Mission Impossible star Tom Cruise has made a rare comment about his former wife Nicole Kidman in an interview published over the weekend.
Australian actor Kidman was married to Cruise from 1990 to 2001, and while she has discussed her former husband on multiple occasions, Cruise has so far been reluctant to talk about her.
In an interview with Britain’s Sight and Sound magazine, Cruise discussed working on the 1999 Stanley Kubrick film Eyes Wide Shut — and was happy to compliment his ex-wife and co-star.
“I read the script the day before and we spent the day talking about it. I knew all of his films,” Cruise said referring to director Kubrick.
“Then it was basically he and I getting to know each other. And when we were doing that, I suggested Nicole play the role [of Alice]. Because, obviously, she’s a great actress,” he said.
Cruise said he and Kidman worked hard to get the “tone of the film” right.
“It was a very unique experience – not a large crew,” he recalled to the magazine.
“We arrived in the summer and basically we just started testing … the script was just an idea. We [were] constantly rewriting the scenes and shooting the scenes and then reshooting the scenes to really find the tone of the film.”
Eyes Wide Shut was the third movie Kidman and Cruise made together. Photo: Warner Bros
Erotic odyssey Eyes Wide Shut was the third collaboration between Kidman and Cruise after the pair met on the set of 1989’s Days of Thunder.
They were married on Christmas Eve 1990 and went on to make Ron Howard‘s Irish-American epic Far and Away in 1992.
While married, the couple adopted a daughter, Isabella (born 1992), and a son, Connor (born 1995).
The couple’s spokesperson announced their separation in February 2001 and Cruise filed for divorce two days later citing irreconcilable differences.
In 2015, former Church of Scientology executive Mark Rathbun claimed in documentary film Going Clear that he was instructed to “facilitate [Cruise’s] break-up with Nicole Kidman”.
That year, Kidman told the Women In the World conference in London that her divorce from Cruise heightened public attention on her career.
“Out of my divorce came work that was applauded, so that was an interesting thing for me,” she said.
Kidman received an Academy Award for her leading role as Virginia Wolfe in The Room in 2003, shortly after her divorce.
Kidman and Cruise were married for more than 10 years. Photo: AAP
In 2020 Kidman told the The New York Times Magazine that working with Cruise on Eyes Wide Shut was a joyous time.
“We were happily married through that,” she recalled.
“We would go go-kart racing after those scenes. We’d rent out a place and go racing at three in the morning. I don’t know what else to say. Maybe I don’t have the ability to look back and dissect it. Or I’m not willing to,” Kidman added.
Both Cruise and Kidman moved on from their marriage.
Kidman married Keith Urban in 2006, and Cruise married Katie Holmes the same year. Cruise and Holmes split in 2012.
