Over the course of their decade-long Hollywood marriage, Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise starred together in three films during the 1990s, with their final co-production being 1999's Eyes Wide Shut.
The film, now considered to be one of the best of the decade, was auteur director Stanley Kubrick's final work before his death six days after showing the final cut.
© Getty ImagesWhile it opened to polarized reception at the time, it was a box office success and has since been reevaluated and dubbed one of the filmmaker's finest. In honor of the movie's 25th anniversary, Nicole told The Los Angeles Times in 2024 of not only how the film came to be, but also called for tight living quarters.
The film was shot over the span of two years, with a 400 day continuous production schedule that received the Guinness World Record for the longest continuous film shoot, and when the original six-month schedule stretched on longer, Nicole's reaction was: "I would have stayed a third year. Does that mean I'm crazy?"
Nicole explained that some scenes were scrapped or re-filmed after weeks of production, and at the start, it was mostly just her and Tom getting to know and collaborate with the late director for weeks before they even began production.
"When Tom and I first started with Stanley, it was at his home, and we didn't even go over to the sets at Pinewood [Studios]," she detailed. "Six, eight weeks passed, and we're wondering, 'Are we ever going to start?'"
"And we just wouldn't start. We were getting comfortable with each other, comfortable enough to throw out ideas."
© AlamyThe To Die For star mentioned that people often wonder what it was like to film a movie that took her and her now ex-husband off the market for so long. "They want to know what it was like to spend that much time making it, which I understand. It was two years of our lives!"
"I remember Sydney Pollack when he arrived, telling us, 'I'm only going to be here for about three days. And it seems like we got the scene today.' And Tom and I just looked at each other, going, 'Mmm-hmmm. Sure, Sydney.'"
She even humorously added that they'd learned how to cook together and lived in a trailer while on set, despite having a home a mere 10 minutes away from the England-based studios.
© Getty Images"By the end, we're learning how to make pasta because he's a great cook, Sydney," Nicole added with a laugh. "Stanley would come to our trailer, we'd eat."
"In the little kitchen in our trailer, Sydney would make this unbelievable artichoke pasta with [Parmigiano-]Reggiano and this incredible olive oil and roast chicken."
© Getty ImagesThe Oscar-winning actress continued: "We had a home 10 minutes away, but we lived in that trailer. Tom and I shared it because Stanley would say, 'You're not each getting a trailer. We can't afford it.' Tom had a smaller area because he was running stuff. And he'd play video games. That was when 'Minesweeper' was big. So there was a lot of that."
