Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise got divorced two years after the release of the film & the former believed the film had nothing to do with it.
Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise’s Eyes Wide Shut was an erotic mystery directed by Stanley Kubrick, featuring some racy scenes between the leads. Cruise is one of the most handsome actors and the whole package is just way too alluring for any actress to miss the chance of getting down and doing dirty business. But Kidman, also his ex-wife (then married), had to be persuaded by the director to do some s*x scenes. The actress once opened up about the whole ordeal and how she struggled to shoot some of the erotic scenes.
The film was released in 1999, and just two years after that, Kidman and Cruise parted ways and got divorced. Many people reportedly thought that doing this film together led to their divorce. But that’s water under the bridge now.
Once speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Nicole Kidman shared how the director Stanley Kubrick coaxed her to do some definitive s*xual scenes with her then-husband Tom Cruise. However, many of those scenes did not make it to the final cut of the film Eyes Wide Shut. Recalling the time when Kubrick persuaded her to do the scenes, she said, “Stanley had to coax me into some of the s*xuality in the film in the beginning, but we shot things that were a lot more extreme that didn’t end up in the movie.”
However explicit the scenes might be but Nicole Kidman revealed she never felt exploited doing so. She praised the late director for tastefully handling the scenes. She said, “I did feel safe — I never felt it was exploitive or unintelligent. He was very different with women than he was with men. He has daughters, so he was very paternal with me.”
The film was made on a budget of around $65 million and it went on to make over $160 million at the box office, making it Stanley Kubrick‘s highest-grossing film; it held greater meaning as it was the last film directed by him before he passed away shortly after that.
Following that, in 2001, Tom Cruise filed for divorce from Nicole Kidman but the reasons behind it were not clear, although fans believe it has something to do with his connection to Scientology. For more such throwbacks on your favourite Hollywood celebrities, stick to Koimoi!
