Mission: Inscrutable: Cruise speaks to fans at a promotional event in Seoul. Photo: JUNG YEON-JE/AFP
How exhausting it must be to be Tom Cruise. Jump out of airplanes, climb tall buildings, avoid explosions, ride motorcycles at high speed in the face of oncoming traffic, all the while working your way through a series of obscure plots of megalomaniacal maniacs seeking world domination, rogue operatives and terrorist groups . , appearing on the red carpet to stare at the crowd, chat with Graham Norton, and then repeat it all over again.
On July 10, Tom Cruise's new plutonium blockbuster Mission: Impossible: The Wage of Death Part One is released, with Cruise reprising his role as Special Agent Ethan Hunt. It is the seventh film in the Mission: Impossible franchise, which has grossed approximately $3.5 billion since its inception in 1996. With a budget of $290 million due to the pandemic, the film took three years to make. Payback of the Dead Part 2 is scheduled for release next year.
Tom Cruise, now 61, has made over 50 films over the past 40 years that have reportedly grossed over $11.5 billion worldwide. dollars. Undoubtedly the biggest movie star in the world, so hardy and so immaculate that it's tempting to think Cruise emerged as a fully hatched, well… Tom Cruise. But it was not always so.
The son of a salesman, Cruz had an itinerant upbringing, was always the new kid at school, and was often bullied. A good athlete at school, due to a knee injury, he started taking drama lessons. He once said that with a different turn in life, he could have become an auto mechanic or a priest — at age 14, Cruz entered a Catholic seminary with the vaguest intention of becoming a priest — an aspiration that may have hinted at his later commitment to the church. pseudo-religion Scientology.
It was Risky Business in 1983, where he played a teenager inviting prostitutes to his parents' house, that marked his arrival in Hollywood. But he rose to the big leagues in 1986 as a badass naval pilot in Top Gun.
With cow-swept dark hair and a prairie-wide smile, Cruz was the archetype of the trimmed All-American boy, the «wheat-box kid» Oliver Stone had cast him in the 1989 film Bourne. The Fourth of July described him — and whose default appearance was one of «divine humility». While making The Color of Money (1986), he insisted on referring to director Martin Scorsese as «Mr. Scorsese» and to his co-star Paul Newman as «Mr. Newman.» «I'm old,» Scorsese countered, «but not that old.»
Conscientious, perfectionist, driven, abstemious—so dedicated to the task at hand that he was said to run to and from the bathroom during takes—he spoke of his enduring desire to challenge himself and the public's perception of himself, taking on completely different roles.
He was paralyzed Vietnam War veteran Ron Kovic in Born on the Fourth of July; street brother of autistic savant Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man; motivational speaker and pickup truck in Magnolia, one of three roles for which he was nominated for an Oscar. Nothing was more nasty than his role alongside his then-wife Nicole Kidman in Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut, about a marriage dissolving into fantasies, sexual obsession and self-deception. Cruise's marriage fell apart shortly after filming wrapped.
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But it's probably fair to say that a few years ago he gave up acting in the sense of pretending to be other people, instead getting into the serious business of being, well, Tom Cruise; a hard chin, wrinkled eyes, polished and toned, «a living manifestation of destiny» as Ethan Hunt described in Mission: Impossible: Rogue Nation; that fate seemed to be that Cruz literally risked his life at every opportunity, be it dangling from a helicopter, free-jumping between buildings, jumping out of an exploding aquarium («This one,» he later recalled, «was especially crazy» ) or climbing the Burj Khalifa in Mission: Impossible: Ghost Protocol, a special permit-requiring stunt to drill through the floors and walls and smash 26 windows in the 2,270-foot building to accommodate Cruise's harnesses. The new Mission: Impossible includes what is considered his most dangerous stunt: driving a motorcycle off a cliff.
When asked by American talk show host Jimmy Fallon why he puts himself through such a test, Fallon was referring specifically to the scene from Rogue Nation in which Cruz hangs from the closed door of a military cargo plane as he races down the runway and takes off. into the air – Cruz flashed his big smile and replied, “I do it because it amuses you all. I want to entertain you.”
If any other star insisted on performing similar stunts, the producers would step in at this point and insist that they turn to an experienced stuntman. But Cruz is a producer. So he chooses the directors, approves the cast, and decides how personally he will participate in the fight scenes of the films — as much as he can.
His demands for authenticity extend to his co-stars. Hayley Atwell told The Telegraph that her screen test included two hours of stunt choreography, including a hand-to-hand combat sequence and mixed martial arts, «just to see where my natural ability lies» and that the prerequisite for being in the film was that she does everything. her own tricks.
Atwell describes Cruise as «like Peter Pan in a pinball machine», polite, well-mannered, «he just has extraordinary charisma», a natural extrovert who is «obviously very comfortable with who he is».
< img src ="/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/af4e1a18e53c5f126469002549ac1200.jpg" /> 'Like Peter Pan in a pinball machine': Hayley Atwell on her Mission: Impossible co-star Tom Kruse Credit: Christian Black
Which tells us little. But Cruz is a man who doesn't reveal much about himself — and certainly less than he does. I interviewed him in 1992 during the release of Far and Away. What I remember is his complete self-confidence. A firm handshake, unwavering eye contact, legs firmly apart—a pose that body language experts say conveys openness, confidence, and control, but on a subway train can express a certain faux pas. You feel like he was working on little tricks of personal psychology.
We talked for an hour, during which Cruise talked about his upbringing, his love of movies, his work ethic — formidable — and how «the star aspect is strictly secondary to me» without actually revealing himself.
Such a meeting today would be unthinkable. He doesn't need one-on-one — as it's called — meetings with magazine journalists to promote his films, and his defense is now strongly raised.
Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise with their children Connor and Isabella in 1996. Credit: Patrick Rivière/Getty images
One suspects that much of this has to do with the publicity that has come about in his personal life over the years due to Cruz's membership in the Church of Scientology.
Cruz was introduced to Scientology in the late 1980s by his first wife, Mimi Rogers, and it was reported that it was his commitment to the Church that led to his divorce from his second wife, Nicole Kidman, in 2001. According to former Scientologists, the Church decided that Kidman was a «suppressive person» who could jeopardize the spiritual well-being of Cruz and the two children the couple adopted during their 10-year marriage. (The Church of Scientology has denied these allegations.)
The divorce in 2004 was followed by a bizarre claim that actress Nazanin Boniadi, a Scientologist, had allegedly been selected as Cruise's potential partner. led the church to subject Boniadi to a number of questionable acts, although they vehemently denied the allegations.
Shortly after, Cruise was in a relationship with Katie Holmes and excitedly hopped around on Oprah Winfrey's couch declaring «I'm in love!»
Tom Cruise with Katie Holmes and their daughter Suri in 2006. Photo: AP Photo/Gregorio Borgia/FILE
This marriage too ended in divorce after five years, and Holmes reportedly felt intimidated by the church and wary of its influence on the couple's daughter, Suri. Holmes received sole custody of Suri, now 17, in a divorce settlement that reportedly contained ironclad rulings that she would not be exposed to anything related to Scientology.
When I asked Cruz about Scientology in our interview, the friendly tone hardened noticeably: “Let me ask you… What do you know about Scientology? What books have you read? I was reading Dianetics by L. Ron Hubbard, and someone handing out flyers outside the organization's office on Tottenham Court Road convinced me to take an intelligence test. (Has potential, results are readable — or words for that matter — but will be immeasurably improved over the course. See price list…). Cruz was unimpressed: “Okay, so you read one book. If I want to know something, I will go to this source and find out about it. I read a lot about Scientology. I have studied it and I know that it works for me.”
Cruz's membership in the organization became so important that it was rumored for a long time that Scientology leader David Miscavige («two years older and a couple of inches shorter than Cruz,» according to Vanity Fair) appointed him as his second assistant. -in command and a possible successor.
In a recent interview, Alex Gibney, the director behind the 2015 film Purification: Scientology and the Prison of Faith, suggested that Cruise has taken a «step away» from Scientology and is no longer «his ambassador» he used to be, citing the 2005 film «War of the Worlds» in which Cruise set up a booth promoting Scientology on set is one of several episodes including Oprah jumping off the couch and Cruise criticizing Brooke Shields on The Today Show for taking medication to ease postpartum depression , leading to a Vanity Fair profile of Dominic Dunn titled «Did Tom Cruise Lose His Balloons?»Currently, Cruz interacts with the media strictly on his own terms: remote, untouchable, adored, as if hidden behind a rubber mask that appears in the Mission Impossible films.
He is said to have homes in Beverly Hills and the Telluride ski resort in Colorado, but he has spent much of his time in recent years in the UK filming Mission: Impossible. He has a house in Biggin Hill, convenient for landing his private jet, but also close to Croydon, where Isabella, the artist's daughter, 30, now lives, whom he adopted with Nicole Kidman.
Both of the children he adopted with Nicole Kidman followed their father into Scientology. His son Connor, 28, a chef and influencer, lives in Florida in the so-called «Scientology community.»
In 2006, Cruz bought a house in East Grinstead in Sussex, where Saint Hill, The British headquarters of Scientology, located. Cruz sold the house in 2016, but he visits Saint Hill regularly and is believed to have spent his first COVID-19 quarantine in a wing of the house.
Tom Cruise speaking at the opening of the Church of Scientology in Madrid in 2004. Photo: PIERRE-PHILIPPE MARCOU/AFP/Getty Images
Everyone who has ever met Cruz says he is cute, very cute. Stories abound in his generosity and kindness: he stopped his car in an accident, escorted an injured woman to the hospital, and paid her medical bills for a broken leg and bruised ribs; rescuing a seven-year-old child he spotted pinned against a barrier at the premiere of Mission: Impossible. He greets his fans with an enthusiasm that goes beyond the usual call of duty of a Hollywood star.
Last year, he appeared at the Cannes Film Festival in a commercial for Top Gun: Maverick. Stepping out of his limousine, he spent six minutes greeting fans thronging the other side of the railings, an unashamed length of time by anyone's standards for signing autographs, posing for selfies, and with a smile on his face. (As he turned away, an assistant came over and squeezed some disinfectant gel into his palm.)
Last Great Movie Star: Tom Cruise at Cannes film festival last year. Photo: Pascal Le Segretain/Getty Images
He later gave a rare interview in front of a live audience, who gave him almost two minutes of standing ovation just for taking the stage. The event was billed as a masterclass talk, but according to one observer, the only skill on display was Cruise's «relentless ability to keep things under wraps», noting that the talk could have been a continuation of Paramount's 68-page press kit for the film. .
What you get is what Tom Cruise wants you to see: the last great movie star, in his drive and his perfectionism, an old-fashioned hero, willing to risk it all when other franchise films the superpowers of the heroes depend on computer graphics and the green screen.
At the beginning of Top Gun: Maverick, Cruise's role as test pilot challenges a commander who dreams of replacing humans with drones. «The end is inevitable,» the officer tells Maverick. «Your species is in danger of extinction.»
Tom Cruise's mission, which he decided to accept, is to prove that while he is around, they are not.
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