A quarter of a century on, Nicole Kidman, co-star of 1999’s Eyes Wide Shut, recalls the challenges of working with Stanley Kubrick.
It’s been 25 years since the release of Eyes Wide Shut, the last film by the legendary Stanley Kubrick, who died just six days after delivering his cut of the film to Warner Bros. The erotic drama still holds the record for the longest continuous shoot in cinema history (at 400 days, no less) and took stars Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise out of the Hollywood picture for a chunk of their careers.
Still, it’s not every day you get to work with a living legend, and with the recent passing of The Shining star Shelley Duvall, there’s cause to remember how Kubrick’s directorial style could be rather challenging. Marking Eyes Wide Shut's anniversary, Kidman has been reflecting on working with the director and just how he was able to get Cruise and Kidman – who were married in real life – to stretch their boundaries for the film.
“I suppose he was mining it,” Kidman told The LA Times. “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.”
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According to Kidman, Kubrick had a couple of other rules: no immediate “no” answers and no asking the director “why” the characters were doing or saying anything. “He didn’t want sycophants,” she said, “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,’” she remembers. “It was experimental, like making student films in Australia.”
Putting those kind of restraints on Hollywood’s biggest power couple of the era created a fascinating onscreen dynamic. Kidman herself was clearly energised by the process, adding that she would have stayed for a third year of production if Kubrick had asked her to. The actor hasn’t shied away from the genre in the years since, either. Kidman’s next film is Babygirl for A24 and she has another erotic thriller on the way with Holland, Michigan. We’ll bring you more updates on those projects as we hear them.
