It was not just her husband she found fault with. Nicole often seemed bored or disenchanted with her life as a Hollywood star, expecting a luxurious lifestyle as her birthright. During publicity for Practical Magic in the fall of 1998, Warner Bros. arranged for a private G5 jet to ferry her around. It was, as far as she was concerned, a given, not a privilege. “She had no sense of wonderment about the world,” recalls an associate. “So many wonderful things happened to her, but she had an enduring sense of boredom like some 1920s flapper. She never delighted in anything.”
Whatever the state of their marriage, that summer was artistic business as usual—Tom working on the money-spinning blockbusters, Nicole choosing low-paying art projects. When Tom finally finished work on Eyes Wide Shut in June 1998, the couple decided to stay on in London, renting another luxurious house in central London. Tom worked on preproduction for a sequel to Mission: Impossible, which was scheduled to be filmed in Australia, while Nicole tried her hand at the theater, earning a modest five hundred dollars a week to star in The Blue Room at the fashionable Donmar Warehouse Theatre. She would play five characters, ranging from a Cockney harlot and a politician’s mistress to an unfaithful wife. The role involved simulating sex five times and appearing naked, albeit briefly, in front of the audience. Nor was Nicole the only one to take her clothes off; her costar, Iain Glen, had to perform a naked cartwheel across the stage each night.
In September 1998, just weeks before the court case against Express Newspapers, The Blue Room opened to rapturous reviews, Nicole’s performance memorably described as “theatrical Viagra” by theater critic Charles Spencer. “She’s drop dead gorgeous and bewitchingly adorable. The vision of her wafting round the stage with a fag in one hand and her knickers in the other as a delicious French au pair will haunt my fantasies for months.”
Nicole had managed something that had eluded her in the movies: Now she was not only considered a beauty, but taken seriously as an actress and a sex symbol. It was intoxicating. Director Sam Mendes, who went on to direct American Beauty, noted the change in her. “I feel for Nicole it was a very special time. It was the moment she became a special entity from Tom Cruise. And I’m sure she was aware that was happening.”
In public, both Nicole and her stage partner Iain Glen were keen to emphasize that their respective partners—Glen was married at that time to actress Susannah Harker—were “secure” about watching them have sex onstage. Tom was so “secure,” in fact, that he came to see the play more than twenty times. Perhaps he was wholly admiring of his wife’s work and absolutely comfortable watching her act out having sex with Iain Glen over and over again. Certainly Glen, who first met Tom when he watched them perform the play at a preview, implied that they were all mates together. “He was such an extraordinary bundle of brilliant, positive energy. You couldn’t have a more enthusiastic and generous person as a friend.”
Behind the scenes, it wasn’t quite so convivial. The handsome Scotsman, who was considered for the role of James Bond, was a talented stage and film veteran who refused to be impressed by Tom’s achievements. Glen, who was the same age as the Hollywood star but six inches taller, looked down on Tom, belittling his ability while flirting with his wife. The general consensus of those in Tom’s circle was that the Hollywood actor was pleasant to the Scottish thespian—but only through gritted teeth. “Tom and he did not get on, whereas there was real chemistry between Iain and Nicole. She always laughed at his jokes.” Those who watched the trio in action could not help but admire Tom’s sangfroid in the face of considerable provocation. As one associate said bluntly, “Iain Glen was a dick who had no respect for Tom and who would openly flirt with Nicole. Tom refused to show any agitation, as he was a real gentleman.”
For a man used to admiration and easy authority, the incestuous, clubby landscape of theatrical London left him feeling isolated. This cliquey world, with its in-jokes, witty banter, and storytelling, was alien to the film actor who was no longer the instant center of attention. Even his famous smile failed to impress. More than that, he was used to the rhythm of the film set, where early mornings rather than late nights were the norm. This lifestyle, however, was meat and drink to Nicole, who reveled in the adrenaline-fueled rush after nightly performances, hanging out until the early hours at the members-only Soho Club, chatting, laughing, and carousing.
For the first time in their marriage, rumors and whispers raced around London about Nicole, claiming that she and Iain were involved in a passionate offstage romance. The gossip was hardly helped by Glen’s breezy attitude in interviews. “We had to get very intimate with each other very quickly as actors,” he told In Theater magazine. “It’s easy to kid yourself that you’re getting on really well, but with Nicole—through Sam’s help—we immediately established a very easy relationship. I think that was very important. People who come to the play see us do five different characters each; in a way, it’s curiously about the relationship between Nic and I as much as anything.”
Once the play finished its London run at the end of October, Nicole and Iain flew to New York, where the show was scheduled to open on Broadway in mid-December. In order to give extra zest to her role as a prostitute, Nicole hired her acting coach, Susan Batson, to help her explore the part further. Batson took her to a seedy part of downtown Manhattan where Nicole spent time talking to real streetwalkers. The problem was that the sight of Nicole mingling with hookers began to draw attention—and customers. “Here was a hot white woman on the street,” Batson remembers. “Cars were coming left and right. We finally had to really get out of there because it got a little dangerous.”
While the extra homework may have helped her performance, the play was not quite as well received as in London. Even so, Nicole and Iain were the talk of Broadway, invited to the famed annual ball at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Unlike his counterpart, Iain Glen was not used to walking the red carpet or, for that matter, wearing a suit. So Nicole arranged for the fashion house Prada to lend him a suit and pair of shoes for the big occasion. When he demurred about sending them back, Nicole generously bought them for him. Her largesse extended to inviting Iain, his wife, Susannah Harker, and their child to Telluride for Thanksgiving, as well as flying them to Sydney to join her family for the millennium celebrations. Although Tom played the gracious host, Glen’s constant put-downs and disrespect infuriated him. If it had been his choice, they would never have been invited in the first place.
As with Kubrick, Tom was all about putting on a show. Tom would regularly visit Nicole backstage, though it was noted that there was little conversation or other interaction between them when they were alone. As soon as photographers were around, it was camera, lights, action, the couple kissing, canoodling, and pawing each other to the point where observers were thinking, “Just get a room.” Once the photographers were gone, the emotional lights went off and the couple reverted to their normal world of silence and distance.
During the Broadway run of The Blue Room, another man came into her life who would have a dramatic impact. At the end of one performance, Nicole walked into her dressing room to find a dozen long-stemmed red roses. At first she thought Tom had sent them, but when she read the note she realized they were from Australian director Baz Luhrmann. “She sings, she dances, she dies. Please meet me,” read the note. Intrigued, Nicole found herself talking to Luhrmann about the role of Satine, the beautiful and tragic courtesan who would be the star of his proposed screen musical, Moulin Rouge. The part would be a stretch for Nicole, who was not a trained singer or dancer. Buoyed by her success in The Blue Room and lured by the prospect of filming in her hometown of Sydney, Nicole decided to take on the challenge.
It proved to be contagious. As Tom was preparing to reprise his role as special agent Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible II, he, too, found himself seduced by a challenging script. This one was by Paul Thomas Anderson, young director of the cult film Boogie Nights, who had visited Tom during the long hours of waiting on the set of E
yes Wide Shut to say he had written a role for him in his upcoming movie, Magnolia. Tom, who devours scripts the way others read newspapers, was immediately taken with the character of Frank T. J. Mackey, a macho, misogynist self-help guru who teaches men how to snare women at his “Seduce and Destroy” seminars. Like the film, his character was over the top, ripe, and rather gamey. Anderson based Tom’s character on the teachings of California author Ross Jeffries, whose speed seduction techniques were the basis for a series of self-help books.
While many were surprised that Tom was prepared to join an ensemble cast, which included Julianne Moore, Jason Robards, and Philip Seymour Hoffman, Tom relished the part, inviting his pals to the set to watch when he conducted a seminar in which his character yelled at his enraptured male audience to “respect the cock and destroy the cunt.” As he later told director Cameron Crowe: “When I read the script I thought, ‘When do you get a chance to go to seminars like that?’ I’m an actor. I’d never played a character like that. I like humor. I thought it was dark and funny.”
It was believed that Anderson had written a scene in which Mackey visits his estranged father on his deathbed with Tom in mind. In fact, Anderson didn’t know that Tom had last seen his father in similar circumstances in real life. The actor did, though, draw on his own experience, Tom later admitting that he was “skating on the edge.” He was sensitive enough to ensure that his mother, Mary Lee, and stepfather, Jack South, saw the film privately before the premiere, lest it bring back painful memories for her. She loved his performance, as did audiences and his peers, Tom duly rewarded with a Golden Globe award and an Oscar nomination.
Shortly after filming ended in early 1999, Tom received an invitation he could not refuse. It was from Scientology executives, politely requesting that he undertake the rigors of what is known as the Potential Trouble Source/Suppressive Person course. The course is designed to anchor an individual’s faith while pinpointing those in his life who create problems and difficulties—Suppressive Persons, who stop a Scientologist from achieving “wins” on his journey up the bridge. The Potential Trouble Source in the sights of the Scientology hierarchy was Nicole Kidman.
Alarm bells had been ringing ever since they had read a December 1998 interview in Newsweek, where she described her faith: “There’s a little Buddhism, a little Scientology,” she said. “I was raised Catholic and a big part of me is still a Catholic girl.” That was not good enough. Not only was she married to one of Scientology’s poster boys, but her father was a psychologist, which automatically made her a Potential Trouble Source. Even though, as a celebrity, Nicole was treated with kid gloves by Scientology leaders, the storm clouds were gathering.
Shortly after Kidman’s Newsweek interview, senior Scientology leaders, including David Miscavige, Ray Mithoff, and others, discussed their strategy to keep Tom firmly in the fold. The fear was that a lukewarm Nicole could fatally compromise Tom’s commitment to his faith. Somehow Tom had to be inoculated against the virus of doubt. The surefire cure for skepticism was the Potential Trouble Source/Suppressive Person course, which reinforced wavering Scientologists’ loyalty while making them more suspicious of those around them who were not members of the faith.
Often, on completion of the course, Scientologists would of their own free will write letters “disconnecting” from loved ones who were not members of Scientology. For example, after he completed the rigors of the PTS/SP course, Peter Alexander’s seventeen-year-old son calmly sat down and wrote him a letter saying that he never wanted to see him again. The fact that such letters were voluntary meant that when questioned, Scientology officials could argue that these individuals were acting in their own best interests and without any coercion.
When she read the Newsweek article, Karen Pressley, who had watched Nicole’s waning enthusiasm for Scientology, realized that it was the beginning of the end for her marriage. “By the late 1990s, Nicole was dragging her feet. Tom was much more involved and advancing much faster than she was. I realized that she wasn’t going to make it and it really upset me.” At the time Karen wanted to leave Scientology. She knew that if she left and her husband, Peter, wanted to stay inside the organization, he would have no choice but to divorce her, which is what happened. Karen now feared that Nicole would go down the same path and lose her children into the bargain.
In early 1999, Tom dutifully attended rigorous auditing sessions with Marty Rathbun, Scientology’s inspector general. On one occasion, as part of a drill, he had to ask strangers this question: “What is the most obvious thing about me?” He carried out the drill so enthusiastically that, rather than confine his questioning to fellow Scientologists, he went out onto the street and collared complete strangers. One startled passerby told him: “Well, you look like Tom Cruise—but only at a stretch.”
His decision to embark on such a tough course coincided with a period of “real loss and pain” in his life. On March 2, 1999, a few days after The Blue Room ended, Nicole and Tom watched Eyes Wide Shut for the first time at a private screening room in Manhattan. Except for two executives from Warner Bros., they were alone. They watched the movie twice, Tom calling Stanley Kubrick in London to tell him how much they loved it. Four days later, Kubrick was dead of a massive heart attack.
“I broke down when I heard,” Tom said about the news. “I was in absolute shock and disbelief. We had shared two years of our lives together.” Tom was a pallbearer at the funeral, which was held in a church in St. Albans, Hertfordshire. At the request of his friend Terry Semel, chairman of Warner Bros., the stunned actor channeled his grief by taking charge of all things relating to the movie.
An acknowledged control freak, Kubrick could not have chosen a better executor, Tom overseeing every detail of the film’s distribution, marketing, and publicity. He was furious when scriptwriter Frederic Raphael penned a short book about working with Kubrick without asking permission. For their part, Raphael’s publishers, Penguin, were astonished at Tom’s reaction to what he considered an act of treachery. As Raphael recalls, “Penguin said they’d never seen anything like it—him trying to stop them publishing the book. But then he is one of these people crazed with wanting total control.”
Tom’s reputation for control faced a further challenge when the noted film critic Roger Ebert refused to sign a two-page “loyalty oath” before interviewing the actor about the long-awaited film. The contract insisted on editorial control, stressing that no interview could portray Tom in a “negative or derogatory manner” and that “the artist” had the right to delete any parts of the interview he didn’t like. When Ebert refused to sign, for once it was Tom who caved, the film critic sitting down for a “frank and forthcoming” chat with the Hollywood star about the movie.
Much as Tom tried to tame the media tiger, he could never truly control the unruly beast. Shortly after Kubrick’s funeral, two American tabloids claimed that two sex therapists had been hired by the director to give Tom and Nicole lessons in loving. The couple was less than amused, Warner Bros. issuing a statement denying the story while their lawyers filed suit. Nowhere was Tom’s hair-trigger sensitivity more exposed than when mention was made of his involvement with Scientology. During the filming of Eyes Wide Shut, the magazine Us Weekly stated that Tom felt that actor John Travolta’s involvement with the production of Battlefield Earth, based on an L. Ron Hubbard novel, was a “mistake.” Within a week the magazine was forced to print a prominent retraction declaring that Tom was an “active and committed member of the Church of Scientology,” who had neither said nor even “hinted” at anything negative to do with Battlefield Earth. That did not stop the film from being described as the worst movie ever made.
“I don’t like suing people,” Tom told Harper’s Bazaar. “I take no pleasure in it. But there comes a point where it’s beyond silly; it’s destructive. I will sue. I will sue every single time that I can until it stops. And when they stop, I will stop.”
After all the controversy, when Eyes Wide Shut actuall
y opened in July 1999, it was a huge anticlimax. Even though it was the first of Kubrick’s films to open at number one at the American box office, the critics were uncertain, some finding the movie dull and unconvincing, others describing the 159-minute film as Kubrick’s last masterpiece, a fitting end to a brilliant career. Naturally, much of the attention focused on the sex scenes, with Nicole viewed as passionate and sexy in her encounters with Gary Goba, but distant and unengaged when coupling with her husband. In time, the movie would be seen as much as a coda to their unraveling marriage as an epitaph to Kubrick’s career.
Tongues were kept wagging that same month when Nicole gave an interview to writer Tom Junod, who had flown to Sydney, where she was rehearsing Moulin Rouge while Tom, also in Australia, worked on Mission: Impossible II. Clearly she enjoyed Junod’s company, taking him around to local bars, showing him the Sydney Harbor bridge, which her grandfather had helped build, and ending up in his hotel bed with Junod, fully clothed, next to her. Just then the phone rang; it was Tom seeking the whereabouts of his wife, as he and the children were waiting for her in a Chinese restaurant. When Junod told him where she was, Tom responded by saying, “In your dreams, buddy,” only for Nicole to interject with, “I’m afraid so, darling. I’m afraid I’m right in his bed at this very moment.”
While Junod insisted he had only been enjoying a “flirtation,” it was perhaps a sign of his security that Tom, who had seen his wife make love onstage with a man he didn’t particularly like and have sex with a complete stranger for six days straight, seemed to take the unusual news in his stride. In fact, he singled out Nicole for special praise when he accepted his Best Supporting Actor award for Magnolia at the Golden Globe awards ceremony in Hollywood. “Her generosity, her support, her sacrifices, her talent—she inspires me,” he told the audience.
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