Nicole Kidman has some built-in cheerleaders.
The actress recently spoke about her career and family in an interview with the Los Angeles Times.
Reflecting on her role as Alice Harford in 1999’s “Eyes Wide Shut,” she revealed that while she will never watch the R-rated film with her teenage daughters, Sunday Rose and Faith Margaret, they caught a glimpse of a memorable scene at the 49th AFI Life Achievement Award Gala.
Kidman was awarded this year’s Lifetime Achievement Award in April.
“At the AFI tribute, they saw the scene where I get stoned,” Kidman said in the story, which published on July 16. “They showed that and I was like, ‘Ooooh. Golly. OK.’ I sat next to my daughter Sunday watching that.”
In the Stanley Kubrick-directed film, her character fantasizes about being intimate with a naval officer she met while smoking marijuana with her husband, Bill. He was played by Kidman’s then-husband, Tom Cruise.
However, her daughter’s reaction took her by surprise.
“[Sunday] said, ‘Mom, that was good,’” Kidman said. “She said, ‘That was really good.’ And I watched that scene and thought, ‘Wow. That was really good.’ And I never do that.”
When asked if she would ever watch the movie in its entirety alongside her daughters, the Oscar-winning actress quipped: “Definitely not.”
She admitted that it “feels slightly odd” to watch your own movies as an actor.
“I’m OK celebrating directors because it’s their work. But my own little part of it, it’s like [groans]. But if you’re a director, it’s lovely to hear that you’re proud of it. So I’m very, very proud of it. I say that to you, Stanley up there, if you’re listening to me. He knows that anyway,” she added.
Kubrick died in 1999 at the age of 70 — the same year as the film’s release.
The AFI tribute also featured Kidman’s work in 2004’s “Birth,” to which her daughter also had a positive response.
The awards ceremony marked a rare red carpet appearance for Kidman and her husband, Keith Urban, 56, with their two kids. The couple has been married since 2006.
Kidman’s previous marriage to Cruise lasted 11 years. The actors divorced in 2001 after adopting two children together, Bella, 31, and Connor, 29.
When Kidman won the Academy Award for best actress in 2003 for “The Hours”, she admitted she was “struggling with things in [her] personal life,” alluding to the recent divorce.
“Russell Crowe said ‘don’t cry when you get up there,’ and now I’m crying,” she recalled in an interview published in Dave Karger’s 2024 book, “50 Oscar Nights.”
The actress added: “I sat on the floor of the hotel eating French fries and a burger with my family and went to bed. That’s when it hit me. I went, ‘I need to find my love; I need a love in my life.’ Because this is supposed to be when you go, ‘This is ours.’”
Cruise, for his part, went on to have a daughter, Suri, 18, with actress Katie Holmes. The “Dawson’s Creek” alum filed for divorce in 2012 after nearly six years of marriage.
In March 2023, a source told Page Six that the actor has “no part” in his daughter’s life. The teen dropped Cruise from her name and instead goes by Suri Noelle, to honor her mother’s middle name.
