ZUMA PressNicole Kidman and Tom Cruise officially divorced in 2001.
But contrary to popular belief, the now 45-year-old actress doesn't think her and Cruise's starring roles in Stanley Kubrick's 1999 sexual thriller Eyes Wide Shut contributed to the demise of their relationship.
"People thought that making the film was the beginning of the end of my marriage," she writes for The Hollywood Reporter. "But I don't really think it was. Tom and I were close then, and it was very much the three of us. On screen, the husband and wife are at odds, and Stanley wanted to use our marriage as a supposed reality."
"That was Stanley: He used the movie as provocation, pretending it was our sex life," she adds. "Which we weren't oblivious to, but obviously it wasn't us. We both decided to dedicate ourselves to a great filmmaker and artist."
Still, Kidman admits the film's release came at a dark time. "There was a lot of interest in Eyes Wide Shut before it was released. But the weekend it came out, July 16, 1999, was the death of JFK Jr., his wife and her sister—a black, black weekend," she recalls. "And for Stanley to have died [on March 7, 1999, at age 70] before the film opened...well, it all felt so dark and strange."
And after all that, she still doesn't really know what Kubrick intended the film to be about. "He didn't believe in interpretation," she says. "He always said, 'Never say no to an idea—you never know how that idea will ignite another idea.' He also said: 'Never put me on a pedestal. When someone's on a pedestal, there's no creativity.' That's how I approach every creative person now—it does not help to glorify them."