Nicole Kidman Offers Rare Remarks About Ex-Husband Tom Cruise When Discussing ‘Eyes Wide Shut’

Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise share a daughter and son, and were married for more than a decade before divorcing in 2001.

Nicole Kidman is taking a stroll down memory lane. The actress recently opened up and discussed her 1999 Stanley Kubrick film Eyes Wide Shut, and offered some rare remarks about her ex-husband Tom Cruise, who co-starred in the film with her.

Eyes Wide Shut “centers on a physician (Cruise) who is shocked when his wife (Kidman) reveals that she had contemplated having an affair 12 months earlier. He then embarks on a night-long adventure, during which he infiltrates a masked orgy of an unnamed secret society.”

Speaking to the Los Angeles Times in honor of the film’s 25th anniversary, Kidman offered some reflection on making Eyes Wide Shut, and commented on how her and Cruise’s relationship might have had an influence on Kubrick’s vision for the movie.”I suppose he was mining it,” Kidman said. “There were ideas he was interested in. He’d ask a lot of questions. But he had a strong sense of the story he was telling.”

“I do remember him saying, ‘Triangles are hard. You have to tread carefully when it’s a triangle.’ Because one person could feel ganged up on,” the Oscar-winning actress continued. “But he was aware of that and knew how to manage us.”

Kidman also shared that she and Cruise had differing relationships with Kubrick, explaining, “There’s something about being a woman in that equation, too. And Stanley liked women. He had a different relationship with Tom. They worked more closely together on his character.”

The former couple married in 1990, and were together for more than a decade, eventually divorcing in 2001. During their relationship they adopted two children together: daughter, Isabella (born 1992), and son Connor (born 1995). 

Cruise had previously been married to actress Mimi Rogers (1987-1990), and after divorcing Kidman he went on to date Penelope Cruz for a few years. After their split, Crusie dated Katie Holmes, with whom he shares one daughter, Suri born in 2005. Cruise and Holmes married in 2006 and were together for roughly six years before Holmes filed for divorce. 

Following her divorce from Cruise, Kidman secretly dated Lenny Kravitz, whom she revealed years later she’d been engaged to. She eventually began dating fellow Australian, and country music superstar, Keith Urban. The pair married in 2006 and share two daughters: Sunday Rose (born in 2008) and Faith Margaret (born in 2010).