5.1 Personal life

Kubrick married his high-school sweetheart Toba Metz, a keen caricaturist, on 29 May 1948, when he was nineteen years of age. They had attended Taft High School together and had lived in the same apartment block on Shakespeare Avenue. The couple lived together in Greenwich Village and divorced three years later in 1951.

He met his second wife, the Austrian-born dancer and theatrical designer Ruth Sobotka, in 1952. They lived together in New York's East Village beginning in 1952, got married in January 1955 and moved to Hollywood in July 1955, where she played a brief part as a ballet dancer in Kubrick's film, Killer's Kiss (1955). The following year she was art director for his film, The Killing (1956). They divorced in 1957.

Kubrick with his wife, Christiane, and their three daughters, 1960

During the production of Paths of Glory (1957) in Munich, Kubrick met and romanced the German actress Christiane Harlan, who played a small though memorable role. Kubrick married Harlan in 1958, and in 1959 they settled into a home in Beverly Hills with Harlan's daughter, Katharina, age six.[6]:165 They also lived in New York, during which time Christiane studied art at the Art Students League of New York, later becoming an independent artist. Like Kubrick, she wanted "solace to think, study, and practice her craft," writes LoBrutto.[6]:224 They remained together 40 years, until his death in 1999. Besides his stepdaughter, they had two daughters together.

Actor Jack Nicholson, who starred in The Shining (1980), observed that "Stanley was very much a family man."[84] Similarly, Nicole Kidman, who starred in Eyes Wide Shut (1999), adds that Christiane "was the love of his life. He would talk about her, he adored her, something that people didn't know. His daughters adored them ... I would see that, and he would talk about them very proudly."[84] The opinion was shared by Malcolm McDowell, who starred in A Clockwork Orange: "He was happily married. I remember his daughters, Vivian and Anya, running around the room. It was good to see such a close-knit family."

Kubrick's Childwickbury Manor in Hertfordshire, England

Kubrick moved to the United Kingdom to make Lolita because of easier financing via the Eady Levy, since at least 85% of the film was shot in the UK, and freedom from censorship and interference from Hollywood studios. When he hired Peter Sellers to star in his next film, Dr. Strangelove, Sellers was unable to leave the UK. Kubrick made Britain his permanent home thereafter, although "he never considered himself an expatriate American," notes Walker. He also shunned the Hollywood system and its publicity machine, resulting in little media coverage of him as a personality. Christiane Kubrick told the London Times how rough New York had become, with children having to be escorted to school by police, people being rude, and smashed glass all over the street. Although he thrived on the manic energy of New York, Kubrick soon adapted to the more genteel atmosphere of Britain, where he set up his life so that family and business were one.

In 1965 the Kubricks moved to Abbots Mead, Barnet Lane, just south of the Elstree/Borehamwood studio complex. This was a turn of the 19th century house, sold to him by Simon Cowell's father. Kubrick worked almost exclusively from this home for 14 years where, with some exceptions, he researched, invented special effects techniques, designed ultra-low light lenses for specially modified cameras, pre-produced, edited, post-produced, advertised, distributed and carefully managed all aspects of four of his films: 2001: A Space Odyssey (1965 to 1968), A Clockwork Orange (1969 to 1971), Barry Lyndon (1972 to 1975) and most of The Shining (1976 to 1980 - finished the year after he left for Childwickbury Green)

In 1978, Kubrick moved into Childwickbury Manor in Hertfordshire, a mainly 18th century building about 48 km (30 mi) north of London and a 10 minute drive from his previous home at Abbotts Mead. His new home, originally a large country mansion once owned by a wealthy racehorse owner, became a workplace for Kubrick and Christiane. One of the large ballroom-size rooms became her painting studio. Kubrick converted the stables into extra production rooms besides ones within the home that he used for editing and storage. Christiane called their home "a perfect family factory." Kubrick rarely left England during the forty years before he died. Although Kubrick once held a pilot's license, some have claimed that he later developed a fear of flying and refused to take airplane trips.Matthew Modine, star of Full Metal Jacket, stated that the stories about his fear of flying were "fabricated," and that "he wasn't afraid to fly." He simply preferred spending most of his time in England, where his films were produced and where he lived.