Cruise married for the second time with Nicole Kidman but the duo got separated after a decade.
In an article for The Hollywood Reporter, Kidman says she had to be 'coaxed' into doing the kinky sex scenes with Cruise.
"Stanley
had to coax me into some of the sexuality in the film in the beginning, but we shot things that were a lot more extreme that didn't end up in the movie,” she told the publication.
Nicole - now a mother of two with husband Keith Urban - reveals how Kubrick manipulated them into using their marriage to spice up the controversial film.
She concedes he effectively failed in getting them to do so - saying while they realised that was his intention, the characters they played were ''not really us''.
However, the actress says that she never felt Kubrick's attempt was 'exploitive or unintelligent'.
Kidman wrote: “He [Kubrick] was very different with women than he was with men. He has daughters, so he was very paternal with me.”
Explaining how Kubrick tried to base the characters, Alice and Bill Harford, on her marriage to Cruise, she explained: “Onscreen, the husband and wife are at odds, and Stanley wanted to use our marriage as a supposed reality.
“That was Stanley: He used the movie as provocation, pretending it was our sex life. Which we weren''t oblivious to, but obviously it wasn''t us.
“We both decided to dedicate ourselves to a great filmmaker and artist,” she added.