Cate Blanchett’s Uncredited Cameo In Eyes Wide Shut, Explained

By the end of his career, Stanley Kubrick was firmly ensconced in his Hertfordshire home, to the extent that he refused to leave England for anything — even shooting a movie. The director had moved to England back in 1961 to shoot “Lolita” at Elstree studios, and basically stayed put thereafter, eventually buying the now famous Childickbury Manor in 1978 and remaining there until his death in 1999.

The legendary filmmaker’s decision to remain in England was at least partly motivated by his distaste for Hollywood studios, and his desire to create without interference. Which is all well and good, and the films that came out during the director’s post-U.S. era speak for themselves. But it sometimes made for some frankly absurd scenarios, such as when his final movie, “Eyes Wide Shut,” took Kubrick’s exhausting methods to a new level. To be specific, Kubrick set out to make a movie that saw Tom Cruise embark on a night time odyssey through various New York City environs, but the director wanted to shoot the whole thing in England’s Pinewood studios. The result was meticulously recreated New York streets made to match the proportions of the city. How did Kubrick manage to create such realistic fabrications? He sent a team to measure the streets of NYC, of course. 

When “Eyes Wide Shut” debuted, that attention to detail did at least make for a movie that betrayed none of its artifice. Cruise’s Dr. Bill Harford journeys through New York without ever giving away the English studio setting, partly because he’s walking on a treadmill against a rear projection of actual New York footage for much of the movie.

Interestingly enough, Kubrick’s refusal to leave the UK also led to some unexpected dubbing that ultimately saw an early-career Cate Blanchett cameo in the film — though her involvement was kept a secret for two decades.

By far the most memorable visual contribution “Eyes Wide Shut” made to our cultural lexicon is the orgy scene, which took a lot of research and which has since become shorthand for secret society shenanigans of the elite. After Dr. Bill learns of his wife’s infidelity, he stumbles through New York on a journey that may or may not see him engage in his own one night stand, only for him to end up at a mysterious hall in which New York’s elite are gathered, their faces hidden behind masks inspired by Italy’s Commedia dell’arte tradition. While there, Bill encounters a masked woman who says, “I don’t know who you are or what you think you’re doing, but you obviously don’t belong here.” She then warns him to leave while he still has a chance.

In Vulture‘s 2019 oral history of the orgy scene in “Eyes Wide Shut,” actor and Stanley Kubrick’s longtime assistant Leon Vitali revealed that the voice in this moment is actually that of Cate Blanchett. Though the lines were delivered on-set by British actor Abigail Good, they were later redubbed by Blanchett after Cruise and his then-wife and co-star Nicole Kidman suggested her. “It was Cate Blanchett!” Vitali told Vulture. “We wanted something warm and sensual but that at the same time could be a part of a ritual.”

When Kubrick passed away on March 7th, 1999, post-production on the film was not yet complete, and Vitali was left to find a suitable voice to overdub Good’s lines. After all, Cruise was supposed to be in New York, so using a British actor for this brief but important interaction wasn’t ideal. Vitali continued:

“Stanley had talked about finding this voice and this quality that we needed. After he’d died, I was looking for someone. It was actually Tom [Cruise] and Nicole [Kidman] who came up with the idea of Cate. She was in England at the time, so she came into Pinewood and recorded the lines.”

At the time she recorded her uncredited “Eyes Wide Shut” cameo, Cate Blanchett’s star was well and truly on the rise. In 1997 she delivered what proved to be her breakout performance in “Oscar and Lucinda,” before starring as Queen Elizabeth I and earning her first Oscar nomination for 1998’s “Elizabeth.” So, when she happened to be in England while Leon Vitali was looking for someone to overdub Abigail Good’s lines, why not use her — especially if she came recommended by Cruise and Kidman?

Perhaps the only reason not to use Blanchett to read lines in an American accent was because she is an Australian actress. In that sense, it surely would have been easier for Good to just improvise an American accent on-set, but it seems neither Kubrick nor Vitali were thinking that far ahead. Either that or the director was toying with the idea of keeping Good’s line intact. He’d already demonstrated some uncertainty when it came to the movie itself, causing the orgy scene to be heavily delayed while he made creative decisions. Heck, Kubrick even came close to casting Steve Martin as the lead in “Eyes Wide Shut,” so he likely hadn’t quite thought through Good’s line by the time they shot her scene.

Meanwhile, Good told Vulture that she always wondered whether her read would make the final cut or not, but didn’t seem at all disappointed that it didn’t. As she told the outlet:

“When all the other girls left, I was in this amazing position of being able to work with two incredible artists. I was on the set with Tom and Stanley, finding things on our own. Stanley asked my opinion a lot. Me and Tom were among the last people he ever filmed.”