Meet Stanley Kubrick's famous actress wife and children — including daughter who followed him in the film industry

The director’s wife of over 40 years, Christiane Harlan said in an interview with The Guardian that Stanley hired her after seeing her on TV. He gave Christiane the part of a bar singer in Paths of Glory (1957) and they married the year after its release. During their 41 years of marriage, the couple welcomed daughters Anya and Vivian and raised Katharina, Christiane’s daughter from a previous marriage. She said of the director: “I thought Stanley was extraordinary, and by some miracle he thought the same thing of me.”

Born in Germany in 1932, Christiane trained as a dancer and actress. After acting in a series of German productions throughout the '50s, she landed a role in Stanley's Paths of Glory (1957). Soon after, Christiane decided to move away from acting and instead chose to focus on her passion for art. Following studies in California and New York, she exhibited in New York, Rome and London, per her website. Many of her pieces also found their way onto the set of Stanley's films. Later, she started the Childwickbury Arts Fair at the couple's Childwickbury estate in 2003, where they had been living since 1978. 

Katharina Kubrick is the daughter of Christiane Kubrick and actor Werner Bruhns, and step-daughter of Stanley Kubrick, who helped raise her from the age of four. She was born in 1953 and appeared in many of her step-father's films, including uncredited roles in A Clockwork Orange, Barry Lyndon and Eyes Wide Shut, according to IMDB. Her first credited acting role was in 2018's action feature Vengeance. She has also worked as an art director for The Island of Adventure (1981), provided original paintings to the set of Eyes Wide Shut and acted as assistant art director on Jim Henson's cult classic The Dark Crystal (1982). The art director and actress was married to Philip Hobbs until 2001 and is mother to three children.

Christiane and Stanley’s first child together, daughter Anya Kubrick, was born on 6 April 1959. She ran her own opera company, Palace Opera, and married the conductor and singer Jonathan Finney. They shared one son, actor Sam Kubrick-Finney. Anya passed away at the age of 50 on 7 July 2009, a decade after her father’s death. Speaking to The Guardian, Christiane described her daughter as “very much like Stanley in many respects. She looked like him and had many of his characteristics. She was intelligent and a nice person.”

Vivian Kubrick was born on 5 August 1960. The actress, director and composer had uncredited roles in four of Stanley’s films, directed the documentary The Making of The Shining at 17, and composed Full Metal Jacket’s score a few years after that. In an interview with The Guardian, Christiane described her daughter as “beautiful, very witty, enormously talented in all sorts of directions.” Vivian has since distanced herself from her family, following a last minute refusal to compose the score for Eyes Wide Shut. Of the distance between them, Christiane said: “I've had two conversations with her since Stanley died. The last one was eight years ago. She became a Scientologist and didn't want to talk to us any more and didn't see her dying sister, didn't come to her funeral.”

The award-winning director was born in New York in 1928 and was gifted a camera for his 13th birthday. He later transitioned away from photography and into film, attracting the attention of Hollywood. He directed Kirk Douglas, and his own future wife Christiane, in Paths of Glory, before going on to direct blockbuster hits like Spartacus (1960), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) and Eyes Wide Shut (1999). A few days after an early screening for Eyes Wide Shut, Stanley died from a heart attack at the age of 70. The film was released posthumously.