Looking back at Stanley Kubrick’s ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ 20 years on
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The secret Cate Blanchett cameo in Stanley Kubrick movie ‘Eyes Wide Shut’
It’s difficult to know what the landscape of cinema would look like without the indelible impact of filmmaker Stanley Kubrick, with a glittering filmography that is nothing short of extraordinary. Commanding a strict creative vision over each and every one of his projects, the influential American director is known for dominating nearly every corner of filmmaking, changing the face of science fiction with 2001: A Space Odyssey in 1968 before lending his hand to horror in 1980 with the Stephen King adaptation, The Shining.
Though he is a director that seems intensely interested in existential stories of human mortality, Kubrick was also known for his lighter side, embracing comedy with Dr. Strangelove: Or How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love The Bomb as well as the playful nature of his erotic thriller Eyes Wide Shut. Infused with titillating sexual desire and underground conspiracy, Kubrick’s final film was his most commercial, starring Hollywood icons Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman in the lead roles.
Though, whilst the director isn’t exactly known for his all-star cameos, there is another icon of contemporary cinema hidden in the background of Eyes Wide Shut’s most notorious moment, the orgy scene. Being heard only briefly as the voice of a mysterious masked woman played on set by Abigail Good, is Cate Blanchett, the star of Elizabeth, The Aviator, Carol, Blue Jasmine and much more.
Having been kept secret for many years, the truth was revealed in the form of a published oral history of the film where Leon Vitali, Kubrick’s assistant, spilt the beans about Blanchett’s cameo. “It was Cate Blanchett!” Vitali excitedly announced, clarifying: “We wanted something warm and sensual but that at the same time could be a part of a ritual. Stanley had talked about finding this voice and this quality that we needed”.
Sadly, this casting choice was taken away from Kubrick when he tragically died on March 7th, 1999, with Vitali now tasked with finding this particular voice alone. As Kubrick’s assistant recalls, “After he’d died, I was looking for someone. It was actually Tom [Cruise] and Nicole [Kidman] who came up with the idea of Cate. She was in England at the time, so she came into Pinewood and recorded the lines”.
Whilst Abigail Good, who played the actual masked woman in the film, was initially disheartened that her own voice wouldn’t be used in the final cut, she also added that she holds no grudge against Kubrick as she cherished the invaluable on-set experience. “When all the other girls left, I was in this amazing position of being able to work with two incredible artists,” Good remembers, adding: “I was on the set with Tom and Stanley, finding things on our own. Stanley asked my opinion a lot. Me and Tom were among the last people he ever filmed”.
As one of the most significant rising stars of the 1990s, Blanchett had just come off her breakout performance in Oscar and Lucinda and her Oscar-nominated role in Elizabeth when she was chosen to work with Stanley Kubrick.
