Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman photographed by Herb Ritts in 1999, they divorced two years later
In 1999 Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman were finally finished with the psychotic filming process of Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut. After more than a decade of being the most beloved couple in Hollywood they were fraying at the ends – although they didn’t want anyone to know it.
Prior to filming Kubrick put together a three person therapy session where he psychoanalyzed Tom and Nicole’s marriage in order to blur the lines between fantasy and reality, something that they weren’t excited about, but who would be? Kidman explained:
Tom would hear things that he didn’t want to hear. It wasn’t like therapy, because you didn’t have anyone to say, ‘And how do you feel about that?’ It was honest, and brutally honest at times.
The couple survived the lengthy shoot but not for much longer. By February 2001 they were officially separated and they divorced that summer. Rumors abounded out the reasons surrounding their break up, but it’s hard to imagine that spending a year in therapy with Stanley Kubrick in England didn’t play a part in it.
