Cruise and wife Nicole Kidman agreed to star in Stanley Kubrick’s 1999 film Eyes Wide Shut, which explores the complicated marriage of a young couple tempted by forces outside their marriage. Kubrick, a notorious perfectionist, shot the film for an incredible 15 months, far exceeding the usual four to six months for many films.
Guinness World Records recognizes it as the longest continuous production run in film history. (The interrupted shoots are another story: Richard Linklater’s coming-of-age drama Boyhood was shot in 39 days between 2002 and 2013.)
Eyes Wide Shut received a lukewarm reception, though it proved generous to Cruise. While on set, he met director Paul Thomas Anderson, who cast him as a motivational speaker in 1999’s Magnolia. That role earned Cruise an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. He had previously been nominated for Born on the Fourth of July and Jerry Maguire (1996), though he had yet to win.
As Nicole Kidman marks 25 years since Eyes Wide Shut, she’s reflecting on making the movie with her co-star and then-husband Tom Cruise.
The Academy Award winner recalled working with writer/director Stanley Kubrick and “just a lot of talking” as they spent weeks rehearsing one memorable scene of the pair having an intimate talk over a joint in their bedroom.
“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 Los Angeles Times. “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.”
Kidman was married to Cruise from 1990 to 2001, during which they filmed Kubrick’s final feature from 1996 to 1998, after an extensive rehearsal period. She presumes the director found inspiration in their marriage while working on the scene.
“I suppose he was mining it,” said Kidman. “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.”