Kidman is offering a rare glimpse into her marriage and therefore shocking separation from Top Gun star Tom Cruise.
Although presently happily married to music star Keith Urban, the 53 year old is going down memory lane as she reflects on making the 1999 film Eyes Wide Shut with her then-husband Tom Cruise.
The duo was married from 1990 to 2001 and share two adopted children, Connor, 25, and Bella, 27.
In an interview with The New York Times, the actress who tied the knot with Keith Urban in 2006 and went on to have two daughters, Faith, 9, and Sunday, 12, casting her mind back said:
“We were happily married through that,” Kidman says of making Eyes Wide Shut with Cruise. “We would go go-kart racing after [intense] scenes. We’d rent out a place and go racing at three in the morning.”
Despite expected challenges of working on the psychological drama for two years, Kidman says both she and Cruise “loved” working with director Stanley Kubrick and living on-set with their children.
“We had two kids and were living in a trailer on the lot primarily, making spaghetti because Stanley liked to eat with us sometimes,” she recalls. “We were working with the greatest filmmaker and learning about our lives and enjoying our lives on set. We would say, ‘When is it going to end?'”
“We went over there thinking it was going to be three months,” Kidman continues. “It turned into a year, a year and a half. But you go, ‘As long as I surrender to what this is, I’m going to have an incredible time.'”
She says of her onscreen nudity in the film that she only agreed after a written contract:
“When I went to work with Stanley Kubrick, he was like, ‘I’m going to want full frontal nudity,’ and I was like, ‘Ahh, I don’t know,'” she says. “So we came up with a great agreement, which was contractual. He would show me the scenes with the nudity before they made it into the film. Then I could feel completely safe.”
Kidman “didn’t say no” to any of the scenes in question after confirming “that it wasn’t going to be me standing there nude and everyone laughing at me.”
“I would never think of not wanting the storytelling to be told properly. Having them say, ‘Once you’re OK with it, great, that’s it’ — what a fantastic place to be in as a woman,” she says. “… I love the relationship between a director and an actor. When it’s pure, it’s exquisite.”
Just like in Eyes Wide Shut, Kidman is set to take on her upcoming HBO limited series, Undoing, with hopes to continue to take on projects that she doesn’t “find comfortable” as she continues her career.
“A lot of people as they get older get more protected and terrified. My desire is to keep throwing myself into things,” she says. “My parenting, my relationship, my work. I’ll take the pain. I’ll take the joy. Because the feeling makes me go, ‘I’m in life.’ It’s an enormous gift, this life.”
Undoing will premiere Oct. 25 on HBO.
