Tom Cruise Makes Rare Comment About Ex-Wife Nicole Kidman: ‘She’s a Great Actress’

Tom Cruise is looking back on his time costarring alongside his now-ex Nicole Kidman in 1999’s Eyes Wide Shut.

In Sight and Sound magazine’s June cover story, Cruise, 62, was asked about filming with Kidman, 57, and director Stanley Kubrick.

“I flew out to his house, and I landed in his backyard. I read the script the day before and we spent the day talking about it. I knew all of his films,” Cruise recalled, referring to Kubrick, who died in 1999 at the age of 70. “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.”

Cruise further told Kubrick that, “Whatever it’s going to take [to make the movie], we’re going to do this.”

In Eyes Wide Shut, Cruise stars as Dr. Bill Harford, who goes on a trek to the Manhattan underworld after his wife, Alice, reveals that she was unfulfilled in their marriage. Cruise and Kidman, meanwhile, were married in real life during the production process. (The pair, who share two adopted children, were married from 1990 to 2001 and divorced two years after Eyes Wide Shut premiered.)

“I thought the film was very interesting, and I wanted to have that experience,” Cruise told the outlet, per The Independent. “When I go to make a movie, I do a lot of detailed investigation and a lot of time with the people before I commit so that I understand what they need and want and they understand me and how we can work together and really create something very special.”

While Bill and Alice were unhappily married in the flick, Cruise and Kidman were experiencing the opposite offscreen.

“That fits the narrative that people came up with, but I definitely didn’t see it like that,” Kidman told The New York Times in 2020, after being asked if her role brought “negative feelings” to their real-life union. “We were happily married.”

She added at the time, “We would go go-kart racing after those scenes. We’d rent out a place and go racing at three in the morning.”

Since the end of their marriage, Kidman and Cruise often decline to publicly discuss their relationship and breakup.

“I was young. I think I offered it up? Maybe I’ve gotten a bit more trepidatious, but I’m always trying to be as open as possible,” Kidman told Harper’s Bazaar in 2021 of speaking publicly about their journey. “I just prefer to live in the world that way. I’m wary at times, and I’ve been hurt, but at the same time, I much prefer a warm approach rather than a prickly shutdown approach. My husband, Keith [Urban], says that when he met me, he said, ‘How’s your heart?’ And I apparently responded, ‘Open.’”

Kidman has been married to Urban, 57, since 2006, and they share two teenage daughters. Cruise, for his part, went on to marry Katie Holmes in 2006, but they split six years later.