Nicole Kidman breaks her silence to clarify a rumor that has been established in the popular imagination for two decades: "We were happily married."
There are many myths, legends, and rumors about the marriage of Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise. Married for 11 years, the couple separated in 2001 in what remains one of the most high-profile divorces in Hollywood history. One that also came accompanied by a pact of silence: neither of them has ever wanted to speak in public about the real reasons that led them to make this decision. Although the shadow of Scientology has always been present in all the conversations around this topic.
One of the most curious facts about this breakup is that it came only two years after the couple participated in what was the most personal and hardest film they have ever starred in: Eyes Wide Shut, by Stanley Kubrick. The latest film was directed by the British genius whose two-year shoot put Cruise and Kidman to the limit.
In the artistic field, Kubrick made them repeated dozens and dozens of times the same shot until they achieved the perfection he was looking for. Personally, because they both bared themselves body and soul to play a marriage in crisis that, in the popular imagination, was the beginning of the end of their love story.
A supposed trip to hell that Kidman has just denied during an interview with the New York Times in which for the first time since then she answers the question of whether that complicated filming, in which both had to emotionally attack each other in front of the camera, It really affected her marriage to Tom Cruise.
“I understand that that fits with the narrative that the public has created seeing what happened next, but I definitely don't see it that way. Back then Tom and I were happily married,” says Nicole.
“When we finished filming those scenes, we rented a kart track and went racing at 3 in the morning. I don't know what else to say about this. Maybe I can't look back and analyze it. Or maybe it's just that I don't want to do it,” she concludes.
What she does remember well from that time is that she loved shooting with Kubrick even though he was a director famous for pushing his actors to the limit. “We worked with the best filmmaker and learned a lot about our lives. We enjoyed ourselves on the filming set. Why would we want it to end? Yes, we went there thinking it would be three months of filming which then turned into two years. But in the end, you knew that as long as you gave yourself to what they asked of you, you were going to have an incredible time,” says the actress.
“Stanley was not a torturer. He was tough because he liked to shoot a lot. But then I would sit on the floor in his office and talk to him and we would watch animal videos together. He once told me that animals were much nicer than human beings. I remember him saying it during a wildlife documentary that featured a lion chasing an antelope. A scene he could barely see. Interesting, isn't it?”, she concludes.
