Orgies, Marijuana, Endless Rehearsals and Video Games: Nicole Kidman Reveals Torturous Filming of ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ With Ex-Husband Tom Cruise

On the 25th anniversary of Stanley Kubrick’s final film, Eyes Wide Shut, Nicole Kidman shares how the director made the filming "torturous" for her and her now ex-husband Tom Cruise.

RadarOnline.com can reveal Kidman spent six weeks rehearsing a scene that was eventually cut, while Kubrick allegedly mined her and Cruise’s marriage in the psycho-sexual thriller.

The bizarre film included a massive orgy and dark rituals as it followed Cruise’s character, Bill Harford, who set out on a late-night odyssey seeking sexual fulfillment.

Kidman said the filming was initially supposed to take six months, but lasted almost three years, adding: “I would have stayed a third year. Does that mean I’m crazy?”

The 57-year-old Oscar winner certainly put up with a whole lot of crazy until the film was released on July 13, 1999 – four months after Kubrick died.

During filming, she lived with Cruise in a tiny trailer because the production couldn’t afford one for each of them. Kidman revealed they spent so much time on set it made more sense to stay in the trailer than go to the house they had, which was only 10 minutes away.

Kidman noted: "Tom had a smaller area because he was running stuff. And he'd play video games. That was when ['Minesweeper'] was big. So, there was a lot of that."

That was off set. On set things were also intense, including the six-week rehearsal period for a particular scene. In an interview with the LA Times, Kidman said: “It was the scene with Tom and I, where I start by smoking the spliff in bed and where I laugh and deliver the long monologue.”

She added: “A lot of that was rehearsing in the bedroom and then [Kubrick] not liking what we’d done. So, we ended up reworking it, constructing it as we went along. There was no need to rush. Stanley would never go over budget. What he bought was time.”

Kidman also admitted the scene where she got stoned was shown as part of her AFI Lifetime Achievement Award tribute on April 27. She joked: “They showed that and I was like, 'Ooooh. Golly. OK.' I sat next to my daughter, Sunday, watching that.”

Along with Sunday, Kidman also shares, Faith, 13, with musician Keith Urban.

Kidman and Cruise married in 1990. When they began filming Eyes Wide Shut in the UK in 1996, they’d already adopted two children, Isabella and Connor. Following the release of the film though, there were rumors about the state of their marriage.

They later split in 2001.

Kidman confessed she “supposed” Kubrick was mining their marriage during the long filming process.

She stated: "I do remember him saying, ‘Triangles are hard. You have to tread carefully when it’s a triangle.’ Because one person could feel ganged up on.”

While the Moulin Rouge star didn’t say outright that she felt that way, she did reveal: “There’s something about being a woman in that equation, too. And Stanley liked women. He had a different relationship with Tom. They worked more closely together on his character.”

Never miss a story — sign up for the RadarOnline.com newsletter to get your daily dose of dope. Daily. Breaking. Celebrity news. All free.

In a pivotal scene, Kidman’s character says she's been having fantasies about having an affair. That fantasy is then played out in a steamy scene with Kidman and a male model.

According to Hollywood Vulture, that scene took almost a week to shoot. Cruise was banned from the set on those days and Kidman was forbidden to divulge to him what went on.

Kidman used the term “bold” when describing what was demanded of her in many of her eye-popping scenes in the movie, stating she believed that’s why Kubrick cast her as Alice.

She said: "I’m quite up-front and Alice becomes quite up-front, particularly when she was stoned … although that wasn’t me when I was stoned. I was just naturally like that. Up-front.”