added: “Right now we’re all a bit nervous — so I’m like, I hope my hands aren’t shaking — but at the same time, I’m really proud to be at a festival like this, and to be forging ahead with films that are still being made, and particularly with women at the helm.”

Kidman acknowledged that she’s worked on many films and series that revolve around sex ( Eyes Wide Shut , To Die For , Big Little Lies , to name just a few), but she underscored how Babygirl offered something new. 

“I’ve worked with so many directors, I haven’t worked with a woman on this subject matter,” she said in statements ahead of the press screenings. “When you’re talking to a woman director and she’s like, ‘OK, let’s work on this orgasm together’ — I’m saying that bluntly, but you’re not going to say that with a guy. [Halina] was always so loving towards all of us, to Antonio, to Harris, to me, to Sophie, all of us. It was just a very warm environment to work in.” 

Reijin made her U.S. debut with the Gen Z slasher satire Bodies Bodies Bodies (2022), also produced by A24. But Babygirl returns to the more erotic tones of the director’s first feature, the 2019 Dutch drama Instinct , which chronicled an illicit relationship between a prison therapist and an incarcerated sex offender.

Reijin, an actress in the Netherlands before she became a director, has said that performing and working with Verhoeven in a supporting role on his film Black Book , directly fed into her creative process for Babygirl . “Paul Verhoeven always told me I could only make a movie if I had a specific question,” she explains in a statement put out by A24. “For this story I wondered: Are we animals or are we civilized? Can we make peace with the animal inside of us? Is it possible for the different parts of ourselves to coexist and, in turn, for us to love our whole selves without shame?”

After a journalist mentioned that Babygirl doesn’t revolve around the punishment of the female protagonist in the way that 1990s erotic thrillers did, Reijin explained: “I think we all — men, women, giraffes, whatever —all beings have, you know, different sides within themselves, and we all have a beast living inside of ourselves,” Rejin said at the press conference. “For women, we have not gotten a lot of space yet to explore this behavior, not only how strong we are, but also how weak we sometimes are. I was raised by my parents in a way that I don’t believe in good and evil, I think we are all both. And we need to keep shining a light on that, because the moment we suppress it, that’s when it becomes dangerous. So that’s why I don’t want any of my characters to be punished. I just want them to be.”

Babygirl will make its official world premiere at Venice’s Sala Grande cinema Friday evening. Later in the night, A24 is hosting a bash for the film at the iconic Hotel Cipriani, which has already become the hottest ticket on the Lido.

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Dopo il film «Babygirl» Nicole Kidman: «Esposta e vulnerabile in un film estremo, ora tremo»

31.8.2024 - 13:00

Al Festival di Venezia 2024 l'attrice presenta il film «Babygirl», thriller a tinte forti.

31.08.2024, 13:00

31.08.2024, 13:15

Nicole Kidman protagonista alla Mostra del cinema di Venezia. La star australiana è arrivata al Lido con il resto del cast di «Babygirl», thriller erotico diretto dalla regista di origine danese Halina Reijn.

«Amo indagare le donne, gli esseri umani in tutte le loro sfaccettature – ha detto Nicole Kidman -, ma oggi sono spaventata di consegnare al mondo questo film così estremo. Mi sento esposta e vulnerabile e ora tremo».

Nel film l'ex moglie di Tom Cruise compare nuda in più di una scena di sesso. La Kidman interpreta Romy, manager di un'industria robotica, sposata e con figlie, che si trova improvvisamente invischiata in un rapporto sadomaso con un giovanissimo stagista Samuel (Harris Dickinson). Scopo di Samuel è quello di ribaltare la situazione, da stagista a dominator facendo attraversare a una donna, abituata comandare come è Romy, tutte le umiliazioni possibili.

«Un film del genere è stato possibile e ho accettato di farlo perché la regista era una donna e non c'era sfruttamento, non ho sentito mai sfruttata la mia immagine. – ha spiegato la diva di Hollywood -Raccontare un film così esplicito con una donna dietro la telecamera era una cosa del tutto unica».

«Per affrontare tante scene di nudo e di sesso abbiamo fatto tante prove e ci siamo seduti al tavolino e parlato molto. E poi abbiamo avuto una bravissima intimacy coordinator che ci ha fatto capire quello che si poteva fare e quello che era meglio evitare. Ci ha fatto capire che ogni scena intima è un luogo sacro, ma in fondo tutto è intimo».

Nel cast anche Antonio Banderas, nei panni del marito della protagonista.

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