Many people point to Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman’s decision to spend nearly two years of their lives working with Stanley Kubrick as one of the major “breaking points” in their marriage. In retrospect, we could argue that there are probably many, many other “breaking points” in the old Cruise-Kidman marriage (XENU!), but I remember clearly what a big deal it was that Tom basically took two years off from his Hollywood blockbuster career to focus on what would become Kubrick’s last film, Eyes Wide Shut. Rumors swarmed around the UK production – Tom and Nicole even sued the tabloids for reports that Kubrick needed to bring in some kind of sex coach to teach them intimacy. In the end, Eyes Wide Shut was a mediocre film (IMO), but Tom and Nicole never said a word against Kubrick, and both have cited the Kubrick experience as overwhelming great and educational. As Nicole promotes The Paperboy, she talked again about Kubrick, and her final regret about her friendship with him:

Nicole Kidman says a great regret of her career was failing to call director Stanley Kubrick the night before he died. Kidman swooped into the New York Film Festival Wednesday as recipient of its first-ever tribute, then returned to the Paris set of “Grace of Monaco.”

During a Q&A before a screening of her movie “The Paperboy”, she recalled meeting Kubrick for the first time with ex Tom Cruise.

“Tom and I went to his house and had dinner, and I remember I was nervous,” she said, adding she was ultimately “able to sit on the floor of his office . . . and be privy to so many things. It was like having a great, great teacher.”

But Kidman never realized “Eyes Wide Shut” would be Kubrick’s last film.

“I remember thinking [he] was frail, and . . . if I were more intuitive I would have realized that he was not well,” she said. “One of the worst things . . . was, I was going to call him [on Kubrick’s last night alive], and I didn’t. Instead I got a phone call [the next day] saying Stanley was dead. It was one of my great regrets that I didn’t call him that night.”

[From Page Six]

I do wonder how close she really was with Kubrick – I always got the impression that Kubrick was closer to men like Tom and Steven Spielberg. But really, Kubrick was so reclusive and private, we don’t have many ways of knowing who he was close to, even now, posthumously.

You know, we can yell and complain about Nicole’s crazy face these days, but her discussion of Kubrick is just a reminder (to me) that she has done a lot of incredible work with some of the great directors. I wish that Nicole would come back to us. But she’s too busy peeing on Zac Efron.

Photos courtesy of WENN.