“I’m resistant to labels”: when Stanley Kubrick told Nicole Kidman she wasn’t a movie star
It’s a fact of life that the biggest stars in Hollywood tend to work with the biggest directors, but Stanley Kubrick wasn’t the sort of auteur who’d become enthralled by the glitz and glamour of the movie business.
The meticulous maestro might be one of the greatest and most influential filmmakers to ever step behind the camera, but when he wasn’t working, he wanted to be left alone. Kubrick could think of few things worse than the idea of celebrity, which may have subconsciously factored into his casting process.
Kubrick helmed 13 features throughout his career, but star power was in relatively short supply. Whether or not he was intentionally sidestepping the baggage that comes with the most recognisable names in Tinseltown remains up for debate, but A-listers were never at the forefront of his thinking.
Of course, there are countless exceptions to the rule, but Kubrick was largely drawn to actors best suited to executing his creative vision than stuffing his ensembles full of faces who could be relied upon to put butts in seats during the theatrical run of the finished article.
Prior to his cinematic swansong, Kirk Douglas led Paths of Glory and Spartacus; Peter Sellers was in seminal form playing multiple characters in Dr Strangelove, and Jack Nicholson delivered one of horror’s most iconic turns in The Shining. Beyond that trio, superstars were in very short supply.
Fear and Desire, Killer’s Kiss, The Killing, A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon, and Full Metal Jacket were populated by a combination of character actors and relative unknowns, and even James Mason’s star was waning by the time he took top billing in Lolita. Whether it was by accident or design, Kubrick had his eyes opened to the other side of Hollywood when he hired Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman for Eyes Wide Shut.
As the industry’s marquee power couple, the pair couldn’t go anywhere or do anything without being relentlessly hounded by the press and paparazzi. It was unlike anything Kubrick had ever experienced before, but even though their wattage couldn’t be denied, the filmmaker didn’t see either of them as being anything other than actors-for-hire who could do the job he wanted.
By the time Eyes Wide Shut had started its arduous shoot, Kidman was a Golden Globe and Bafta-winning talent with blockbusters and box office hits like Days of Thunder, Batman Forever, The Peacemaker, and Practical Magic under her belt. However, not only did she question the very notion of what a movie star is, she revealed to The Guardian that Kubrick didn’t believe it applied to her.
“It’s too cerebral for me,” she reflected of her status. “I can only go what Stanley Kubrick would say to me, which was, ‘Nicole, you’re a character actress’. Usually, I’m resistant to labels.” Naturally, when somebody of Kubrick’s standing hands out a label, it’s going to test out that resistance.
Kubrick might have been forced to hide in his car at one point filming Eyes Wide Shut, having become overawed by the frenzy that followed Cruise, but when it came to Kidman, he didn’t even consider her a star at all.
