With 25 years having passed since Stanley Kubrick’s last film, “Eyes Wide Shut,” was released following his death, Nicole Kidman is looking back on the psychosexual drama and production surrounding it with positive memories. Sharing the screen with her then-husband Tom Cruise, the pair played a well-to-do New York married couple in the midst of a conflict in their relationship, a plot that feels prescient in relation to their breakup in 2001.
Reflecting on the making of the film for a recent interview with the Los Angeles Times, when Kidman was asked what of herself she brought to the character, she said, “My boldness. I’m quite up-front and Alice becomes quite up-front, particularly when she was stoned … although that wasn’t me when I was stoned. I was just naturally like that. Up-front.”
Kidman also acknowledged how her boldness was encouraged by Kubrick, despite the legendary auteur’s reputation as a notorious stickler.
“The great thing about him is that he told us, ‘Don’t put me on a pedestal.’ That’s the No. 1 rule,” Kidman said. “Because when we came to his house, we were like, ‘Oh, my God. The great Stanley Kubrick.’ And that kind of thinking hinders the creative process. He didn’t want sycophants. He told us to throw ideas out. 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.’ It was experimental, like making student films in Australia.”
When asked about how Kubrick shaped her performance, Kidman wasn’t sure how to answer other than to say he wouldn’t stop until he got it. In that sense, she felt she had his confidence and the rest was about trusting herself and her naughty personality.
“I suppose that was why he cast me. That mischief, that provocative nature, he found that out and it got more imbued into Alice,” said Kidman to the LA Times. “The scene where I drop the dress … that was me. That wasn’t written. That was my dress from my closet. ‘This is how I take off the dress, Stanley.’ Because I had a lot of clothes, we weren’t paying to buy clothes. And Stanley had come over and I was showing him all these beautiful dresses. That’s how that happened.”