Actress Nicole Kidman has denied longstanding rumours her marriage to Tom Cruise began to crumble while they shot sexy film Eyes Wide Shut.

Cruise and Kidman played a troubled married couple in Stanley Kubrick's 1999 film, which featured orgies and sexually explicit scenes.

The pair split two years (01) after the movie was released, prompting speculation that the racy drama damaged their union and ultimately led to their divorce.

However, Kidman has addressed the reports in a tribute essay to Kubrick for The Hollywood Reporter, insisting the couple relished their time working with the great filmmaker, and got on well throughout filming.

She writes, "My approach to the two-year shoot was actually very Zen. Tom and I thought, 'We're so lucky, we've gotten to spend two years with the master.' Stanley said the film was finished - but if he had more time, who knows how it would have morphed.

"People thought that making the film was the beginning of the end of my marriage - but I don't really think it was. Tom and I were close then, and it was very much the three of us. 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."