The former couple was married from 1990 to 2001 and co-starred in the 1999 film.
Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise's marriage was a happy one when they were making Eyes Wide Shut. In an interview with The New York Times, the 53-year-old actress opens up about making the 1999 film with her then-husband.
Kidman and Cruise were married from 1990 to 2001 and share two children, Connor, 25, and Bella, 27. The actress tied the knot with Keith Urban in 2006 and went on to have two daughters, Faith, 9, and Sunday, 12.
"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 the 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.'"
One thing Kidman surrendered to was onscreen nudity, something she only agreed to do after approval of those scenes was written into her 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."
Like she did in Eyes Wide Shut and will do in her upcoming HBO limited series, Undoing, Kidman 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.
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