How Stanley Kubrick split up Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise
While filming Eyes Wide Shut, Stanley Kubrick's uniquely cruel style of directing tore Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise's relationship apart through stress.
(Credits: Far Out / Warner Bros.)
Film » Cutting Room Floor
Sat 18 January 2025 13:45, UK
By now, hearing a story about Stanley Kubrick being a nightmare on set comes as no surprise. Every film he directed seems to carry tales of his relentless perfectionism and the toll it took on his actors. But for Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise, working on Kubrick’s final film, Eyes Wide Shut, the stakes went beyond their careers or sanity—it was their marriage that hung in the balance.
When Kidman and Cruise married in 1990, it was the coming together of two of Hollywood’s brightest talents. Both were just breaking into the big time, so when they tied the hot, it positioned them as the ultimate it-couple of the moment, which is perhaps exactly why Kubrick decided to cast them both to bring their romance onto the screen in his erotic thriller.
Already, though, that’s a strange decision. The plot of the movie isn’t exactly marital bliss, so the choice to cast a real married couple to play these roles in a twisted movie tinged with betrayal, paranoia and psychological torment feels somewhat sadistic. But, as the film world knows well, that’s a label that could definitely be applied to Kubrick.
There is no denying the man’s talent. Across all of his films, Kubrick pushed the boundaries of filmmaking, daring to push horror into a more cinematic space with The Shining, daring to tackle stories as controversial as Lolita or A Clockwork Orange, and even daring to take on an opus as monumental as 2001: A Space Odyssey and demand that audience sit and appreciate it. So much of his greatness comes from the performances he captures within his films, but from on-set stories, they were hard-earned and often beaten out of his actors.
Kubrick was a perfectionist to the extent of cruelty. He would have his actors repeat takes again and again. He made Scatman Crothers do one take of The Shining over 140 times, holding the world record for the most takes a single scene has ever taken. In the case of Eyes Wide Shut, he made Cruise walk through a door 95 times. But that was a minor detail to the experience the couple had on set.
Determined to get a deep and thorough depiction of the couple in his film, Kubrick essentially had Kidman and Cruise move onto the set. They would spend nights sleeping in the bedroom set as Kubrick not only immersed the actors in their roles but dug into their real-life relationships to find fuel for the movie. He’d reportedly chat to both actors separately and secretly, encouraging them to share marital secrets and issues with him in confidence that he’d then whisper to the other. He’d whisper something into their ear if he needed one of them to be angry. If he needed them to be sad, he’d reveal some betrayal. Throughout the filming, he was reportedly using the couple’s real-life issues as fodder to get great performances.
For Cruise, the stress of working on Eyes Wide Shut wasn’t limited to the pressures of the production itself. By the 1990s, the actor was already a prominent advocate for Scientology, and the church was reportedly uneasy about his involvement in a film centred on mysterious, cult-like rituals. On top of dealing with an infamously demanding director and the strain it placed on his relationship, Cruise was also allegedly being monitored by his assistant, Michael Doven, under the orders of David Miscavige, the leader of the church.
The situation on set got so bad that Cruise was coming apart at the seams. While filming, it’s said that he ended up struggling greatly with ulcers, constant abdominal pain and nausea due to the intense stress he was under.
“I suppose he was mining it,” Kidman said of Kubrick using her own marriage for inspiration, “There were ideas he was interested in. He’d ask a lot of questions.”
Filmed over a long stretch of over 15 months, beginning with an odd period of Kidman and Cruise simply living at the director’s house, wondering, “Are we ever going to start?” there’s an unsettling sense that Kubrick was quite literally tearing their relationship apart, purposefully straining the couple in real life to capture it on tape. Sure, maybe it made the film great with two incredible lead performances likely inspired by their real-life states. But then, only two years after the film was released, the couple divorced.
Related Topics
Nicole KidmanStanley KubrickTom Cruise
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