5 Performances That Were Awesome...
5. Alice Harford - Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
As Stanley Kubrick's last film,
Eyes Wide Shut's most notable achievement was perhaps in its ability to polarize opinion, though there was no doubt that real-life couple Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman gave equally powerful and haunting performances throughout. A psychological drama about a Doctor who finds himself on a psycho-sexual odyssey after his wife admits that she almost cheated on him,
Eyes Wide Shut has since found itself re-evaluated by the many who were originally quick to criticize. And Kidman's performance is a genuine marvel: precisely cold and sexy, the actress does not garner as much screen time as Cruise, though her scattered appearances throughout the movie are never anything but haunting. As Alice Harford, Kidman has us constantly feeling like we don't quite know what's going on with her character - though, in this case, that's certainly a good thing, given the way she ignites her performance with bundles of sex appeal and a dark, broody sensibility. Though critics were quick to judge Kubrick for casting Cruise and Kidman (many of whom wrote it off as a mere "stunt"),
Eyes Wide Shut probably wouldn't have worked quite as well as it did without Nicole Kidman in the Alice role. She also gets to deliver the film's important (and somewhat humorous) final line, which, of course, she nails.