At the London Première of A Portrait of a Lady, the lights go down and someone bustles into a seat in the row behind mine. It's Nicole Kidman, released from purdah by Stanley Kubrick in the middle of shooting Eyes Wide Shut (the biggest load of priapic bollocks - if that's anatomically possible - you ever did see and written, shockingly, by Frederic Raphael, an otherwise heroic figure in British Screenwriting History).
So I get introduced to Nicole and, scrabbling for something - anything, just to keep the air moving across the vocal chords - to say to the Great and Ever So Tall Woman, I ask what it's like to be working with Stanley. "Oh", she says, all Aussie charm (sic) and breathiness, "It's such an honour" as if I was a tabloid reporter looking for an unsuspecting, unrehearsed, dirt-dishing quote.
My mistake. Why would she think otherwise? Poor woman - Kubrick was brilliant, but also paranoid, reclusive and obsessive. The last thing she was going to do was spill beans. Did I really expect anything else? I might as well have asked how things were with T. Cruise.
Tom, I never was a threat. You did it all by yourself.
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