If it weren’t for Tom Cruise, someone else might have played Alice in Stanley Kubrick’s 1999 erotic thriller “Eyes Wide Shut.”
In a rare interview with Sight and Sound (via Us Weekly), Cruise said when he first met with the prolific director to discuss what would be his final film, he suggested his wife at the time, Nicole Kidman, play the freespirted Alice Harford opposite his repressed New York socialite, Bill Harford.
“I flew out to his house, and I landed in his backyard. I read the script the day before and we spent the day talking about it. I knew all of his films,” Cruise said. “Then it was basically he and I getting to know each other. And when we were doing that, I suggested Nicole play the role [of Alice]. Because, obviously, she’s a great actress.”
Cruise went on to say that he was extremely dedicated to making “Eyes Wide Shut,” telling Kubrick at the time, “Whatever it’s going to take [to make the movie], we’re going to do this.”
Kubrick reportedly always wanted a real couple to play the Harfords and originally thought of Alec Baldwin and Kim Basinger for the starring roles. So, although Cruise’s suggestion was influential, the idea of pairing a husband and wife for “Eyes Wide Shut” had been ruminating in Kubrick’s mind.
The film follows Cruise’s Bill Harford, an equal parts egotistical and anxious New York doctor who dives into the darkest depths of the esoteric Manhattan underground after his wife Alice tells him she is unfulfilled in their marriage.
While audiences assumed parallels between the on-screen marriage of Bill and Alice and the real-life relationship of Cruise and Kidman, the latter told The New York Times in 2020 that their union was nothing like their “Eyes Wide Shut” counterparts’.
“That fits the narrative that people came up with, but I definitely didn’t see it like that,” Kidman said. “We were happily married.”
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