Three Of a Kind

By Cathy Booth/Sydney

It was just the two of them, sitting in the dark. Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman, by themselves in a small screening room in midtown Manhattan last March, watching Eyes Wide Shut, the film directed by Stanley Kubrick and starring the Cruises, naked, in love and at war.

It was past midnight when the film ended, but neither of them moved. Kidman, on strict voice rest for her Broadway show, The Blue Room, madly scribbled notes to her husband; then they sat and watched it again. "The first time, we were in shock," Kidman recalls. "The second time, I thought, 'Wow!' It's going to be controversial. I'm proud of the film and that period of my life. It was my obsession, our obsession, for two or three years."

Two or three years for one movie? Were they mad? With Kubrick's famous obsession for perfection, the 18-week shoot turned into 52 weeks over 15 months. Cruise, Hollywood's $20 million man, took himself out of the game at the height of his career, accepted a sizable pay cut, moved his family to England, put himself through workdays that ran 12 to 16 hours and, in the process, developed an ulcer.

But far from feeling that they were hostages to Kubrick's vision, Cruise and Kidman say they dived in, eyes wide open, determined to share the adventure. "We knew from the beginning the level of commitment needed," says Cruise. "We felt honored to work with him. We were going to do what it took to do this picture, whatever time, because I felt--and Nic did too--that this was going to be a really special time for us. We knew it would be difficult. But I would have absolutely kicked myself if I hadn't done this."

Hours after the screening, Cruise, flying to the home the couple keep in Sydney, Australia, where he was preparing to shoot Mission Impossible 2, called Kubrick from the plane. "Stanley was so excited. We talked for four or five hours," says Cruise. Four days later came a call with the news that Kubrick had died. "I said, 'No, that's impossible,' " says Cruise. "Then the other phone line was ringing, and it was Nic in New York. She was really disturbed. I was really worried about her. I was in shock."

Even now--nearly four months later, in interviews with TIME--neither Cruise nor Kidman can talk about Kubrick without misting up. Kubrick had originally been worried that Cruise and Kidman would put on movie-star airs. But the three of them--the supposedly phobic recluse and his two glamorous stars--became extraordinarily close during the making of Eyes Wide Shut. Though both stars had full shooting schedules in Sydney this month and at-home birthday bashes (she just turned 32, he will be 37 this week), they were eager to talk about Kubrick with TIME. "We're so proud of the movie, but we have this strange feeling about its success," says Kidman. "Stanley was always around. And now he's gone."

Kubrick began to woo Cruise as early as 1995, after his longtime friend Sydney Pollack, who produced Cruise's film The Firm, reassured him that the young star was no brat. At first Cruise thought Pollack (who ended up appearing in the film too) was kidding when he said Kubrick wanted the star's fax number. But soon, Cruise recalls, they began "faxing each other back and forth, never really discussing the movie, just talking about airplanes and cameras." A year later, Kubrick faxed Kidman with an offer to be in the film with her husband. "I didn't need to read the script," says Kidman. "I didn't care what the story was originally. I wanted to work with Stanley."

When the notoriously travel-phobic Kubrick invited the couple to his house in the English countryside, they were surprised to find a warm family man, not the weird hermit of the press clippings. Cruise and Kubrick, both pilots (though Kubrick refused to fly later in life), ended up debating the effect of aviation on World War II. "Stanley was not what you expected. He was very open," says Cruise.

By the time filming began in 1997, the three had become virtually inseparable. The set at Pinewood Studios outside London became their home away from home. The apartment of the film's couple was modeled after one Kubrick once kept in Manhattan, but Kidman chose the books, the color of the window shades, and even added the change Cruise always leaves by their bed at home. She populated it with her own things too, leaving her makeup in the bathroom, tossing her clothes on the floor. "It's sort of messy," she giggles, urging moviegoers to check out her living habits. Says Cruise: "By the end, we felt as if we lived on that set. We even slept in the bed." When Kubrick filmed Cruise and Kidman in the nude scene that opens the film, he closed the set and operated the camera himself, intensifying the intimacy among the three of them.

Between shoots, Kidman, a former high school debater in her native Australia, would plop down in her bathrobe and curlers on the floor of Kubrick's book-cluttered office to talk politics. "I challenged him, and he loved it," she says. "It was great to work with someone you can have deep discussions with. He could alter the way you see the world."

The pace of work on the $64 million project was leisurely. "Stanley didn't work under the gun," says Kidman. "Time was the most important thing to him. He was willing to give up location to save money, but he wasn't willing to give up time." Obsessed with getting it just right, Kubrick wrote and rewrote the script while they were shooting it, sometimes faxing changes to his stars, often as late as 4 a.m.

"Stanley knew that's how he worked best. He was not indulgent," says Cruise. Even so, there were moments when they wondered what they'd got themselves into. Says Kidman: "Sometimes it was very frustrating because you were thinking: 'Is this ever going to end?'" The long shoot, and its subject matter, eventually took a toll physically on Cruise. He is reluctant to talk about his ulcer, fearing the inevitable headlines--KUBRICK GIVES CRUISE AN ULCER!--but confides that he woke up one night early in the production in terrible pain. "I didn't want to tell Stanley. He panicked. I wanted this to work, but you're playing with dynamite when you act. Emotions kick up. You try not to kick things up, but you go through things you can't help."

Kidman could see the pressure building. "We were both dealing with jealousy and sex in a way that it was always lurking around. We shot for 10 1/2 months, but we were there for a year and half. That's quite a strange thing to always have with you, day in and day out. You never quite walk away from it. Stanley as well."

The actors say it is difficult these days to see the movie because it was always the three of them worrying and plotting together, but they are determined to preserve Kubrick's final legacy. The film's climactic orgy scene had threatened to earn it a restrictive NC-17 rating. According to the film's producer, Jan Harlan, Kubrick realized that he would have to make adjustments to earn an R rating. Rather than cut his film, he came up with the idea of digitally adding figures to partly hide the most explicit 65 seconds of the scene when it is shown to U.S. audiences. (The rest of the world will see it as Kubrick originally made it.) "There is nothing in the picture that Stanley didn't approve," vows Cruise.

Before his death, Kubrick cut the tantalizing 90-sec. trailer of Tom and Nicole, naked and necking. He knew it would have everyone guessing: Do they? Or don't they? The Cruises aren't telling. "Stanley loved ambiguity," says Kidman. As in all the Kubrick films, the answer to Eyes Wide Shut lies in the seeing.