Cinema: Three Of a Kind

Everyone was taking a risk when the celebrated director and the famous movie stars decided to work together. Tom and Nicole tell why it paid off

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!'...

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