“It’s going to be controversial”: the movie Nicole Kidman called an obsession
Emerging in the 1980s, Nicole Kidman began her career in Australia, her native country, before heading to Hollywood in the following decade. She quickly established herself, appearing in Batman Forever, Gus Van Sant’s To Die For, and Jane Campion’s Portrait of a Lady.
By working with established, well-respected filmmakers, Kidman asserted herself as a star dedicated to cinema rather than just commercial success. Moving between bigger-budget Hollywood productions and more artful and experimental works, the actor has become one of cinema’s most iconic modern stars.
From her Oscar-winning performance in The Hours as Virginia Woolf to her controversial appearances in movies like Jonathan Glazer’s Birth and Lars Von Trier’s Dogville, Kidman’s filmography is no short of impressive. She has managed to work with names that many actors would dream of working with, from Yorgos Lanthimos and Robert Eggers to Sofia Coppola, Baz Luhrmann and Park Chan-wook. Yet, there’s one that stands above all the rest: Stanley Kubrick.
The actor was cast in his final film, Eyes Wide Shut, alongside her then-husband, Tom Cruise. It was released in 1999, with Kubrick sadly dying before he got to see the movie hit screens. Kidman played Alice, whose relationship with Cruise’s Bill isn’t as steady as it once was. Both attempt to resist the temptations of others and discuss their desires frankly with one another. Then, the film descends into typical Kubrickian chaos as Bill attends a masked orgy where strange rituals take place.
Eyes Wide Shut divided a lot of viewers, but it is hard to deny the sheer mastery with which the film was made. It’s hypnotic, unnerving and enrapturing, and for Kidman, the process of making it was equally as enticing. She became obsessed with the film, believing that she had created something really special. It seems as though Kubrick’s obsessive nature – demanding countless takes and refusing to stop filming until he found the perfect shot – infected Kidman and Cruise, too, who completely involved themselves in the film’s world for the entirety of production.
When the pair finally got a chance to watch the film, they viewed it twice in one sitting. “The first time, we were in shock,” the actor explained. “The second time, I thought, ‘Wow!’ It’s going to be controversial. I’m proud of the film and that period of my life. It was my obsession, our obsession, for two or three years.”
Kidman also explained that she accepted the role in the film without even knowing what it was. “I didn’t need to read the script,” she said, “I didn’t care what the story was originally. I wanted to work with Stanley.” While Kidman was certainly impressed with the final film, Kubrick was apparently unhappy with it, according to Ronald Lee Ermey. “Stanley called me about two weeks before he died. We had a long conversation about Eyes Wide Shut. He told me it was a piece of shit and that he was disgusted with it, and that the critics were going to have him for lunch,” he recalled to Radar Online.
In the end, Eyes Wide Shut grossed $162million and has since been heralded as one of Kubrick’s greatest movies.
