Stanley Kubrick made incredibly x-rated demands to Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman for very controversial movie
When Stanley Kubrick's 1999 movie was released, it was one of the most talked-about films of the time.
It starred Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise who played married couple, Alice and William.
The movie was particularly fascinating to fans, due to the fact that Kidman and Cruise were actually married in real life at the time.
The pair married on Christmas Eve 1990 before splitting in 2001.
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The flick - called Eyes Wide Shut which turned 25 this year - was pretty controversial, not least because of Kubrick's directing style.
It took a whopping 15 months to make, which set the Guinness World Record for the amount of time shooting a film.
During this period, it's reported that Kubrick - known for his perfectionism - insisted on Kidman and Cruise shooting approximately 50 takes of different scenes.
According to Vanity Fair, he even sat with the pair for hours and asked them to divulge their fears, thoughts on commitment and details about their relationships.
"Tom would hear things that he didn’t want to hear," said Kidman.
"It wasn’t like therapy, because you didn’t have anyone to say, 'And how do you feel about that?' It was honest, and brutally honest at times."
In one scene of the movie, William imagines Alice having sex with another man.
Although the scene was short, Kubrick reportedly demanded that Kidman shot six days of sex scenes with a male model and posed in various 'erotic positions'.
During this time, Cruise reportedly wasn't allowed on set and Kidman was apparently told not to tell him anything about what had happened.
As the filming continued, it seemed that the lines between fiction and reality were becoming hard to distinguish.
Not only did Kidman and Cruise sleep in their characters' bedroom, but Cruise even left loose change on the bedside table, just as he did at their home.
“As an actor, you set up: there’s reality, and there’s pretend,” said Kidman.
“And those lines get crossed, and it happens when you’re working with a director that allows that to happen. It’s a very exciting thing to happen; it’s a very dangerous thing to happen.”
After Eyes Wide Shut was released, Cruise - who apparently had a stomach ulcer during filming, but didn't want to tell Kubrick - was criticised for his performance.
But the actor never blamed Kubrick, who died shortly before the film aired.
"There were rumours out there about how Stanley was going to make a pornographic picture. But that wasn’t the movie he was making," he said.
"You can see that they didn’t quite grasp what the movie was, even when they saw it, because they carried the baggage in.
"You have to understand: it’s Stanley Kubrick. It’s not going to be what you think it is. And he’s not going to tell you everything. So even the people who think they know Stanley Kubrick’s movies, missed it.
"Because whatever preconception you have, you’ve got to take it on its own merits and not the surrounding elements."
Topics: Film, TV and Film, Nicole Kidman, Tom Cruise
Lucy Devine