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Stanley Kubrick wanted Woody Allen or Bill Murray for Eyes Wide Shut role instead of Tom Cruise, new book reveals

Woody Allen in 2019, and Tom Cruise in 'Eyes Wide Shut': ANDER GILLENEA/AFP/Warner Bros
Woody Allen in 2019, and Tom Cruise in 'Eyes Wide Shut': ANDER GILLENEA/AFP/Warner Bros

Stanley Kubrick originally wanted Woody Allen, Steve Martin or Bill Murray for the leading role in Eyes Wide Shut, a new book has revealed.

The 1999 erotic drama starred Tom Cruise as a cuckolded psychiatrist who embarks on a sexual odyssey after he discovers his wife, played by Cruise’s then-wife Nicole Kidman, is having an affair.

Kubrick adapted the film from a 1926 novella titled Dream Story, by author Arthur Schnitzler, and had been developing the project for almost three decades before it was finally made.

In Stanley Kubrick: American Filmmaker, a new biography on the late director by David Mikics, it is revealed that Cruise was not what Kubrick originally had in mind for the starring role.

"In the Seventies, [Kubrick] fantasised about casting an actor in Dream Story who would have a comedian’s resilience, imagining Steve Martin or Woody Allen in the leading role,” Mikics writes.

Stanley Kubrick: An American Filmmaker will be released on 13 October by Yale University Press.

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