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Louise Thomas
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Nicole Kidman has spoken out about her former relationship with Tom Cruise.
In honor of the anniversary of their 1999 movie Eyes Wide Shut, Kidman reflected on what the filming process was like for her, as well as whether or not the film’s director, Stanley Kubrick, decided to take advantage of their relationship.
“I suppose he was mining it,” the actress said in an interview with the Los Angeles Times. “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.’”
The Oscar winner added: “Because one person could feel ganged up on. But he was aware of that and knew how to manage us.”
Kidman and Cruise were married for more than a decade, from 1990 to 2001. They share two children together Isabella, 31 and Connor, 29.
Despite their relationship at the time, The Family Affair actress admitted that being a woman led to a slightly different relationship with the director simply because of her gender. “There’s something about being a woman in that equation, too,” she continued. “And Stanley liked women. He had a different relationship with Tom. They worked more closely together on his character.”
This isn’t the first time Kidman has talked about the dynamic she had with Cruise while they filmed the movie. She also spoke to the New York Times about her marriage to Cruise in October 2020.
“We were happily married through that,” Kidman told the outlet. “We would go go-kart racing after those scenes. We’d rent out a place and go racing at three in the morning. I don’t know what else to say. Maybe I don’t have the ability to look back and dissect it. Or I’m not willing to.”
Following her divorce from Cruise, Kidman married Keith Urban in 2006. They share two children together, Sunday, 15, and Faith, 13.
In April, the musician took the stage at the 49th AFI Life Achievement Award Gala, where he explained what it was like to meet the Big Little Lies actress and how scared he was to call her.
“I was trying to play it cool, but inside I felt like I’d snuck into the royal ball simply because Nic had such a truly otherworldly aura about her,” he said, referring to how they met in January 2005 during the G’Day USA gala. “I felt a bit like I was meeting a real-life princess.”
Urban admitted that he did “manage to get her phone number on a tiny piece of paper” but it took him some extra courage to actually give the actress a call because of his fears.
“I was scared. I was nervous to call her,” he explained. “I did, as you probably figured out, pluck up the courage to finally call her.”
“I do want to take an opportunity to talk about Nic’s heart and her spirit. We got married in June 2006 and barely four months into our marriage, my addictions that I’d done really nothing about, blew our marriage to smithereens,” he further explained. “And I went into the Betty Ford Center for three months. Four months into a marriage I’m in rehab for three months. I had no idea what was going to happen to us.”
“And if you want to see what love in action really looks like, give that a whirl,” he said. “Nic pushed through every negative voice, I’m sure even some of her own. And she chose love. And here we are tonight, 18 years later.”
