nicole kidman tom cruise 1999

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• User reviews

Eyes Wide Shut

A Manhattan doctor embarks on a bizarre, night-long odyssey after his wife's admission of unfulfilled longing. A Manhattan doctor embarks on a bizarre, night-long odyssey after his wife's admission of unfulfilled longing. A Manhattan doctor embarks on a bizarre, night-long odyssey after his wife's admission of unfulfilled longing.

• Stanley Kubrick
• Frederic Raphael
• Arthur Schnitzler
• Nicole Kidman
• 1.8K User reviews
• 298 Critic reviews
• 69 Metascore
• 12 wins & 30 nominations

• Dr. William Harford

• Alice Harford

• Nick Nightingale

• Victor Ziegler

• Helena Harford

• (as Peter Benson)

• Ziegler's Secretary

• Sandor Szavost
• (as Sky Dumont)
• (as Louise Taylor)

• Lou Nathanson

• All cast & crew
• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

Director's Trademarks: A Guide to Stanley Kubrick's Films

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Did you know

• Trivia Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman signed open-ended contracts. They agreed to work on this project until Stanley Kubrick released them from it, however long that turned out to be.
• Goofs Bill Harford arrives at Rainbow Fashions by taxi from the Sonata Cafe, and, as he talks to Milich, Gillespie's Diner can be been seen across the other side of the street. Earlier in the story, it was seen that Gillespie's is next door to the Sonata Cafe; there's no way he would have taken a taxi just to cross the street.

Victor Ziegler : Listen, Bill. Nobody killed anybody. Someone died. It happens all the time. Life goes on. It always does, until it doesn't. But you know that, don't you?

• Crazy credits The end credits are a slideshow. This is unusual for a film of its time, when many employed rolling end credits.
• Alternate versions The Europeans version is completely uncensored. The orgy scene was partially censored in the American release to avoid an "NC-17" rating. Computer generated people were placed in front of the sexually explicit action to obscure it from view.
• Connections Edited into Hai-Kubrick (1999)
• Soundtracks Musica Ricercata II: Mesto, Rigido e Cerimonale (1950) Performed by Dominic Harlan , piano Written by György Ligeti Published by Schott Musik International GmbH & Co. KG

User reviews 1.8K

• Jul 16, 1999
• How long is Eyes Wide Shut? Powered by Alexa
• What did Leelee Sobieski whisper into Tom Cruise's ear at the costume shop?
• Did Stanley Kubrick have final cut before he passed away?
• How many versions of Eyes Wide Shut are there?
• July 16, 1999 (United States)
• United Kingdom
• United States
• Warner Bros. (United States)
• Elveden Hall, Elveden, Suffolk, England, UK (interiors: Long Island Mansion "Somerton" where orgy takes place)
• Warner Bros.
• Stanley Kubrick Productions
• Hobby Films
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• $65,000,000 (estimated)
• $55,691,208
• $21,706,163
• Jul 18, 1999
• $162,283,210

Technical specs

• Runtime 2 hours 39 minutes
• Dolby Digital

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• What Is Cinema?

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

By Amy Nicholson

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.

By Chris Murphy

By Savannah Walsh

“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

Amy Nicholson

By Britt Hennemuth

By David Canfield

By Paul Chi

By Donald Liebenson

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Eyes Wide Shut

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Kubrick's intense study of the human psyche yields an impressive cinematic work.

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From the EW archives: Behind the scenes of Eyes Wide Shut

Starring Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, the film was Stanley Kubrick's last work before his death

Editor-at-Large

The following appeared in the Jul. 23, 1999 issue of EW.

”Nicole and I talk about it so much at night. When we’re 70 years old, sitting on the front porch, we’ll be able to look back and say, ‘Wow! We made this movie with Stanley Kubrick!’ We know it may take a long time to finish, but we don’t care. We really don’t.”

That was Tom Cruise in younger, more innocent days, way back in November 1996, just weeks into shooting Eyes Wide Shut . At the time, the poor guy figured it would take six months to finish the film, eight at the most. ”We’ll be done by June,” he cheerily predicted. ”But however long it takes is fine with us.”

Well, he got the month right, anyway: The cameras finally stopped rolling on Eyes in June — of 1998 — ending one of the longest shoots ever bankrolled by a major studio (or at least the longest since Kubrick’s last two-year production).

Also one of the most gossiped about. Like a lot of the late great director’s movies, Eyes was shot in total secrecy, its sets at Pinewood Studios in England locked tighter than that CIA vault Cruise dangled into in Mission: Impossible . Whatever the film’s married costars were up to inside Kubrick’s sealed soundstages — one (false) rumor had Cruise wearing a dress — the world would have to wait to find out. And wait. And wait some more.

Not anymore. This week, Kubrick’s final film — he died at 70 of a heart attack just days after screening a finished cut — will at long last unspool. All the speculation about its plot (”a story of sexual jealousy and obsession” is all Warner Bros. had said about the production) will finally be over. All the questions about how kinky (and naked) Cruise and Kidman would get will finally be answered.

Still, there is one mystery that won’t be revealed on screen this week. And it’s this: Those two years Kubrick took to finish Eyes ? How exactly did he spend them? How, precisely, did he make the movie? And — most titillating of all — what was it like inside those closed sets, where the world’s most demanding director held Hollywood’s most powerful couple hostage for so long they almost did end up in rocking chairs on their front porch?

To solve that mystery, all you have to do is keep your ears wide open.

”He was a really normal guy,” Kidman said of Kubrick shortly after his funeral last March. ”A really smart, really great guy. We were even talking about doing another film together.”

Kubrick has been called many things over the years — brilliant, inspiring, abrasive, tyrannical — but ”normal” is a new one. Rumors of his eccentricities ranged from the mildly loopy (never motoring over 35 miles per hour) to the oddly paranoid (he was said to be terrified of America, even though he grew up in the Bronx) to the downright notorious (he supposedly drove actors mad with his relentless perfectionism, insisting on shooting retake after retake). Obsessively private and press shy, he seldom left England and almost never attended public events (recent photographs are almost impossible to find). Which, of course, only made him more fascinating.

But according to the actors of Eyes Wide Shut — like 35-year-old Todd Field ( Twister, Walking and Talking ), who labored for seven months playing a jazz musician in the film — it turns out the roly-poly, fuzzy-faced filmmaker was an altogether different sort of man. Meet Kubrick the Cuddly. “He could be like a little boy,” says Field. “His sense of humor went from very highbrow to very lowbrow. One minute he’d make the most sophisticated joke, like out of a Preston Sturges movie, and the next he’d be doing Steve Martin imitations from The Jerk . He thought that part where Steve Martin doesn’t have any rhythm was just hysterical.”

But don’t get your hopes up: There are no funny balloon animals or fake-arrows-through-the-head gags in Eyes Wide Shut . Kubrick’s cinematic corpus closes on a serious, surreally pervy note, with an R-rated $65 million psycho-drama that has Cruise and Kidman playing an upscale Manhattan couple who make the relationship-rocking mistake of discussing their deepest sexual fantasies. A blue movie with stars is how Kubrick described it — or at least how he described a very similar concept he and screenwriter Terry Southern noodled around with some 35 years ago, while working on their script for Dr. Strangelove .

“Like a lot of people of my generation, I think Stanley felt he missed the sexual revolution,” muses 67-year-old Eyes screenwriter Frederic Raphael ( Two for the Road, Darling ). “We all felt like we were born too early or too late for the orgy. And Stanley was curious about that. Also, it was a genre — the sexual relations film — he’d never attempted before. As a director, I think he’d been wanting to explore that for a long time.”

He didn’t get the chance to explore it with Southern (the two had a falling-out over credit for Strangelove , although the writer, who died in 1995, did end up penning a 1970 novel called Blue Movie , dedicated to “Stanley K”). Instead, Kubrick went on to lens such unsexy masterpieces as 2001: A Space Odyssey, A Clockwork Orange , and The Shining . But he remained curious, finding inspiration for his A-list sex flick idea in — of all places — obscure early-20th-century Germanic literature. Specifically, Traumnovelle , a 1926 novella by Arthur Schnitzler about a Viennese couple who take a walk on the uberspannt side.

Kubrick purchased the screen rights to the book around 1970 (actually, he had his pal Jay Cocks, then a TIME magazine reporter, now a screenwriter, buy them for him, to hide his interest in the project), but sat on the concept for another couple of decades. Then, in 1994 — seven years after the release of his penultimate film, Full Metal Jacket — he suddenly got interested again, hiring Raphael to update Schnitzler’s story in a screenplay. It turned out not to be such a sexy assignment (“I was Gaul and he was Caesar,” Raphael says of the collaboration), but it did provide the writer with plenty of material for a dissy, dishy memoir called Eyes Wide Open , published last month in a breach of the Kubrick code of silence that’s infuriated the director’s family, studio, and many of Eyes ‘ actors. (“If you write about this sacred conflict, cast me as Spartacus, leader of the slaves,” Raphael requests.)

According to Raphael’s tell-all, Kubrick had always intended on casting a married couple for the film — although the pair he thought of first were Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger. But after Cruise and Kidman helicoptered to Kubrick’s English estate to take a meeting — holding hands the entire time, Raphael reports — the roles belonged to them. There were no problems filling the film’s other parts, either; in fact, Kubrick filled some of them twice. Harvey Keitel was originally cast as Cruise’s millionaire orgy-going bud but was replaced by Sydney Pollack when scheduling conflicts came up during filming. Jennifer Jason Leigh also left in mid-production (scheduling problems again, not acting ones), with Swedish actress Marie Richardson taking over her small role.

Meanwhile, Kubrick’s craftsmen set about erecting New York City on Pinewood’s backlots, re-creating Greenwich Village to painstakingly precise specifications. Kubrick went so far as to send workmen to Manhattan to measure street widths and note newspaper vending machine locations. He also dispatched cameramen to shoot real New York footage for rear-screen projection scenes of Cruise strolling around town (a cinematic trick that long predates the work of today’s digitized directors).

Because of the nature of the material — and also because it‘s how Kubrick always worked — filming on Eyes was an intensely intimate affair. Kubrick himself usually manned the camera, allowing only a handful of crew on the set. One outsider permitted to watch the proceedings was 29-year-old Boogie Nights director Paul Thomas Anderson (Cruise, who’ll be appearing in Anderson’s follow-up, Magnolia , smuggled him past security). “Kubrick had a really small crew,” recalls Anderson. “I asked him, ‘Do you always work with so few people?’ He gave me this look and said, ‘Why? How many people do you need?’ I felt like such a Hollywood a–hole.”

Although Raphael had spent two years toiling on scores of different drafts of the film, much of Eyes ended up being reworded on the fly. “We’d rehearse and rehearse a scene,” explains Field, “and it would change from hour to hour. We’d keep giving the script supervisor notes all the time, so by the end of the day the scene might be completely different. It wasn’t really improvisation,” he clarifies. “It was more like writing.”

Sometimes the rehearsing/rewriting process would go on all day. Then, finally, Kubrick would let the cameras roll. And roll. “Time was not of the essence,” understates Vinessa Shaw, the 23-year-old former teen star ( Ladybugs ) who signed on for a two-week stint playing a prostitute and ended up shooting for two months. “I remember one time, around three in the morning, I did my 69th take of a scene. Iheard somebody say, ‘Wow! That must be a record.’ And then I ended up doing 20 more takes.” Not that she’s complaining: “It gives you a real sense of freedom,” she goes on. “Doing a scene over and over, all of a sudden you see it as completely different. It gives you a chance to explore.”

She wasn’t the only Eyes cast member who found Kubrick’s compulsiveness exhilarating — at least at the beginning. “He’s got amazing energy,” Cruise gushed during those early weeks of shooting. “You work on a scene and you work on it and work on it — and you know you are not going to leave that shot until it‘s right.” Still, even Cruise’s enthusiasm started to flag by the end. “I was there for a month early on and Tom was so gung ho,” Shaw recalls. “And then I came back for another month at the end of the shoot and there was a difference. He was still into it, but not as energetic.” In fact, Cruise had developed an ulcer during filming.

For Kidman, the long hours and multiple retakes were the easy part. “As an actor, you have to be very truthful,” she explains, “and that can be difficult on a marriage. It was almost like discovering a new aspect of each other, which was exciting but also scary. People ask me, ‘God, why did you put yourselves through all that?’ And it is a strange thing for a couple to do. It‘s strange that all that stuff is going to be out there on the screen. There aren’t a lot of directors we’d do that for. But Stanley was much more than a director to us.”

He was much more than a director in other ways as well. After filming wrapped, he supervised the editing, as he did on most of his pictures, splicing miles of footage into a 2-hour-35-minute film. He was also the movie’s de facto marketer, laying out every detail of the picture’s publicity campaign (his widow, Christiane, 67, now has final say on marketing decisions). And he was always his best — or at least harshest — critic, working on his films up to the very last minute, and sometimes beyond (he cut The Shining by four minutes after its release).

What tweaks he might have made on Eyes we’ll never know (those digitized bodies that were posthumously inserted into the orgy scene, Austin Powers -style, to avoid an NC-17 rating, could’ve turned out differently, for one thing). “I think Stanley would have been tinkering with it for the next 20 years,” Kidman believes. “He was still tinkering with movies he made decades ago. He was never finished. It was never perfect enough.”

Not enough for him, perhaps. But to the rest of the world, no director ever came closer to perfection. Certainly none ever pushed harder or labored longer to achieve it. Just ask the older, wiser Tom Cruise. You can probably find him on his front porch, sipping a glass of warm milk.

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EYES WIDE SHUT, Tom Cruise, Nicole Kidman, 1999

Eyes Wide Shut (1999, 74%) Kubrick’s intense study of the human psyche yields an impressive cinematic work.

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Eyes Wide Shut

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• "For adult audiences, it creates a mesmerizing daydream of sexual fantasy (…) Rating: ★★★½ (out of 4)"   Roger Ebert : rogerebert.com
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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.

Recommended

How Tom Cruise Really Felt When He Joined Nicole Kidman In Eyes Wide Shut

It's one thing to be married to a fellow actor and shoot a movie together, but imagine working together for over a year on what was not only a legendary director's last film, but also a movie that explored the intricacies of keeping together a mundane marriage while withstanding outside temptation. This is what Tom Cruise and his then-wife Nicole Kidman went through while shooting Stanley Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut."

Released in 1999, "Eyes Wide Shut" centers around Dr. William "Bill" Harford (Cruise) and his wife Alice (Kidman), a Manhattan-based married couple who have gotten so used to the routines of domestic life that the only way sexuality plays a role anymore is through the temptations of strangers and mystery. Things start to unravel as William finds himself seeking a new kind of pleasure as he ventures outside the city to a mansion hosting a masked party at which an underground sexual ritual is taking place.

While "Eyes Wide Shut" is notable for its unique storytelling and blatant erotica, its probably best known as Stanley Kubrick's last film, as the director died before the movie was released. It's also known as one of the most "exhausting" shoots for any cast and crew (via  Vanity Fair ). According to Vanity Fair, when "Eyes Wide Shut" began shooting in the fall of 1996, Cruise and Kidman "fully expected to return to Hollywood by spring." However, filming didn't finish until 1998. Cruise and Kidman wound up spending 15 months working on "Eyes Wide Shut," which earned the Guinness World Record for "the longest continual film shoot."

So, how did Cruise feel when Kidman joined the cast of the historic film?

Brutal honesty

Originally aiming to cast Steve Martin in the lead role in 1980, 15 years later,  Stanley Kubrick eventually landed on casting Tom Cruise, at the suggestion of his producer Terry Semel. According to the Independent , Cruise flew to England to meet Kubrick in 1995, and after some basic conversation about "vintage cameras, planes, the New York Yankees," the filmmaker asked Cruise to star in "Eyes Wide Shut." After accepting, Cruise suggested his real life wife at the time play his on-screen wife as well. Kubrick apparently loved the idea, as it "introduced a new layer of psychosexual subtext" to the movie.

The couple went through a grueling shoot with Kubrick, whose unique filmmaking methods began affecting Cruise and Nicole Kidman's marriage. Kubrick decided he would psychoanalyze his married lead actors. Per Vanity Fair , Kubrick pushed Cruise and Kidman into admitting what they feared most about marriage during "conversations that the three vowed to keep secret." According to Kidman, these conversations left her then-husband subjected to "things that he didn't want to hear," and the discussions were "brutally honest at times." She also told Vanity Fair that while it was exciting that the lines of reality and fiction blurred, it was also dangerous. Cruise agreed: "I wanted this to work, but you're playing with dynamite when you act. Emotions kick up."

'Pluses and minuses' to filming a movie with your real-life spouse

In a 1999 press conference , Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman were asked if they felt safe playing a married couple on screen, or if they would have felt better working alongside someone else. Cruise responded that he was "glad she played [the role in 'Eyes Wide Shut'] because of her talent." He elaborated, "As an actress, I was really excited, because she's such a great actress and artist and to share that experience together is something very special and I think that we had a lot to offer because we are married." Cruise also admitted that the entire experience "had its pluses and minuses."

While Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise would eventually divorce  in 2001 after 11 years of marriage — and only two years after the release of "Eyes Wide Shut" — they are reportedly open to a reunion as friends or co-workers as of early 2021 (via OK! Magazine ). Plus, in 2017, Kidman told Deadline that she would have continued working with Kubrick for years on end, as she really enjoyed the experience. 

"I could have stayed with Stanley [Kubrick] for five years. Never come back," she said. "I look back at that and go, 'Thank God I had this slightly zen approach to things.' 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." Kidman added, "He had a great wit and he was a philosopher, but he was never preachy. It was always coming from a place of curiosity and questioning and exploration."

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Nicole Kidman: Tom Cruise and I were 'happily married' while making 'Eyes Wide Shut'

Nicole Kidman says her relationship with Tom Cruise was in a good place when they made the erotic thriller "Eyes Wide Shut."

The couple was married when they starred together the 1999 film.

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"We were happily married through that," she told The New York Times Magazine when asked about a scene in the film when she gives a long speech about adultery.

"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."

Kidman and Cruise, who met on the set of the 1990 sports drama "Days of Thunder," divorced in 2001 after 11 years of marriage . They adopted two children during their union, daughter Isabella, 27, and son Connor, 25.

In 2006, Kidman married Keith Urban and has two children with him, daughters Sunday, 12, and Faith, 9. In April 2006, Cruise and Katie Holmes welcomed a daughter, Suri. The couple married later that year before divorcing in 2012.

Kidman doesn’t talk too often about her previous marriage , though she has said she was "so young" when they tied the knot. At the time, she was 23, and Cruise was 28. Kidman's also been open about how being married to a star of Cruise’s magnitude meant she avoided being sexually harassed .

Kidman, 53, and Cruise, 58, have both had stellar careers, with Kidman collecting an Academy Award for "The Hours" and Cruise earning a trio of Oscar nominations over the years. For Kidman, working with legendary director Stanley Kubrick on "Eyes Wide Shut" is an experience she still cherishes.

"We were working with the greatest filmmaker and learning about our lives and enjoying our lives on set. We would say, 'When is it going to end?' We went over there thinking it was going to be three months. It turned into a year, a year and a half," she said.

"But you go, 'As long as I surrender to what this is, I’m going to have an incredible time,'" she continued. "Stanley, he wasn’t torturous. He was arduous in that he would shoot a lot."

Drew Weisholtz is a reporter for TODAY Digital, focusing on pop culture, nostalgia and trending stories. He has seen every episode of “Saved by the Bell” at least 50 times, longs to perfect the crane kick from “The Karate Kid” and performs stand-up comedy, while also cheering on the New York Yankees and New York Giants. A graduate of Rutgers University, he is the married father of two kids who believe he is ridiculous.

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A look back at nicole kidman & tom cruise’s 11-year marriage in photos.

by Delilah Gray

Delilah Gray

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The 1990s had a lot of great things: the beginning of Friends , unbelievably stylish ensembles, and the birth of iconic “It” couple Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise. They were everywhere, and everyone wanted to know every detail about the shocking couple. Cruise was already one of Hollywood’s elites when they tied the knot in 1990, but everyone wanted to know, who was this gorgeous Australian actress who stole his heart ?

They met on the set of the hit film Days of Thunder and tied the knot a year later on Christmas Eve in 1990. Before Kidman became the superstar she is today , she told Marie Claire per Goalcast that she felt like a trophy at the beginning of their marriage. “I thought, I don’t deserve to be here. We would go to the Oscars, and I would think, I’m here to support [Tom]. I felt it was my job to put on a beautiful dress and to be seen and not heard.”

Then came kids, more films, and a lot of red carpet-appearances. They would frequently say how much they loved one another in interviews, with Cruise calling Kidman his “soulmate.”

They were the faces of ’90s love, and their sudden divorce in 2001 shocked everyone, along with Kidman being the reported reason Cruise skipped the 2023 Oscars over 20 years later.

So let’s throw it back to the 1990s and take a look at Kidman and Cruise’s life in photos.

A version of this article was originally published on Dec 2021.

‘Days of Thunder’

Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman met and fell in love on the set of  Days of Thunder back in 1989. 

Pre-Wedding Bliss

After a year together, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman tied the knot in a private ceremony on Christmas Eve in 1990 in Telluride, Colorado.

“It” Couple

Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman quickly become Hollywood’s “It” couple.

Far And Away

Married couple Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise worked together on-screen again for the western film Far and Away.

Hollywood Royalty Meets British Royalty

Back in 1992, Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise met Princess Diana of Wales . They became friends and they attended her funeral together in 1997.

Becoming Parents

In 1992, Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise adopted a daughter named Isabella Jane and in 1995, they adopted a son named Connor . They were very private about their children’s lives and rarely put them in the spotlight.

Leaving Scientology

Nicole Kidman joined the Church of Scientology for Tom Cruise but decided to leave in 1997 . And at one point, she even got Cruise to leave for a brief period of time, according to The Daily Beast. 

Madly in Love

In a 2002 interview with Vanity Fair , the year after her divorce, Nicole Kidman admitted that she’d been so head over heels she overlooked some things. “I fell madly, passionately in love. 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.”

‘Eyes Wide Shut’

Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise worked together one final time on Stanley Kubrick’s sexy thriller Eyes Wide Shut   in 1999.

Fun After Filming

In a 2020 interview with The New York Times Magazine , Nicole Kidman said that during Eyes Wide Shut , she and Tom Cruise made some amazing memories together. “[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 three 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.”

Shocking Split

Despite officials saying it was an amicable split, Nicole Kidman said she was blindsided when Tom Cruise filed for divorce from her in 2001.

Cruise Moved On Quickly

During Tom Cruise’s divorce to Nicole Kidman, he started a relationship with  Vanilla Sky  co-star Penelope Cruz in 2001. They dated for a few years before splitting up in 2004, then he jumped into marrying his third wife Katie Holmes.

Happy Ending For Kidman

After the sudden divorce, Nicole Kidman threw herself into her acting. She got an Oscar nomination for her iconic role in Moulin Rouge and ended up winning an Oscar for her leading role in the 2003 film The Hours. She re-married to country music star Keith Urban in 2006. They share two daughters born in 2008 and 2010.

2023 Oscars Situation

Despite Cruise’s film  Top Gun: Maverick  receiving multiple nominations, he reportedly skipped the whole ceremony because he didn’t want to have a run-in with Kidman.

Still a Family

Kidman’s relationship with her oldest children, who reportedly lived primarily with Cruise after their divorce, has been a subject of debate. In recent years Bella has proven she’s on good terms with her mom by interacting with her on social media and defending her in interviews.

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Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman: The Way They Were

A true ’90s power couple. Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman ‘s romance didn’t last, but their relationship remains a subject of fascination for movie fans around the world.

The Oscar winner and the Mission: Impossible actor met in early 1990 while filming Tony Scott ‘s Days of Thunder , in which Cruise played race car driver Cole Trickle and Kidman appeared as his love interest, Dr. Claire Lewicki. Some critics thought the film was too similar to 1986’s Top Gun , which also starred Cruise under the direction of Scott, but the romance developing between its two young stars quickly eclipsed any negative press.

Less than one year after finalizing his divorce from Mimi Rogers , Cruise married Kidman in December 1990 during a private ceremony held on Christmas Eve. The low-key event was attended by their family members and held in Telluride, Colorado.

“I was so young when I got married,” Kidman told Red magazine in 2016, reflecting on her marriage to Cruise. The Moulin Rouge! actress was 23 at the time, while the Top Gun: Maverick producer was 28. “I look back now and I’m like, ‘What?'”

Shortly after their wedding, the couple worked together again on Ron Howard ‘s drama Far and Away , which hit theaters in 1992. That same year, the duo adopted daughter Isabella shortly after her birth. In 1995, they adopted son Connor, who later starred in the films Seven Pounds and Red Dawn .

Cruise and Kidman collaborated for a third time on Stanley Kubrick’s final film, Eyes Wide Shut , which premiered in 1999. “We were happily married through that,” the Hours actress told The New York Times in 2020, reflecting on where she stood with Cruise while making the controversial movie. “We would go go-kart racing after [intense] scenes. We’d rent out a place and go racing at three in the morning.”

Less than two years after the movie’s release, however, the couple announced their separation. “Citing the difficulties inherent in divergent careers which constantly keep them apart, they concluded that an amicable separation seemed best for both of them at this time,” a rep for the duo said in a February 2001 statement.

The Jerry Maguire actor later moved on with Penélope Cruz before marrying Katie Holmes in 2006. Cruise and the Dawson’s Creek alum, who share daughter Suri (born in 2006), split in 2012.

Kidman, for her part, was briefly engaged to Lenny Kravitz in 2003. In June 2006, she wed country star Keith Urban , with whom she shares daughters Sunday Rose (born in 2008) and Faith (born in 2010).

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Despite the end of her relationship with Cruise, Kidman has said she’s not bothered by the perpetual interest in their romance.

“I was young. I think I offered it up?” the Big Little Lies alum told Harper’s Bazaar in September 2021 when asked whether the continued fascination bothers her. “Maybe I’ve gotten a bit more trepidatious, but I’m always trying to be as open as possible. I just prefer to live in the world that way.”

Keep scrolling for a look back at Cruise and Kidman’s relationship:

Credit: Shutterstock

A true '90s power couple. Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman 's romance didn't last, but their relationship remains a subject of fascination for movie fans around the world. The Oscar winner and the Mission: Impossible actor met in early 1990 while filming Tony Scott 's Days of Thunder , in which Cruise played race car driver Cole Trickle and Kidman appeared as his love interest, Dr. Claire Lewicki. Some critics thought the film was too similar to 1986's Top Gun , which also starred Cruise under the direction of Scott, but the romance developing between its two young stars quickly eclipsed any negative press. Less than one year after finalizing his divorce from Mimi Rogers , Cruise married Kidman in December 1990 during a private ceremony held on Christmas Eve. The low-key event was attended by their family members and held in Telluride, Colorado. [sendtonews type="float" key="YvwaNmNo9L-2836467-14453"] "I was so young when I got married," Kidman told Red magazine in 2016, reflecting on her marriage to Cruise. The Moulin Rouge! actress was 23 at the time, while the Top Gun: Maverick producer was 28. "I look back now and I'm like, 'What?'" Shortly after their wedding, the couple worked together again on Ron Howard 's drama Far and Away , which hit theaters in 1992. That same year, the duo adopted daughter Isabella shortly after her birth. In 1995, they adopted son Connor, who later starred in the films Seven Pounds and Red Dawn . Cruise and Kidman collaborated for a third time on Stanley Kubrick's final film, Eyes Wide Shut , which premiered in 1999. "We were happily married through that," the Hours actress told The New York Times in 2020, reflecting on where she stood with Cruise while making the controversial movie. "We would go go-kart racing after [intense] scenes. We’d rent out a place and go racing at three in the morning." Less than two years after the movie's release, however, the couple announced their separation. "Citing the difficulties inherent in divergent careers which constantly keep them apart, they concluded that an amicable separation seemed best for both of them at this time," a rep for the duo said in a February 2001 statement. The Jerry Maguire actor later moved on with Penélope Cruz before marrying Katie Holmes in 2006. Cruise and the Dawson's Creek alum, who share daughter Suri (born in 2006), split in 2012. Kidman, for her part, was briefly engaged to Lenny Kravitz in 2003. In June 2006, she wed country star Keith Urban , with whom she shares daughters Sunday Rose (born in 2008) and Faith (born in 2010). Despite the end of her relationship with Cruise, Kidman has said she's not bothered by the perpetual interest in their romance. “I was young. I think I offered it up?” the Big Little Lies alum told Harper's Bazaar in September 2021 when asked whether the continued fascination bothers her. “Maybe I’ve gotten a bit more trepidatious, but I’m always trying to be as open as possible. I just prefer to live in the world that way.” Keep scrolling for a look back at Cruise and Kidman's relationship:

Credit: Stephen Vaughan/Paramount/Kobal/Shutterstock

The twosome met while filming Days of Thunder , which also starred Robert Duvall , Randy Quaid and Cary Elwes . “I remember being so nervous and seeing Tom Cruise drive up in a Porsche," Kidman recalled during a 2016 interview on The Jess Cagle Show . "He got out of the car and walked through the door, and I was like, ‘Ah.’ My jaw dropped.”

Credit: Brendan Beirne/Shutterstock

December 1990

The Interview With the Vampire actor and the Australian actress tied the knot in a private ceremony attended by their family members less than one year after meeting. “He basically swept me off my feet," Kidman told Vanity Fair in 2002. "I fell madly, passionately in love. 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.”

Credit: Bei/Shutterstock

Kidman and Cruise attended their first Oscars together. Days of Thunder was nominated for Best Sound but lost to Dances With Wolves .

The Jack Reacher star and the Emmy winner adopted daughter Isabella shortly after her birth. "I was scared to death. Scared to death!" Cruise told Vanity Fair in 1994, joking about changing his daughter's diapers after her arrival. "I didn't know what the hell I was doing."

October 1994

Cruise opened up about fatherhood and his marriage to Kidman in a Vanity Fair cover story. "It was that special connection when you recognize your soul mate," he recalled of meeting the Stepford Wives actress. "She is a person who understands. It was as if a whole new life had started for me."

Credit: Alex Berliner/BEI/Shutterstock

November 1994

The duo made a splash at the premiere of Cruise's film Interview With the Vampire , which also starred Brad Pitt and Antonio Banderas . "He's quite eccentric," Kidman told Vanity Fair of her husband one month earlier. "He's just an odd one. He has his own little quirks and mannerisms. He's kind of wild — and I love that."

Credit: Dave Lewis/Shutterstock

The pair adopted their second child, son Connor, shortly after his birth.

November 1996

The couple began filming Eyes Wide Shut , which would be Kubrick's final film. "We had two kids and were living in a trailer on the lot primarily, making spaghetti because Stanley liked to eat with us sometimes," Kidman told The New York Times in 2020. "We were working with the greatest filmmaker and learning about our lives and enjoying our lives on set."

Kidman accompanied Cruise to the Oscars, where he was nominated for Best Actor for his performance in Jerry Maguire . He lost to Geoffrey Rush for Shine .

Credit: Michael Caulfield/AP/Shutterstock

The couple attended the premiere of Eyes Wide Shut , their final collaboration together as actors. Cruise later coproduced Kidman's film The Others , which hit theaters after their 2001 divorce.

The duo were stars of the Oscars red carpet, posing for photos ahead of the ceremony. Cruise was up for his third Academy Award, scoring a nod for Magnolia , but he lost to Michael Caine for The Cider House Rules .

Credit: Peter Brooker/Shutterstock

Kidman joined Cruise at the premiere of Mission: Impossible 2 .

February 2001

Cruise filed for divorce from Kidman, citing irreconcilable differences for the split. Former Scientologist Mike Rinder claimed in 2022 that the church played a role in the couple's breakup by creating a "distance" between them. The apostate also alleged that the Church of Scientology wiretapped Kidman's phone to monitor her influence on Cruise, who is one of the religion's most prominent members.

The church denied Rinder's claims in a September 2022 statement, saying: "The Church never ordered or participated in any illegal wiretapping. Mike Rinder is an inveterate liar who seeks to profit from his dishonesty. He supports himself by orchestrating the harassment of his former Church and its leader through false police reports, incendiary propaganda and fraudulent media stories.”

Credit: Theo Kingma/Shutterstock

November 2007

Kidman clarified that she did not have a miscarriage early in her marriage to Cruise, but rather had one early in their relationship. "It was wrongly reported," she told Marie Claire , explaining that she'd had an ectopic pregnancy when she was 23. "So it's huge news, and it didn't happen. I had a miscarriage at the end of my marriage, but I had an ectopic pregnancy at the beginning of my marriage. It was incredibly traumatic for me. Sometimes you share your grief."

Credit: Berliner Studio/BEI/Shutterstock

The Aquaman actress opened up about her miscarriage she experienced during her relationship with Cruise in an interview with Tatler . “I know the yearning. That yearning. It’s a huge, aching yearning," she told the outlet. "And the loss! The loss of a miscarriage is not talked about enough. That’s massive grief to certain women."

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Nicole Kidman

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Nicole Kidman: Lust and Trust

By Nancy Collins

Nancy Collins

N icole Kidman is weeping. As she stands on the cliffs high above the early morning waves of Australia’s Bondi Beach, Kidman’s startling blue eyes fill up with tears. She is talking about the death of Stanley Kubrick, the reclusive genius who directed Kidman and her husband, Tom Cruise, in the $65 million psychosexual thriller Eyes Wide Shut . Kubrick’s thirteenth and final film, due on July 16th, is said to contain scenes of unprecedented erotic intimacy only hinted at in the much-talked-about teaser trailer, which shows a nude Kidman, in front of a mirror, being passionately kissed and fondled by Cruise. No one speaks. The only sound is that of Chris Isaak singing “Baby Did a Bad, Bad Thing.”

Just how bad remains to be seen. Over the next several hours, Kidman will talk frankly about growing up red-headed and wild in Sydney, her marriage to Tom Cruise, their children and her own sexual evolution. But it’s the loss of the best friend and father confessor she found in Kubrick — the seventy-year-old director died of a heart attack on March 7th in his home near London, just days after the Cruises first saw the finished film — that Kidman returns to often. “Nic’s never lost someone so close to her,” says Cruise. “I’d been through it with my own father, and it really hits you hard, takes you up short.”

At her suggestion, my first day with Kidman begins very early indeed. We are to meet at dawn on Bondi Beach to watch the sun come up over the Pacific. So here I am, at 6 A.M., standing in the nearly deserted parking lot adjacent to the surf, watching a few ghostly figures run along the cement boardwalk. Per instructions, I’m searching for a blue BMW. Fifteen minutes later it pulls up and a tall (five feet ten), laughing redhead, whose luminescent white skin virtually glows in the mist, emerges.

She’s dressed casually in blue jeans, a black sweater and running shoes; there is little about Kidman to suggest the femme fatale of such films as To Die For, Batman Forever and Practical Magic , much less the bombshell whose soul- and skin-baring performance in the London and Broadway hit The Blue Room prompted one critic to dub her “theatrical Viagra.”

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“I must say I wasn’t offended by the term,” says Kidman, who arrives today on less-seductive duty, her famous red ringlets tucked under a baseball cap. She’s ready for fun, especially at her own expense. “Driving here, I suddenly thought that saying, ‘Meet me in the middle of a parking lot at sunrise’ was maybe too vague,” she explains with a grin. “After all, it is the other side of the world.”

Sydney is also home to Kidman, the city where she grew up and has now returned with her husband and their two adopted children, Isabella Jane, 6, and Connor Anthony, 4, to live for a year while he films the sequel to Mission: Impossible and she stars in two Australian films: Jez Butterworth’s Birthday Girl and Baz Luhrmann’s musical Moulin Rouge .

Mr. and Mrs. Cruise are ensconced in a harbor-view home bought and decorated by Kidman. Nearby live her parents — Janelle, a nurse-educator, and Antony, a psychologist-biochemist and college professor who is the author of several self-help best sellers, including Managing Love and Hate . Kidman’s only sibling, younger sister Antonia, also lives in Sydney, where she is an entertainment reporter for the local Fox affiliate. Antonia is married to a sports agent and is the mother of five-month-old Lucia — a niece much adored by her aunt.

“I haven’t really lived here for nine years,” says Kidman, who is exceptionally close to her family. She had planned to be with Antonia during the birth of Lucia, but the baby arrived a week early. Still, says Kidman, “I was with Antonia by phone from New York the whole time.” Now she’s reveling in this year of being home. “I’d come back to visit, but to actually stay here, be able to go over to my mom’s place and have a cup of jasmine tea, which is what I used to do at eighteen … well, it’s great to be doing it again at thirty-two.”

All the Kidmans share her joy. “Last Sunday, Tom, Nicole, my husband and I went out on a boat, fishing for the day,” says Antonia. “Tom is such a good dad, so involved, so much enthusiasm. Nicole has a big life, but the way she deals with it, you don’t notice it’s big.”

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Though Kidman’s life has changed dramatically since she left these shores for America at age twenty-two, somethings will always stay the same. Like her struggle for simplicity. Any special attention makes her visibly uncomfortable. And because she doesn’t act famous, she is not treated that way — at least in Australia. As she and I stroll from the boardwalk up into the cliffs overlooking the beach, no one bothers us. The occasional jogger, recognizing the lanky star, merely nods and lopes on.

But then, on Bondi Beach, Kidman is sanded gentry. “I came here all through my life,” she says, surveying the beach and its sprinkling of cafes. “You’d get fish and chips, eat them with Mom and Dad, and go for a swim in the afternoon. There’d be the shark alarm — you’d have to run out of the water — a loud blaring that is still so vivid.”

Nicole Kidman: Lust and Trust , Page 1 of 11

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Tom Cruise & Nicole Kidman | July 5, 1999

“My God, I’m your boyfriend”: Tom Cruise Poured His Heart Out While Confessing His Love For Penélope Cruz After Divorce With Nicole Kidman

T om Cruise didn’t just jump up and down on a couch as an overeager romantic. The otherwise calm and composed Cruise often blurted out his love for his partner on public platforms in the 2000s. The actor might be single now, but there was a time when he was associated with some of the top actresses. After his divorce from Nicole Kidman, Cruise was involved in a romantic relationship with Penélope Cruz.

Cruise and Cruz met on the sets of the 2001 film Vanilla Sky and hit it off right away. This was before the time he entered into another very public relationship and marriage with Katie Holmes. One old interview proves that Cruise was madly in love with The Last Samurai actress at the time.

Tom Cruise Confessed His Mad Love For Penélope Cruz

Tom Cruise made the cover story in a 2002 issue of Vanity Fair with his shocking divorce from Nicole Kidman and his new love for Vanilla Sky co-star Penélope Cruz. Cruise and Kidman’s marriage was the ideal Hollywood love story and the couple was rarely seen spending time apart. The relationship ended after 11 years of marriage and Cruise filed for divorce, citing irreconcilable differences.

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According to the outlet, Cruise and Penélope Cruz had a whirlwind of romance. They danced together at the Mission: Impossible actor’s 39th birthday party. They escaped for an exotic getaway at the Wakaya Club in Fiji. They were later spotted with the kids at his home in Telluride, Colorado.

Cruise blurted out in an excited moment with Vanity Fair , “I thought, My God, I’m your boyfriend. You’re my girlfriend!” He shared that Cruz was incredibly romantic and was inviting in a relationship. He appreciated how good and beautiful an actress she was, even comparing her to Audrey Hepburn. Cruise shared:

As a person and on film, she invites you in, and she’s incredibly romantic. And yet real, you know? She’s beautiful. She’s a very skilled actress, but has an effortless quality about her. You look at Audrey Hepburn. She had that kind of elegance and yet was accessible.

Notably, Cruise was heavily burdened with things in his life at this time, facing the fallout of the divorce from Kidman and serving as the producer of several films. However, the pressures didn’t stop him from delivering exceptional performances or being a good romantic. His relationship with Cruz ended after three years in 2004 ( via BBC ).

Tom Cruise and Romantic Relationships Throughout The Years

When he was just starting as an actor in the early-to-mid 1980s, Tom Cruise had relationships with Melissa Gilbert, Rebecca De Mornay, and Cher. He married actress Mimi Rogers after a high-profile relationship that started in Scientology. He met Nicole Kidman in 1990 on the set of Days of Thunder and married her later that year.

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After breaking up with Cruz, he was allegedly involved with Nazanin Boniadi, who was a member of Scientology at the time. In 2005, he began a relationship with Katie Holmes , which he publicly confessed in the now-infamous interview with Oprah Winfrey ( via EW ). After a celebrated love life and marriage in 2006, Holmes filed for divorce from Cruise in 2012.

Vanilla Sky is now available for streaming on Paramount+.

Nicole Kidman's Kids With Tom Cruise Snub Her On Big Night

By Author Dina Sartore-Bodo at Apr 29, 2024 • Category Keith Urban

Nicole Kidman ‘s kids with Tom Cruise did not make an appearance on their mother’s big night, even when her other children came out of hiding to do so!

Fact is, despite being teenagers, Nicole’s daughters with Keith Urban have never been to a red carpet event with their parents.

But all that changed when their mom received AFI’s highest honor!

Nicole Kidman’s Daughters Make Red Carpet Debut at AFI Award Gala

On April 27th, Nicole Kidman  was honored with an American Film Institute Life Achievement Award. At 56, she is the first Australian actor to be given the award, which meant the honor needed to be celebrated in a big way.

So, for the first time ever, Nicole and husband Keith Urban’s daughters Sunday, 15, and Faith, 13, joined their parents on the red carpet. The two lovely young ladies with joined by their cousins and Nicole’s sister, making the evening a true family affair.

In her acceptance speech, Nicole noted how big of a night it was for her family:

Nicole’s AFI Speech: I’m So Lucky!

“There’s an enormous amount of luck in my life, but there’s also the most important thing — love, big, big love,” Kidman said as accepted the Life Achievement Award. Gesturing to her family’s table, she told the crowd, “Right there is the love of my life and the loves of my life. My daughters have never been anywhere publicly with me on a red carpet, tonight was their first night, so they’re here, Sunday and Faith.”

Of course, it did not go unnoticed that there were some faces missing at the table. First, Nicole’s beloved mother. Unfortunately, she had to watch the ceremony from home, but Nicole had a special message for her.

“This is all because of you and I love you so much,” Nicole said to her mom. “There’s no place like home, as they say, click click. You’re my home.”

And yet, still two other faces were missing in the crowd.

Nicole Kidman’s Kids With Tom Cruise Skip Her Big Night

There was hope that Nicole Kidman’s adopted children, son Connor, 29, and daughter Bella, 31, would attend the ceremony, despite their stranded relationship.

Bella and Connor are the only children Nicole shares with her ex-husband, Tom Cruise. It was Nicole’s fondest wish to have all of her children together for the momentous night, and invitation was extended to her adult kids.

But even from the beginning, Nicole was reportedly unsure they would accept.

“Nicole knows Connor is extremely loyal to his dad so she doesn’t expect him to come, but the invitation is there for both of them,” an alleged source told the Australian outlet,  New Idea . 

“Nicole is trying to limit her expectations, but is clinging to hope Bella might make it,” the source added.

Sadly, neither Bella or Connor accepted the invite. For whatever small consolation,  Bella liked one of her mother’s Instagram posts about the award.

Not the same thing, but what can you do.

Katie Holmes Asked Nicole Kidman for Advice on How to Divorce Tom Cruise

His two famous exes have something of a secret friendship.

Given that the latter two have remained in Hollywood's spotlight after their divorces, longtime fans have been wondering if Kidman and Holmes ever struck up a friendship.

The answer? It may genuinely surprise you.

As it turns out, the women definitely had a rapport while Holmes was married to Cruise in the late aughts. This would make sense, as the Dawson's Creek actress not only shared daughter Su ri with the Mission: Impossible actor, but she was also stepmom to Kidman and Cruise's kids, Isabella and Connor.

But no one would've known that Kidman and Holmes even had some sort of friendship behind the scenes, because neither one discussed the other in interviews. In fact, Kidman often refrains from talking about anything involving Cruise, telling The Cut in October 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."

While it may have looked like Kidman and Holmes didn't have much in common past their shared ex, the two bonded over one major storyline in both of their lives: figuring out a way to get out of their respective marriages to the star.

In fact, when Holmes filed for divorce in June 2012, she sought out advice from Kidman for the best way to do so, both personally and legally.

"They’ve spoken over the last few weeks," a source told Us Weekly at the time of Katie and Tom's divorce. "Nicole has been supportive, saying she’s been through it too and to hang in there."

Almost a decade later, another source told OK! Magazine the same thing, saying that the two related to each other on the subject of being married to one of biggest actors in Hollywood. "They shared a very unique experience,” a source said to the outlet in August 2021. “Nicole knew firsthand how difficult it was to walk away from Tom and the stress that comes with being married to such a huge star.”

Fans may think that Holmes divorcing Cruise would've been the end to hers and Kidman's relationship ... and it kind of was. The two have since moved on from their respective marriages, but it doesn't mean they don't have each other's backs. The same source continued to tell OK! , "[Katie] has a lot of respect for Nicole as one of the best actresses of her generation and also as a compassionate and impressive human being."

So, there you have it. Two drastically different women, both tied to the same man forever. And who knows? Maybe they're still giving each other advice on how to handle being in Cruise's shadow, even years after their divorces.

As the entertainment and news editorial assistant for Good Housekeeping , Adrianna (she/her) writes about everything TV, movies, music and pop culture. She graduated from Yeshiva University with a B.A. in journalism and a minor in business management. She covers shows like The Rookie , 9-1-1 and Grey's Anatomy , though when she’s not watching the latest show on Netflix, she’s taking martial arts or drinking way too much coffee.

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Reese Witherspoon Reacts After Nicole Kidman Forgets Her Real Name

Reese witherspoon had to remind nicole kidman that she uses a stage name when discussing her "weird" nickname for their big little lies costar laura dern..

Reese Witherspoon 's been living a big little lie. 

After Nicole Kidman questioned why Reese calls their Big Little Lies costar Laura Dern by her last name, the Legally Blonde  actress had to give her pal a gentle refresher on her own moniker. 

"I hate how you call her Dern," Nicole confessed to Reese in a video for  Vanity Fair  published June 5, "It sounds so weird. I'm always like 'Laura,' and you're like 'No, Dern, Dern,' and I'm like, 'Why?'"

Reese quickly interrupted her pal's rant to explain the nickname, saying, "'Cause my name is Laura, and her name's Laura, and it's confusing to me."

The Morning Show  star went on to remind Nicole that her  birth name  is  Laura Jean Reese Witherspoon , which she shortened to her mother Betty 's maiden name before pursuing a career in acting. 

And while Nicole, 56, admitted she "forgot" her castmates shared a first name, she still expressed some confusion over the whole situation, noting that Laura "doesn't even call you Laura, though."

Reese, 48, didn't have a rebuttal for that argument, quipping, "You're trying to understand something that just makes no sense."

Of course, Reese has been publicly going by her stage name for most of her life. After all, the Oscar winner got her start in the entertainment industry at age 7, when she starred in a florist's commercial. Seven years later, she made her feature film debut in The Man on the Moon , a role that she's previously credited with kickstarting her road to stardom. 

"I had no idea the journey that lay ahead of me," wrote Reese of the 1999 film in a 2021 Instagram , "but I am so deeply grateful for all the ups and the downs that brought me to this moment."

Keep reading to find out who in Hollywood has opted to use a stage name. 

Katheryn Elizabeth Hudson

Though the singer initially released a Christian album under her birth name in 2001, she felt the stage name Katy Perry —inspired by her mom's maiden name—might meet pop fans more in awe, awe, awe. 

Cardi B took on the name Bacardi after family and friends started calling her sister Hennessy. Later on she shortened the name to something that suited her quite a bit more.

Before she became the Duchess of Sussex,  Meghan Markle  was briefly known as Rachel. 

Shania Twain shared the origin story of her stage name during an appearance on Apple Music's  Home Now Radio : "In short, I was born, Eilleen Regina Edwards, and then I was adopted and I became Eilleen Regina Twain. Then I became a professional singer and I needed a stage name that sounded a little less like my grandmother's name, because I'm named after my grandmother, both my grandmothers, Eilleen and Regina . I think, in my mind, I was just not really wanting to be called my grandmother's name onstage, so I decided to change it to Shania Twain. I met somebody with the name Shania, thought it was beautiful, and Shania Twain was born."

Oddly enough,  Gigi Hadid got her stage name in school when the teacher would confuse her and a girl named Helena. Since her mom called her "gigi" as a term of endearment at home, she told the teacher to just call her Gigi and it simply stuck. 

If you're looking for an explosive action-star name, how about Vin Diesel instead?

Miley Cyrus ' bright smile is what inspired her childhood nickname, Smiley. Eventually the name was shortened to Miley and it stuck. 

Apparently the singer looked more like a Bruno than a Peter, so one day his dad started calling him Bruno. Ever since, he has been known as Bruno Mars .

Before the meat dresses and chart-topping music, Lady Gaga was just an everyday girl from New York.

Jason Sudeikis confirmed on Today   that he was named Daniel after his father, but following some confusion, his mom started using his middle name Jason to avoid confusion. 

Emma Stone  ended adopting this stage name after finding out that the Screen Actors Guild already had a member registered under her birthname. 

Turns out Reese isn't even  Reese Witherspoon 's middle name. The actress chose the moniker in honor of her mother, whose maiden name is Reese.

Every artist has an alter ego, and  Lana Del Rey just happens to be the persona of choice for the singer. 

In 2014, Frank Ocean legally changed his name because, why not? 

A little known fact about 30 Rock 's  Tina Fey is that she is actually named Elizabeth. The comedian made a not so subtle tribute to her birth name by naming her character Liz Lemon.

This pioneer of West Coast rap would later go on to be known as Snoop Dogg .

Turns out the "Royals" singer is really into learning about the aristocracy, hence the reason why she chose the name  Lorde , but with a feminine 'e.'

Before he started shaking his bonbon for the masses, music superstar Ricky Martin went by this everyday name.

It's hard to believe that Iggy Azalea was born Amethyst Kelly!

Fans were confused when  Taylor Swift thanked then-boyfriend Adam in an acceptance speech, which lead people to the discovery that  Calvin Harris is simply a stage name. The DJ told  Shortlist  magazine he chose the name because his first single was more soulful and wanted something a bit more "racially ambiguous."

Before she became a household name, this was what erstwhile Friend Jennifer Aniston answered to.

Alicia Keys didn't always have such a musical name.

Before he became arguably the biggest movie star in the world, Tom Cruise went by this name.

Back when she was born in 1980, this was how the future bigtime actress Natalie Portman greeted the world.

Before she became a big-time TV star and married Ellen DeGeneres , this was the name Portia de Rossi answered to.

Guess music superstar Elton John didn't think his original name would be a hit with audiences.

Check The Simple Life alum  Nicole Richie 's birth certificate and this is the name you'll see.

All it took was a nickname from some high school friends, and U2 frontman Bono 's famous moniker was born.

We agree. Carmen Electra is much more effective when it comes to selling a sexy Baywatch persona.

"I went on as Eric Bishop, killed, standing ovation," Jamie Foxx has said of his early comedy days, revealing that for weeks after his fellow comedians blocked him from getting back onstage. So he took his act to a new location and wrote down three unisex-sounding names in the hopes of getting picked. "I go up and get a standing ovation, so the name sticks."