tom cruise 1986 interview

an image, when javascript is unavailable

The Definitive Voice of Entertainment News

Subscribe for full access to The Hollywood Reporter

site categories

‘top gun’: thr’s 1986 review.

On May 16, 1986, Paramount unveiled the Tom Cruise jet-fighter thriller 'Top Gun' in theaters, where it would become a summer smash and gross $176 million stateside.

By Duane Byrge

Duane Byrge

Share this article on Facebook
Share this article on Twitter
Share this article on Flipboard
Share this article on Email
Show additional share options
Share this article on Linkedin
Share this article on Pinit
Share this article on Reddit
Share this article on Tumblr
Share this article on Whatsapp
Share this article on Print
Share this article on Comment

On May 16, 1986, Paramount unveiled the Tom Cruise jet-fighter thriller Top Gun in theaters, where it would become a summer smash and gross $176 million stateside. The Hollywood Reporter’s original review is below.

Top Gun is the Navy euphemism for the U.S. Navy’s Fighter Weapons School, the training center for its elite of elite fighter pilots. Top Movie might be the trade euphemism for this certain summer blockbuster from producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer.

Top Gun has all the earmarks of being the biggest grosser since the same duo produced Beverly Hills Cop .

Essentially a fictional process film — showing how pilots get through the grueling/dueling training sessions — Top Gun additionally should tap into the upsurge of popular sentiment regarding the Navy’s recent successes in the Mediterranean.

THR Newsletters

More from The Hollywood Reporter

Anne hathaway on how she overcame being a “chronically stressed young woman” in hollywood, zendaya says she’s potentially open to releasing new music “one day”, colin jost roasts biden, the press and gets sentimental at white house correspondents dinner, protesters of israel-hamas war gather outside white house correspondents dinner, harvey weinstein hospitalized after his rape conviction was overturned in new york, jerry seinfeld says he still thinks about being heckled at a stand-up set 30 years ago: “it was mean”.

Today's news
Reviews and deals
Climate change
2024 election
Fall allergies
Health news
Mental health
Sexual health
Family health
So mini ways
Unapologetically
Buying guides

Entertainment

How to Watch
My watchlist
Stock market
Biden economy
Personal finance
Stocks: most active
Stocks: gainers
Stocks: losers
Trending tickers
World indices
US Treasury bonds
Top mutual funds
Highest open interest
Highest implied volatility
Currency converter
Basic materials
Communication services
Consumer cyclical
Consumer defensive
Financial services
Industrials
Real estate
Mutual funds
Credit cards
Balance transfer cards
Cash back cards
Rewards cards
Travel cards
Online checking
High-yield savings
Money market
Home equity loan
Personal loans
Student loans
Options pit
Fantasy football
Pro Pick 'Em
College Pick 'Em
Fantasy baseball
Fantasy hockey
Fantasy basketball
Download the app
Daily fantasy
Scores and schedules
GameChannel
World Baseball Classic
Premier League
CONCACAF League
Champions League
Motorsports
Horse racing
Newsletters

New on Yahoo

Privacy Dashboard

Flashback Friday: Young Tom Cruise Talks 'Top Gun' in 1986

Kelly McGillis and Tom Cruise in ‘Top Gun,’ which celebrates its 30th anniversary this month

Risky Business made Tom Cruise a regular on the Teen and Tiger Beat circuits. But it was Top Gun , released 30 years ago next Monday, that sent him into the stratosphere, both literally, since the movie required him to fly Navy fighter jets, and metaphorically, because it catapulted him to a higher level of movie stardom.

Related: How Much Do You Really Know About ‘Top Gun’?

In a Flashback Friday move, the Los Angeles Times has republished a profile of Cruise that appeared in the newspaper not long after Top Gun arrived in theaters and became the No. 1 movie in America.

Still navigating his way through the whole mega-fame thing in May 1986, Cruise comes across as more candid and less guarded than he would later become.

Watch the trailer for the ‘Top Gun’ re-release in 3-D/IMAX:

He told reporter Pat. H. Broeske that he avoided doing interviews for a while because he wasn’t used to fielding so many questions about his personal life. “It [publicity] was a whole new thing to me,” he said. “I traveled around a lot while I was growing up; my dad was an engineer. No one ever really got to know me. It’s like I was always the new kid in town. When you travel like that, you can kind of make up who you are. But I couldn’t do that in interviews.”

“Someone would ask about my parents’ divorce,” he added. “And I’d say to myself, ‘My God, I’ve never told anyone about these things before in my life.’ You know?”

Related: Exclusive Clip: Tom Cruise on ‘Top Gun’ and Its Spectacular F-14s

He also made it clear that there are some things he would not discuss—"I make it a policy not to talk about money” — and that Paul Newman, his co-star in the then-upcoming The Color of Money, had given him useful advice about how to handle the press: “He said that they’ll make up things if you don’t talk to them.”

But my favorite part of the interview is the section where Cruise defended the volleyball scene in Top Gun , standing firm that it serves a purpose in the movie apart from just showing hot dudes minus their shirts.

“That scene happens to be very important,” he said. “First of all, it shows that to fighter pilots physical prowess is very important. Plus, the scene shows the constant competition between these guys — how they compete on every level.”

Related: ‘Top Gun’ Among 2015 National Film Registry Selections

“I don’t take my shirt off to sell tickets,” he insisted. “The way I look at it is, let a good movie bring the audience in.”

Top Gun certainly did that; it would become the top-grossing movie of 1986 , earning $176.7 million in North America. And you know what else? The volleyball scene is very important, dammit!

NFL Draft: Bears take Iowa punter, who immediately receives funny text from Caleb Williams

There haven't been many punters drafted in the fourth round or higher like Tory Taylor just was. Chicago's No. 1 overall pick welcomed him in unique fashion.

NFL to allow players to wear protective Guardian Caps in games beginning with 2024 season

The NFL will allow players to wear protective Guardian Caps during games beginning with the 2024 season. The caps were previously mandated for practices.

NFL Draft: Spencer Rattler's long wait ends, as Saints draft him in the 5th round

Spencer Rattler once looked like a good bet to be a first-round pick.

Cowboys owner Jerry Jones compared his 2024 NFL Draft strategy to robbing a bank

Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones made an amusing analogy when asked why the team selected three offensive lineman in the 2024 NFL Draft.

Michael Penix Jr. said Kirk Cousins called him after Falcons' surprising draft selection

Atlanta Falcons first-round draft pick Michael Penix Jr. said quarterback Kirk Cousins called him after he was picked No. 8 overall in one of the 2024 NFL Draft's more puzzling selections.

Korey Cunningham, former NFL lineman, found dead in New Jersey home at age 28

Cunningham played 31 games in the NFL with the Cardinals, Patriots and Giants.

NFL Draft: Brenden Rice, son of Hall of Famer Jerry Rice, picked by Chargers

Brenden Rice played the same position as his legendary father.

Based on the odds, here's what the top 10 picks of the NFL Draft will be

What would a mock draft look like using just betting odds?

NFL Draft fashion: Caleb Williams, Malik Nabers dressed to impress, but Marvin Harrison Jr.'s medallion stole the show

Every player was dressed to impress at the 2024 NFL Draft.

From the Archives: Cruise-ing in the media stratosphere

Show more sharing options
Copy Link URL Copied!

E ven though “Top Gun” is now credited as one of the films that helped to launch Tom Cruise’s career, when the movie first came out in 1986, some felt the actor’s performance was divisive. He was also in the midst of navigating his newfound stardom. In an interview with The Times just after “Top Gun” opened -- that’s right, 30 years ago today -- the actor said he often felt uncomfortable when faced with personal questions. “I’d be asked about my childhood. That didn’t mean I’d want to talk about it,” said Cruise, who was 24 at the time. “Then someone would ask about my parents’ divorce. And I’d say to myself, ‘My God, I’ve never told anyone about these things before in my life.’ You know?” To celebrate the film’s three-decade anniversary, here’s that interview in full -- one in which he reminded our writer of a “kid sister’s boyfriend” who you’d expect to see “shooting down Sunset Boulevard in his dad’s Porsche.” Here’s our interview with Cruise, originally published on May 25, 1986:

------------

FOR THE RECORD

May 16, 8:18 a.m.: This article indicates that “Top Gun” opened on May 13, 1986. The movie’s release date was May 16, 1986.

We all know about Tom Cruise -- and we’re going to know even more if we survive the publicity blitzkrieg for “Top Gun.”

Never mind that many critics took aim at the film -- which opened with a winning $8.2-million weekend -- and its hunky star. (“Cruise brings little but a good build to the role” -- New York Times’ Walter Goodman; “Supposed to be a super flyboy, he comes across more like just a fly or a boy”--USA Today’s Jack Curry; “The likable Cruise is simply miscast. He’s not the dangerous guy everyone’s talking about, but the boy next door” -- Newsweek’s David Ansen.)

He stares seductively from the cover of Interview (his first “official” cover, if you discount his countless teen-magazine fronts). And there’ll be Cruise coverage in Rolling Stone, People and Us. He schmoozed with newspapers at a New York junket. In Los Angeles, he did interviews with Associated Press, New York Times Syndicate, Knight-Ridder Syndicate, USA Today and some radio. Plus TV, including “Good Morning America,” “CBS Morning News,” “Entertainment Tonight,” the Movie Channel and Cable News Network.

If this doesn’t get the word out, his producers are out and about and talking. So are co-stars like Val Kilmer and Tom Skerritt.

Cruise’s willingness to talk follows a self-imposed silence of three years. He went mum during promotion for “Risky Business”--the film that made him “hot.” As he told us -- during Calendar’s turn at bat -- “I supported the film up to a point, then, when everything kind of started going, I pulled back and stopped it all.

“I had to say, ‘Listen, guys, for myself, I’m just not personally ready to do this.’ ”

The reason? “It (publicity) was a whole new thing to me. I traveled around a lot while I was growing up; my dad was an engineer. No one ever really got to know me. It’s like I was always the new kid in town. When you travel like that, you can kind of make up who you are. But I couldn’t do that in interviews.”

By the same token, admitted Cruise, he didn’t know how to respond to prying questions. “I’d be asked about my childhood. That didn’t mean I’d want to talk about it. You know how it is when you’re a kid and you aren’t wearing the right kind of shoes and they hang you up in the locker room for being a nerd? Well, I was never wearing the right shoes. I never had the right clothes.

“Then someone would ask about my parents’ divorce. And I’d say to myself, ‘My God, I’ve never told anyone about these things before in my life.’ You know?”

There are subjects Cruise still doesn’t want to discuss, but these days they’re more likely to involve money and negotiation. “I make it a policy not to talk about money,” Cruise insisted, though he stressed, “In choosing a role, money is not an issue if I want to do something.” (Industry sources put Cruise in the league of $1.5 million per film.)

He spoke from the rooftop and, later, from the room of his favorite West Hollywood hotel -- his home away from his New York home. (Knowing the persistence of fans, the hotel will remain nameless.)

It was an interview fraught with politeness. (Other reporters also have taken note of Cruise’s exceptional manners.) He had ordered a lunch to be served outdoors. (“It’s such a beautiful day, and my room is kind of stuffy.”) Once seated, he remembered that he’d asked the desk to hold his calls. “But I’d better let them know where we are, or your photographer won’t be able to find us.”

His ability to (now) meet the press is partially the result of going to London for the lengthy production of “Legend.” “When I went there, they hadn’t yet seen ‘Risky Business’ or ‘All the Right Moves,’ ” he said. “No one knew who Tom Cruise was. It really gave me some perspective on the situation. I thought it out. I now know that this (attention) comes in waves. And that I can deal with it.”

A reporter who takes on a Cruise assignment can expect a flood of calls from friends dying to know what the actor is really like . (Anguished one woman friend, “I think I’m in love.”) Let’s set the record straight: Movies do magical things. You can’t always believe what you see. He may be playing a masterful, macho part on the screen. But in person, he’s not much different from a kid sister’s boyfriend.

In “Top Gun,” Cruise plays a fighter pilot who skillfully romances The Wild Blue Yonder and The Older Woman while sporting a cool pilot’s jacket with lots of insignia. But in Real Life, Cruise comes across as a nice, well-spoken and (dare I say it) cute 24-year-old --who could play much younger. You might expect to see him shooting down Sunset Boulevard in his dad’s Porsche . . . not necessarily a $30-million F-14 shooting through the skies.

Actually, when last seen, he was on the football field vying for a scholarship -- and a way out of a dead-end steel town -- in the critically admired “All the Right Moves.” But it was “Risky Business” -- in which he danced in his skivvies (while lip-synching to Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock and Roll”) and had an anxiety attack as he watched his dad’s $35,000 Porsche roll into a lake -- that made him a force to be reckoned with. (The New York magazine article that initiated the Brat Pack dubbed Cruise “The Hottest of Them All.”)

He can also be spotted as one of “The Outsiders” (he’s the muscled greaser with the chipped tooth) and sporting a red beret and a psychotic gleam in his eyes in “Taps.” The latter introduced him to Sean Penn (who’s since become one of his closest friends) and also, said Cruise, resulted in “lots of offers to play maniacs.”

This all started with high school stage productions and workshops in New York City. (“I’d bus tables, unload trucks, do day-to-day jobs while I was attending them.”) When time permits, he still participates in workshops. “They give you so much back,” he said. “God, I still remember Mickey Rourke coming to the workshops we had for ‘The Outsiders.’ I know my role in that film was a nothing role, but, to have worked with Francis (Coppola). That’s what I did it for.”

There’s no denying his passion for this, his “transition” film. In addition to getting him out of cinematic high school, “Top Gun” gave Cruise a chance to be creatively involved. He helped on the script and worked extensively with technical advisers on the air story.

He recounted a World War II tale (told to him during his research for the film) that underlines the respect of bravery that he feels is inherent among top gunners. It’s about this guy who’s flying alone, after having lost his squadron. (“In those days, they were flying those P-51s. I mean, they used to have to open the cockpit to jump out. And guys would get shot four or five times, jump out, get sent home and, later, go back up,” Cruise said, with a shake of his head.) The Japanese fighter pilot who took down the squadron kept coming at the lone plane.

“He was ripping right past the pilot, unloading at him,” said Cruise. “And after this seemed to go on and on forever, this fighter pilot was, you know, saying goodby to his family, praying, talking to God and all that. And all of a sudden, this Japanese pilot flew up wing to wing to him. He looked over at him and saluted, and flew on.”

Cruise was reverential: “It was like he was saying, ‘If you were still in the air after what I’ve unloaded on you, you’ve got my respect.’ ”

Cruise sees “Top Gun” as a homage to that spirit: “It’s not the man they want in competition--it’s the machine. It was important to me that we made a movie about characters and the human element--not a war picture. This movie is about competition, not killing.”

He’s not amused at the suggestion that the movie might also be about exploitation of handsome young male bodies. (“I don’t take my shirt off to sell tickets. The way I look at it is, let a good movie bring the audience in.”)

With a nod to a volleyball scene, in which audiences get eyefuls of muscled torsos, he said: “That scene happens to be very important. First of all, it shows that to fighter pilots physical prowess is very important. Plus, the scene shows the constant competition between these guys--how they compete on every level.”

Cruise is on the lookout for flesh-flashing scenes for which there is no defense: “If you notice, none of the ‘Top Gun’ TV commercials or (publicity) stills being released show me with my shirt off. And you don’t see posters of me like that. Any poster that’s ever been made has been black market--I’ve never authorized anything.”

The Tony Scott-directed “Top Gun” followed the epic fairy tale, “Legend,” directed by Ridley Scott (brother of Tony). (Said Cruise: “Definitely a weird coincidence. I feel like a member of the family.”)

A vehicle for Ridley Scott as a visual stylist, the $30-million-plus “Legend” had Cruise cast as a legendary forest man who romances a princess, cavorts with faeries and elves and does battle with a devilish character named Darkness. As a result, Cruise did his emoting opposite lots of special effects and in the midst of sumptuous sets on the massive sound stage at Pinewood Studios originally built for the James Bond films.

Released four weeks ago, following an exhaustive and much-publicized post-production period, the film brought yawns from the critics and managed to sell only $13 million in tickets.

Cruise--who wasn’t available for interviews upon that film’s release--said he has no regrets about having done it: “Ridley is a true visionary and my character is essentially a color within a Ridley Scott vision. It was a very physical role. The set itself wasn’t level and it seemed I was always dropping out of trees and doing gymnastics.”

He also did some talking to the animals -- though not all of them wanted to listen. For his opening scene, in which he’s shown petting a fox, the creature was digging its nails into him: “My legs were bleeding as I was doing the scene.”

And then there was his act with an obstinate bird -- and he chortled recalling the episode. Surrounded by a large crew, Cruise whistled for a bird, which was supposed to fly down to his hand. But the bird flew upward--disappearing into the vast set. Scott called for another take. “And all of a sudden,” said Cruise, “I saw all these workers, climbing the huge walls of this Bond stage, whistling, carrying nets and everything.”

He used a genteel British accent to mimic the animal trainer who told Scott: “I’m sorry sir. We’ve lost the bird.”

According to Cruise, Scott replied: “Well that’s fine. Just bring in another bird.”

“But sir,” continued the trainer, “that was our only bird.”

As it turned out, the trainer had thought that having only the one bird would help cut expenses on the mega-budgeted production. The cost of the feathered star: A teensy 15.

“And Ridley looked at me with this, this expression . . .” Cruise said. “I mean, this guy, with all the pressure that he was under, he just looked at me and started laughing.”

The perils climaxed when the set caught fire and was destroyed. “Oh God, I can remember this scene of Ridley walking through it all, looking around him. And it was all destroyed. And I walked up to him and said, ‘Rid . . . ‘ But I didn’t know what to say. What could I say? And he looked at me and said, ‘Well, I’m going to go play some tennis. How about meeting me for dinner later? Does that sound fine with you?’ Talk about grace under pressure.”

With the legendary “Legend” behind him, Cruise admitted: “I don’t want to make another movie like that again. I’m glad I did it, because I loved watching that kind of movie when I was growing up. And it was a good experience for me as an actor. But I know now that I couldn’t do another. There are so many things that were out of my control.”

His next film is set for release at Christmas. “The Color of Money,” which he just wrapped in Chicago, stars Paul Newman, with Martin Scorsese directing. It’s the sequel to “The Hustler” (1961). This time, Cruise is the pool-shooting hotshot who learns from Newman.

Working with Newman? “Oh my gosh, it was just -- just the best. I mean, look at the career that guy’s had. He’s had high highs and low lows and he’s lasted three decades. Three decades.”

The shoot kicked off with a two-week rehearsal: “We would rehearse and Marty would adjust his shots to the actors. He’s so meticulous--his style, the movement of the camera. But the camera never got in the way of the actors. You never felt you were moving for it.”

How’s his performance? “Well, Marty likes it,” said Cruise, explaining that he and Newman chose not to watch dailies. “But you know how you feel about what you’ve done. You know when it feels right--when it’s working.”

Newman talked with Cruise about dealing with the press: “He said that they’ll make up things if you don’t talk to them.” And it was Newman who jumped to Cruise’s defense -- in a letter to the editor -- when one of the Chicago newspapers, supposedly acting on a tip from an extra, alleged that Cruise was a lousy pool player.

His name has popped up in conjunction with several upcoming projects -- but he couldn’t discuss them just now. “Nothing’s definite,” said Cruise, who acknowledged that he’s giving college some thought. Meanwhile, his TC Productions, based at Columbia Pictures (where he has what he tabbed “a very loose” deal developing projects), gets lots of scripts. And there’s time to be spent with family. (His mother, stepdad and three sisters are spread out in Philadelphia, New Jersey and Delaware; one of the sisters is in possession of his prized flyboy jacket.)

He talked eagerly about his hopes for longevity as an actor (and, in time, as a creative force). He wasn’t so eager to rehash one of his early career moves -- a teen sex flick called “Losin’ It,” that he made at the recommendation of a former manager. “It was the first film offered after ‘Taps,’ ” explained Cruise. “I really learned a lot in doing that -- in terms of what I did and didn’t want to do with my life as an actor. I realized at that point that I really have to be careful.

“When I first got involved with that film, there was excessive nudity that I just didn’t feel good about. I couldn’t do it. And the language was pretty hard. A lot of it was cut back.

“The film itself isn’t excessively vulgar -- comparatively. But after coming off ‘Taps,’ where we were all so committed to making a good film, it was an eye-opener. And it made me realize that someone can do something for the wrong reasons.”

Since then, said Cruise, he’s adhered to a game plan in which the role -- and the project -- is the thing. As for popularity (the kind wrought by mountains of press), “I can’t be concerned about what sets me apart from everyone else. I’ve got enough just to deal with what I have to deal with.

“Let someone else figure out who’s hot and who’s not and all that kind of thing. I’ll be happy just to work.”

Emma Stone would like to be called by her real name, if you don’t mind

April 26, 2024

Review: In the well-researched ‘We Grown Now,’ a family hangs tough in Chicago’s projects

April 18, 2024

Kirsten Dunst, left, and Cailee Spaeny in 'Civil War'

What ‘Civil War’ gets right and wrong about photojournalism, according to a Pulitzer Prize winner

April 16, 2024

Only good movies

Get the Indie Focus newsletter, Mark Olsen's weekly guide to the world of cinema.

You may occasionally receive promotional content from the Los Angeles Times.

More From the Los Angeles Times

Zendaya attends the Australian premiere of "Challengers" at the State Theatre on March 26, 2024 in Sydney, Australia.

Oh, Zendaya knows all about that ‘Spider-Man’ female lead-to-tennis player ‘prophecy’

Randall Emmett foreground, left. Sylvester Stallone is in the center.

Company Town

After scandal, movie producer Randall Emmett is flying under the radar with a new name

Billie Eilish, left, and Kate McKinnon as Weird Barbie in the movie "Barbie."

This is what Billie Eilish talks about when she’s not promoting ‘Barbie, Barbie, Barbie’

April 25, 2024

A man with a bloodied face is ready for action.

Review: Generic from its title onward, ‘Boy Kills World’ does little to differentiate its gore

Get the magazine!

New Again: Tom Cruise and Cameron Crowe

By jeff oloizia, december 15, 2011.

Normal001390222245185442731811.1287 000

When Tom Cruise sat down with us for his May 1986 cover story, he was a quirky 24-year-old preparing to enter full-fledged Hollywood superstardom in a movie called Top Gun . His interviewer, the shaggy auteur Cameron Crowe, was still three years away from his first directing role and had only one screenwriting credit to his name (1982’s Fast Times at Ridgemont High , adapted from Crowe’s book of the same name). Though the duo wouldn’t work together until a full decade later —Jerry McGuire garnered Oscar nominations for both—it was apparent even in the early days that the writer and actor had a unique rapport.

Twenty-five years later, it seems only fitting that we should be buzzing in anticipation over new projects from both. Cruise’s latest, Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol (out today), is a slick spy thriller that is as newsworthy for the inclusion of a special six-minute prologue to next summer’s Dark Knight Rises as it is for the millions it’s sure to make upon release. Crowe’s film, the heartfelt Matt Damon vehicle We Bought a Zoo , follows on Friday.

Not content to simply twiddle our thumbs until we can hit the cinema, we decided to revisit the pair’s conversation in an attempt to search for signs of the Hollywood A-listers they would later become.

It has been three years since Tom Cruise made his starring debut as Joel Goodsen, the awakening young capitalist in Paul Brickman’s “Risky Business.” The movie was a perfect showcase for Cruise’s style—equal parts comic vulnerability and dramatic strength. When the family egg tumbled through the air at the end of “Risky Business,” audiences everywhere felt the full weight of Joel’s predicament. By the time it landed, Cruise had arrived.

Now 24, Cruise has worked steadily since that memorable turn, but due to a combination of lengthy schedules and production delays, he hasn’t been seen since 1983’s “All the Right Moves.” That hiatus is about to end. This year will see the release of three high-profile Cruise releases. First comes Ridley Scott’s long-awaited “Legend.” The summer blockbuster, “Top Gun,” will hit theaters this month, and due in December is “The Color of Money,” Martin Scorsese’s sequel to “The Hustler.” Cruise stars as the pool-playing protégé/nemesis of Fast Eddie-Paul Newman.

I spoke with Tom Cruise at the Columbus Dynasty Restaurant on New York’s Upper West Side. A model of manners, Cruise rarely missed an opportunity for a “sir” or “ma’am.” When our talk was over, he thanked the waitress, hoisted his backpack onto his shoulders and disappeared into a crowded subway, looking a lot like Joel Goodsen a long way from home.

CAMERON CROWE: You’re someone who is associated with a lot of people’s adolescent thoughts and fantasies….

TOM CRUISE: Yep. I’ve been laid just about everywhere. On the train, in the bedroom, on the stairs… [ laughs ]

CROWE: What was your own adolescence like?

CRUISE: I’ve had such extremes in my life. From being this kind of wild kid, to one year of studying to be a Franciscan priest at the seminary… I was very frustrated. I didn’t have a lot of friends. The closest people around me were my family. I think they felt a little nervous about me because I had a lot of energy and I couldn’t stick to one thing. If I worked in an ice-cream store—and I’ve worked in a lot of them—I would be the best for two weeks. Then I was always quitting or getting fired, because I was bored. I feel good about the fact that I finally found something I love. I never lived in one place for very long—that’s the way my whole life has been. I was always packing and moving around, staying in Canada, Kentucky, Jersey, St. Louis—it all helped because I was always learning new accents, experiencing different environments.

CROWE: How close did you come to being a Franciscan priest?

CRUISE: Not too close. I was there for one school session. I remember we used to sneak out of the school on weekends and go to this girl’s house in town, sit around, talk and play Spin the Bottle. I just realized I loved women too much to give that up.

CROWE: What was the turning point, when you decided on acting and moved to New York?

CRUISE: I was 17 and starred in a school musical, Guys and Dolls . And I just loved it. At the school I grew up in, sensitivity was something that was not accepted. Especially being the new kid. I felt vulnerable a lot of the time, constantly having to put up these guards to take care of myself. You don’t sit around with the guys and talk about, “God, that really hurt my feelings, what you said.” It was more like, “Yeah, let’s go out, have some beers and kick some ass.” That was really frustrating to me. So the first time I did the play, all the guys came and saw it and said, “Whoa, we didn’t know you could do that.” I felt good about it. Not just the fact that they saw it, but I felt good about it in my heart. My mother taught creative drama, so I’d always enjoyed it. I told my parents I was going to New York. I never really planned on going to college anyway. I had saved money and I was going to go to Europe and find the “big picture” there. CROWE: Does your rebel side ever come out in the movie-making process?

CRUISE: Like getting into a fistfight on a movie set? No. But I am very aggressive. You’ve got to be aggressive; there’s too much responsibility not to be. When you look at Taps , a lot of that character was my childhood. I wasn’t intense like that, but the character is just fear. That’s what he does when he’s afraid—he fights. I have an aggressive side, absolutely. I need a creative outlet. Now I work out every day. I get up and work out 45 to 60 minutes. And that’s how I start my day. Discipline is very important to me.

CROWE: How did you learn to deal with the constant rejection of going out on readings?

CRUISE: I felt that the people rejecting me were there to help me in the long run. Sometimes it hurts, but I truly believe that there are parts I’m supposed to get and parts I’m not supposed to get and something else is going to come along.

I remember being flown out to Los Angeles to read for a series. I didn’t know anything—I didn’t know how tough it was. I went in to read and this director was sitting there in his office—he thought he was the coolest thing happening. I read, and I knew it was terrible. And he said, “So, how long are you going to be in California?” And I’m thinking, “He’s probably going to want me to come back and read again with someone else.” I said, “Well, just a couple of days.” He said, “Good. Get a tan while you’re here.” [laughs] I couldn’t help it. I walked out, and I thought it was the funniest damn thing. Tears were coming out of my eyes, I was laughing so hard. I thought, “This is Hollywood. Welcome, Cruise.”

CROWE: Your first major role was in the film Taps . Did you feel like you were on the ground floor of something special, working with Sean Penn and Timothy Hutton?

CRUISE: I felt like it was a chance for me, and a beginning. Me and Penn, I really don’t know if we ever slept during that movie. We’d stay up all night and just talk about film and about acting. And Hutton was working every day, so he couldn’t hang out that much except on the weekends. We were really scared and nervous and excited—we didn’t know what was going to happen. It was a special time in my life because it was my first movie, and it was Sean’s first movie. Hutton had just won the Academy Award and he was all excited. You felt that something special was happening.

I didn’t know anything about agents and business or scripts. Coming off Taps , I felt like, hey, everyone wants to make a great movie. Everyone who’s doing this loves their work. It’s too hard a line of work to not love it. You work as hard as you can and you get everything and something has to work out. Then I did a film they titled Losin’ It. When I first read it, it was worse than the released film. I had this small agent at the time who said, “Do it, do it.” I worked hard, but it was a terrible time in my life.

CROWE: How did you make the transition from Losin’ It to working with Francis Ford Coppola on The Outsiders ?

CRUISE: I learned the things I wanted, and the things I didn’t want. I got a new agent and thought, “I have to work with good people and good directors and grow.” I heard about the movie, and I came out to Los Angeles and stayed at Emilio’s [Estevez] house over Christmas. And I stayed at the Penns’ house in the summer. That’s when Sean was doing Fast Times . I just went to Francis and said, “Look, I don’t care which role you give me, I really want to work with you. I want to be there on the set and watch.” And he said okay. So there I was on the set working with all these young actors. That was a hell of a good time. I just wanted a wide body of work. After Taps came out I was offered every horror film, every killer-murderer part. I told this one agent that I wanted to work with Francis. He said, “Francis! He’s not going to pay you anything!” It was never a main role, but I created something. That was where I learned I had a sense of comedy. I still want to work with Francis again. CROWE: In Risky Business , Paul Brickman took the youth-oriented genre and really opened it up visually and musically. It’s been very influential. Were these elements part of the movie from the beginning?

CRUISE: Yes. Francis offered everybody a chance to go on and do Rumble Fish the same week I was offered Risky Business . I thought Paul Brickman was a very bright man with great taste. He knew exactly what the movie was going to be.

CROWE: What was your audition like?

CRUISE: I was doing The Outsiders in Tulsa, and I had to come back to Los Angeles for a day for some reason. Originally, Paul had seen Taps and said, “This guy for Joel? This guy is a killer! Let him do Amityville III !” Somehow, my agent, without me knowing, arranged to have me just drop by the office and say hello. So I went in wearing a jean jacket, my tooth was chipped, my hair was greasy. I was pumped up and talking in an Oklahoma accent. “Hey, how y’all doing?” Paul just sat there, looking at me. He said, “Let’s just read a little bit.” I’m not a very good cold reader. What I do is start with a line and go off and ad-lib and start reading the thing, and they were ready to say, “Okay, thank you.” I didn’t know. I cut them off and said, “Let me try it this way.” I started from the top again and I did it another way and we ended up reading through half the script. It was fun, we were all laughing.

Then I came back later and tested for it at six in the morning. I was shooting nights and so I flew in late, got in at 1:00 A.M. and I had to leave at 10:00 P.M. to shoot the rumble scene in The Outsiders that night. Here I was again. My hair was greasy and I was heavy, but now I was wearing this preppy maroon Adidas shirt. My arms were huge. I walk in and see this stunningly gorgeous woman sitting there looking at me and I’m thinking, “Oh my God.” Rebecca [De Mornay] had already been cast. They wanted to see the two of us together. I tested, and to make a short story long, we didn’t test that well. Paul just believed in me. I told him exactly what I was going to do. We talked about it for a long time and he trusted me.

CROWE: A lot of people have ideas about what the movie is about. What’s your theory?

CRUISE: It’s about today’s capitalistic society. Do the means justify the ends? Do you want to help people, or do you just want to make money? Joel is questioning all that. So am I. Today the thinking of young people is so linear and non-creative. It’s all about money. Unfortunately, we need something like Vietnam to force people to deal with political issues. I’m not saying I’m some erudite political figure—but it bothers me. At least I’m asking the question. The movie is Joel’s exploration of society, how he gets sucked into this wild capitalistic ride.

CROWE: Supposedly there was a major battle over the ending.

CRUISE: Yes. We had to change the ending to make it more upbeat and commercial. Geffen Films felt it was too… basically, they felt it was a bummer, okay? [laughs] At one point, Paul said he wouldn’t direct the new ending. They were going to hire another director to direct it. Paul really fought it. We all did. We all loved the piece so much. I didn’t want to sell Joel out. In the end, I think we got across the same point, though. Joel knows in his heart that this woman is more important than money. That’s what I wanted to get across. A lot of people, when I discuss the ending of the film with them, say Joel didn’t sell out—some say he did. It’s a subtle film and you walk out with what you want to walk out with. It has so many different levels.

CROWE: What was the original ending?

CRUISE: It was this great, emotional scene in the restaurant. Instead of the scene outside where Rebecca says, “Do you want to come over?”, she sits on my lap in the restaurant and it just ends on the sunset background coming up and me stroking her hair with her head on my shoulder. It cuts back and forth and then I say, “Isn’t life grand?” It was really nice. They felt it was too sardonic. So we made it more specific and upbeat.

CROWE: Whose idea was it to do the dance in your underwear?

CRUISE: Brickman’s idea. What he did was he set up the frame of the shot. He showed it to me and said, “Let’s really play it and use the whole house.” We had talked earlier and he said, “Look, I want Bob Seger’s ‘Old Time Rock & Roll’ or maybe some Elvis, but if you can come up with something else, great.” I went through tape after tape. In the end, nothing beat Bob Seger. So I took the candlestick, and I said, “How about making this the audience?” And then I just started ad-libbing, using it as a guitar, jumping on the table. I waxed half the floor and kept the other half dirty, so that I could slide in on my socks. As we went along, I threw more stuff in. Like the thing with the collar up, jumping on the bed. Originally, it was only one line in the script: “Joel dances in underwear through the house.” We shot it in half a day. CROWE: Have you ever been close to marriage?

CRUISE: No.

CROWE: How private do you feel about your girlfriends?

CRUISE: I don’t hide from cameras or anything. It doesn’t bother me. I don’t seek out press for the women I’m dating, but if it finds me, it finds me.

CROWE: You were close to Rebecca De Mornay for several years. How hard is it for you to balance your career with your relationships?

CRUISE: It’s not easy. I spent a lot of time alone. I mean, a lot of time alone. But I’ve spent time alone my whole life and it doesn’t bother me. I feel lonely at times, but I don’t want to get into a relationship with someone if it is not right. I’m not the type of person who just does things to do them. It takes time to get to know people.

CROWE: With the success of Risky Business , how quickly did you start to feel the room tip toward you when you entered it?

CRUISE: I’m really very private, in my own world. Suddenly I was someone walking on the street and people were looking at me and I was thinking, “Jesus, is something hanging out of my nose?” It took time to get adjusted to it. It was such a perfect time to do Legend in England. Everyone is looking at you and somehow just moving your hand seems so much more exaggerated.

CROWE: Why was Legend delayed so much?

CRUISE: That’s been overblown, first of all. The press kind of took that and blew it out of proportion. It’s a movie-movie. There was a lot of post-production. Ridley [Scott] made a fairy tale, a breakthrough visual film. I think the studio thought the whole piece was a little too romantic. So instead of just releasing it, Ridley said, “Okay, let’s go back and rescore it and give it a little harder edge.” Now it’s ready to go.

Legend was an interesting thing. I don’t know how Harrison Ford has done so many of those types of films. I mean, I did All The Right Moves , and I thought, “Okay, I’ve done the two extremes of high school life. I’ve done it.” In Legend , I’m this magical character, Jack O’ The Green. The sets were huge. Sometimes we would be working on a scene that might last 30 seconds in the film, but it took a week to shoot it. It’s stunning and gorgeous and poetic and most of the time I would be looking at a piece of black tape and having to imagine all of it. It was exciting, but it made me hungry to do a piece like Top Gun .

CROWE: How did you feel when Reagan forced down the Egyptian jets with American F-14s? Like this was Top Gun territory?

CRUISE: I felt like I had some insight into it. Because trying to get the jets for the movie, we had to go to Washington and sit down with the secretary of the navy and all the naval officials. I mean everybody. I hung out with the fighter pilots for nine months. I love flying in the F-14. I’m not big on weapons or war, but I enjoyed flying. Those pilots go up there and risk their lives every time. Duke Cunningham is a naval ace; he helped me a lot and he gave me his gold wings to wear in the film. All these guys talked to me. They’re very emotional about it. When you fly in the F-14, it’s one of those experiences that is bigger than life itself. It blows your shit away. These guys do it every day and you know why they want it. Flying is so intense and emotional. But ever since I got involved in Top Gun , I didn’t want to make a warmonger movie. I wanted to get into the personality of these guys, what makes them fly. What makes my character, Maverick, want to fly? I wanted to give him a sensitivity. And I think in the dogfights, before he goes up, you see he’s nervous. I mean, you’re not a fighter pilot because you want combat. It’s the flying, the F-14.

CROWE: There’s a graphic plane crash in the movie. How do you research your performance for a plane crash?

CRUISE: What I did was I looked through tapes and talked to pilots who had been in crashes. I actually saw a six-minute tape of one. They filmed some air combat maneuvers at Top Gun school. A helicopter was out there filming these jets when all of a sudden one of the engines went out. You can hear the pilots’ voices. The cameras have him right in frame. They start following the jet down, and the thing is that because of the gravity, the blood is rushing to your brain. What can happen in that situation is that there is so much pressure that some pilots just die. The blood explodes through them—they can’t handle the G’s. They have to reach back to rip the ejection, and they’re pinned so heavily that they can’t reach. And you hear them trying to talk, and your heart is in your throat watching this. It’s just bits and pieces… of… them… trying… to… talk, and you feel their training, trying to keep that control and knowing that, my God, this is it.

CROWE: Did they die?

CRUISE: No, thank God they didn’t. At the last second the plane hit an air pocket 500 feet off the ground, which gave them just enough time to rip up and punch themselves out. They both lived. And the plane went down. You can see it all. CROWE: Have you ever used your celebrity to get something that you really wanted?

CRUISE: I guess meeting Dustin Hoffman was the closest to that. Usually I would never do anything like that. But I was in this Cuban restaurant up on Columbus Avenue with my little sister. All of a sudden she got up to go to the bathroom and when she sat down, she had this big smile on her face. She pointed and said, “That’s Dustin Hoffman over there.” He was doing Death of a Salesman , and I had just gotten back from finishing Legend in London. I knew this was his last weekend and it was impossible to get tickets. I feel really shy about going up to people and saying hello, telling them I appreciate their work, but I went up and said, “Hey, Mr. Hoffman,” and he turned around and said, “Cruise?” He was so cool. He said, “Look, we’re having the last performance coming up, why don’t you and your sister come by into my dressing room and watch me get made up for it?” He made sure that we had seats and everything. Afterward, we went to dinner with his family and his cousin. That’s the stuff that makes you feel good. As I was doing Top Gun , I was thinking I’d really like to work with an established older actor whom I can learn from—and an established director. Then Marty [Scorsese] called me and said he wanted me to read the script for The Color of Money . He wanted to know what I thought of it. And I was thinking, “He wants to know what I think of it. What does that mean?” [laughs] I read it and thought, “There’s a role in here for me. Holy shit. This thing is great.” I told Marty how much I enjoyed the script and he asked me if I wanted to do it. I said, “I’d love to!” So that’s what I’ve been doing, that and playing a lot of pool. I’ve improved 200 percent in the last few weeks.

CROWE: What is the relationship between your character and Paul Newman’s in The Color of Money ?

CRUISE: Newman’s character, Fast Eddie, is a corrupt hustler—any means justify the end. My character, Vincent, is a pure pool player. If he could just have pool, sex with his girlfriend, a Bud in his hand and his job at the toy store—what the hell, he’s set. Newman sees this raw talent and thinks, “Man, I’m going to make a lot of money off this kid.” He tries to turn Vincent into a hustler. They each act as a catalyst for the other. Eddie sees what he is missing. When you start messing with your mind it is hard to know where the purity is. You lose your perfect shot, you lose your finesse. If you are a liar, then you are going to think everyone in the room is a liar. You are not going to be able to look at someone and say, “I trust you.” I believe that. Eddie gives Vince a cue and that is the bond between them. There’s a great scene where Eddie says, “You don’t deserve this cue,” and I say, “No, you don’t deserve this cue. I’m a fucking pool player.” The inference being that Eddie is a hustler. The Fast Eddie character is great. Scorsese is an actor’s director… details, details, details.

CROWE: What was your first meeting with Paul Newman like?

CRUISE: I met him a long time ago, at his office in New York. He was always cool to me. He had just seen Taps . I walked into the room and he said, “Hey, Killer.” I said, “Listen, man, five more minutes and I would taken that school over.” He just calls me Cruise now.

CROWE: What’s the best way to evaluate your film performance? Some people hide in the bathroom and listen to what people say after the movie.

CRUISE: I’ve never done that. I go to rushes every night, not just to see my performance, but to see what the director’s done in terms of choosing his shots and lighting. I enjoy seeing the overall process. At times I look to see if I’m doing what I set out to do. I’m always finding out new things about what’s going on with the character. Making a movie is like a chess game. It’s about constantly changing patterns, adapting to new things. It’s not just black and white, as you know. Every day something happens and you think, “That’s terrific, let’s shift with this.” But I don’t have any specific method when a film comes out.

CROWE: Where is all this heading for you? Ultimately, are you looking for a Warren Beatty-type of situation where you can produce, direct and star?

CRUISE: I’m looking for overall growth. I need a lot of things happening in my life. I would love to direct, though I’m definitely not ready now. But I enjoy working with writers and their scripts. It’s very exciting to me. Eventually I would like to produce, direct and act onstage, but it’s not a heavy pressure. When I do it, I want to do it well. I’m just educating myself with writers and scripts, because I didn’t read a lot of books when I was growing up… I’m dyslexic, although I’m not an extreme dyslexic like my little sister was. It was just a chore. My energy was always all over the place. Reading was not at the top of my list, because it always took me so long. When I wrote a paper, my mother would help me with it. I would take a test and get very nervous. I would skip questions and skip lines. I’ve gotten better. I’ve learned to control my eyes. I used to have to use my finger all the time. I just wasn’t relaxed about it.

CROWE: How seriously do you take yourself?

CRUISE: Let’s face it, I’m not saving lives here. I feel fortunate, but this is just one aspect of my life. I love my work, but my family is very important to me, too. You pick up the paper and see that there are many things happening outside my little world.

CROWE: Will you be starring in Bright Lights, Big City ?

CRUISE: Quite honestly, I haven’t read a script for it. I keep asking for the script, and before I got deeply involved in Top Gun I came here and met Jay [McInerney]. We sat down and talked, went to some clubs. I loved the book. Jay did a terrific job with it. It’s such an interior piece. I think it’s very daring. It’s not an easy piece to translate into a screenplay, you know. It needs a kind of Risky Business perspective. Joel was a very internal character, too. “The dream is always the same,” he said. I mean, you really got to know him through seeing him dance in his underwear, alone. Bright Lights, Big City , I think, has got to be very stylish and handled just right. But I would like to do the movie if I like the screenplay. I’m not going to be available until next fall.

CROWE: What is it that you bring to a performance? What do you think your specialty is?

CRUISE: I’m a good listener. I think it’s the one characteristic that’s most important. I’ve always been that way. Not that I take all the advice, but you’ve got to listen to it and have the courage to make your own decision. Then I just go for it. The important thing is to be relaxed in your work. Same in life. Don’t make everything too intense. Then you can let everything go and not “act.”

CROWE: Are good looks a curse, or is that just a myth propagated by good-looking people?

CRUISE: I don’t know. [laughs] I think I have the ability to look different ways. I look good just as much as I look bad. I mean, I don’t look like Paul Newman or Beatty.

CROWE: Who is your best friend?

CRUISE: Let’s see, my best friend outside my family is probably Emilio Estevez. Penn’s a good buddy, too, but since he’s been with Madonna I haven’t seen him as much. Estevez…we hang out a lot. He’s a very down-to-earth, unassuming guy. A good friend to have.

CROWE: Your own work has always been well received. How would you respond to the one criticism that you still haven’t played a grown man yet?

CRUISE: Still becoming a man! God forbid if I do everything I want to do before I’m 26. When I get to be Newman’s age, I’m looking to still be playing the great characters he plays. I hope the public and everyone realize that I’m still growing. I’m still feeling my oats here. I’m working toward the long range of what I can be as an artist. And I work my ass off trying. Because I know what I want to be.

What Drove Justin Kuritzkes to Write the Year’s Horniest Movie?

Ella Purnell Takes Chloë Grace Moretz Into the Wasteland

“What Are You Laughing At?” Sarah Paulson, in Conversation With Pedro Pascal

Marisa Abela Tells Myha’la Herrold How She Found Amy Winehouse

Nicholas Galitzine and Anne Hathaway Give Us a Lesson in Chemistry

Carla Gugino and Lena Headey Trade Hollywood War Stories

Screen Rant

Tom cruise interview: top gun maverick.

Top Gun: Maverick star Tom Cruise talks about his emotional reunion with Val Kilmer's Iceman on the set, and why training is so important for actors.

Fans have waited with bated breath for decades to see Tom Cruise soar the skies once more, and Top Gun: Maverick has finally delivered beyond everyone's expectations. The sequel to the 1986 classic Top Gun has already seen the highest Thursday gross ever for Paramount , with a lofty $150M opening projection, and received an incredible 97% Rotten Tomatoes rating . After all this time, audiences can once more meet Peter "Maverick" Mitchell (Cruise) - but now he's an older and wiser commander looking after eager recruits instead of being the restless youth ready to prove his worth.

While Top Gun: Maverick boasts a large ensemble cast that fleshes out the naval aviators far beyond Maverick's immediate reach, he remains the central axis around which the story revolves. Fans get a peek at the romance in his life, thanks to former flame Penny Benjamin (Jennifer Connelly, Snowpiercer ), as well as significant connections such as to Goose's son Rooster (Miles Teller, The Offer ). Furthermore, viewers will be thrilled and moved by the touching reunion between Maverick and Top Gun 's Iceman (played by Val Kilmer).

Related: Top Gun Maverick’s Iceman Scene Is A Beautiful Val Kilmer Tribute

Screen Rant had the chance to catch Cruise on the Top Gun: Maverick red carpet, where he gushed about the significance of his moment with Iceman as well as defended the supposedly tough training the ensemble cast went through.

Screen Rant: The movie is so fun, but also so emotional, and I think one of the most emotional components is reuniting you with Val Kilmer. How do you describe that reunion?

Tom Cruise: I think people just have to see it; I don't even want to try. He's such a fine actor, and you see what he brings to this movie; the power that he has. And I think that relationship and the structure of the story, where it works, I don't want to talk about. I just want people to experience it.

Everybody talks about the hard training that the actors went through.

Tom Cruise: It wasn't that hard.

Was there a point where you were like, "I think this is too much? We're pushing them too hard?"

Tom Cruise: No, absolutely not. Absolutely not. Listen, the whole point of making films and the beauty of it is that you get to travel the world and see other cultures and be part of communities. To look and walk in someone else's shoes and feel what they are [feeling].

Making movies, you're constantly learning; you have to constantly work to become more and more competent in many different fields. And I want to tell them, that's the beauty of making movies. That's why I've always pushed my films to go international, around the world and in different communities. And to be part of that right from the beginning. It was my dream.

You've got to work. You got to work. It's not a bunch of parties and doing that, and that's what I love. And then they get to enjoy this evening.

More Top Gun: Maverick Interviews

After more than 30 years of service as one of the Navy's top aviators, Pete "Maverick" Mitchell is where he belongs, pushing the envelope as a courageous test pilot and dodging the advancement in rank that would ground him. Training a detachment of graduates for a special assignment, Maverick must confront the ghosts of his past and his deepest fears, culminating in a mission that demands the ultimate sacrifice from those who choose to fly it.

Cast & Crew At Global Premiere
Miles Teller
Jennifer Connelly
Charles Parnell & Bashir Salahuddin
Jay Ellis, Monica Barbaro & Lewis Pullman
Greg Tarzan Davis, Danny Ramirez & Glen Powell
Director Joseph Kosinski

Next: Top Gun Maverick Ending Explained

Top Gun: Maverick is currently out in theaters.

International edition
Australia edition
Europe edition

Christopher McQuarrie, Tom Cruise, Joseph Kosinski and Jerry Bruckheimer on the set of Top Gun: Maverick.

Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski: ‘Of all Tom Cruise’s characters, Maverick might be closest to his real personality’

The belated sequel to Top Gun is easily the highest-grossing film of 2022 – as well as Tom Cruise’s most successful movie ever. Its director explains how hard it was to make the film and why its star never, ever gives up

In 1990, Tom Cruise told Playboy he wouldn’t make Top Gun 2, for fear it might glorify or gamify war. What changed? It’s a film about competition and friendship and sacrifice. It was never a film about war. We wanted to give people insight into a world and to experience what it’s like to ride in one of these machines. But the desire was to tell an emotive story about a guy in his 50s. The push was: what’s the audience feeling about that? We were pretty ruthless in making sure that we were always pushing that story, even in an action scene.

Does it feel strange to still be discussing something you shot in 2018? It is a little weird. The pandemic is a strange, two-year gap we all have. I’m just relieved the movie worked out and was released in the way we wanted. There was a lot of pressure on Tom [Cruise] and Jerry [Bruckheimer, the producer] to put it out on streaming. I’m glad we waited because we made it for the big screen and I think it was the movie that a lot of people came back to cinemas to see.

Maverick is a mortal person, if quite an unusual and resilient one. Do you think there’s waning interest in superheroes? I do feel like the movie probably hits differently post-Covid. We are all in a different headspace. Every sequence in this movie was flown by real navy pilots: real people doing extraordinary things. People tell me that they’re gripping on to the edge of their seat in the third act. That’s exactly what we hoped for.

Tom Cruise as Pete ‘Maverick’ Mitchell in Top Gun: Maverick.

It’s also quite an earnest film. There’s not a lot of sarcasm. It wears its heart on its sleeve. It’s OK to show some genuine emotion. Men crying in the movie is a good thing. We approached it in a very honest, straightforward way. What Tom does dramatically in a film that also requires such incredible action skills – you just can’t take that for granted. I can’t think of anyone else who would be able to do both things and produce the film.

You’ve spoken about how Cruise mentored the younger stars on the film. Yet his charisma is so singular it’s hard to see how they could ape him. Of all the characters he’s played, I think Maverick might be kind of the closest to his real personality. He’s always pushing the envelope. The young actors were so curious to just pick his brain. Here’s a guy who has the career that they all dream about and he’s willing to talk about how he got there.

Glen [Powell] read for the part of Rooster and didn’t get it; Miles Teller did. He didn’t want the part of Hangman; he wanted the lead. Then Tom explained to him that as a young actor, you have to choose great movies, not great roles. It totally changed Glen’s approach.

What do people fail to appreciate about Cruise? Everyone knows he gives 110% every day. But the amount of work it takes to make movies like this requires a level of commitment that’s pretty astonishing. He just never gives up.

What do you think he sees in you? What’s the kinship? He knows I’ll work as hard as I can on every frame. I’m always willing to have the conversation and be open to the best idea. We like fast cars, fast planes, you know, all that kind of kinetic movement. Two of the five films I’ve made have been with him.

Is there still snobbery around mainstream action hits? No, the critics embraced it, the audience embraced it, the industry embraced it. I got emails from the heads of every studio congratulating us on the film. Everyone’s rooting for us. And it played overseas bigger than it played domestically. The themes are very universal. We’re not pointing at a specific enemy. We’re not making a political statement. We’re just trying to tell this very honest story about a guy struggling with some things in his life set against the backdrop of this incredibly demanding, exciting job.

How delicate a dance was that depoliticisation? I actually enjoyed the creative challenge of saying: how can I make this enemy so unidentifiable that no matter how hard someone tries, they’ll never be able to pick them out?

Did the Pentagon involvement ever feel compromising? I know on the first film Jerry had to work hard to persuade them to participate. This time that wasn’t the case, because so many of the decision-makers joined the navy because of the first film. We lived on an aircraft carrier for a couple of weeks. That’s tough: 5,000 people on a ship operating 24/7. You get in your bunk exhausted at the end of a 15-hour day and there’s aircraft taking off 5ft above your head all night long. A constant din of activity: very loud and very busy. It’s intense.

after newsletter promotion

Is flying safe with sleep deprivation? I hear that if you live on the ship for a while, you have trouble sleeping when you come back home and there’s no sound.

‘Two of the five films I’ve made have been with Tom Cruise’ … Joseph Kosinski.

Will it be hard to top this success? Yes. But this is Top Gun. It’s like such a special thing: 35 years of love and pent-up excitement. I don’t know if there are many other films out there so beloved and untouched. For me, box-office success is not how I gauge the films I work on. Your films are like your kids: you love them each the same.

Is culture today more nostalgic than 10 years ago? There’s this sense of pining for the way things were. The 80s seem like a simpler time. A nice naivety to life pre-internet. We weren’t bombarded with as much information. The film intentionally has a throwback sensibility. There’s very little in it that ties it to 2022. Maverick has a BlackBerry, but that’s about the only real piece of modern technology in the film. All the real emotional drama occurs in face-to-face conversations. It is a little bit of a fantasy world. Maverick can ride around without a helmet and the sun’s always setting.

Best films 2022
Top Gun: Maverick

Comments (…)

Tom Cruise reveals that taking on Top Gun: Maverick was a 'daunting task'

Fans of Top Gun have had to wait 36 years for the long-promised sequel to the 1986 film.

Thursday 19 May 2022 07:24, UK

Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player

Tom Cruise speaks about new Top Gun movie

Top Gun was the film that rocketed Tom Cruise to superstardom back in 1986.

Now the sequel, perhaps the most highly anticipated movie in decades, is due to arrive in cinemas here next week.

But the actor admits it wasn't the easiest follow-up to make.

"Taking on the sequel to Top Gun was a daunting task," Cruise said. "Fans all over the world - more than any other film for decades have been saying please do another one, and I was like - I don't know how to do that.

"And I would go home and think about how to approach it, so to hear about how audiences feel about it I'm telling you I just feel, I'm so excited for them, I'm so happy about it, I'm relieved for them you know."

Aviators, love interests and oiled-up bodies - read our review of the film

Tom Cruise plays Capt. Pete "Maverick" Mitchell in Top Gun: Maverick from Paramount Pictures, Skydance and Jerry Bruckheimer Films.

Top Gun: Maverick arrives 36 years after its predecessor, but Cruise says there's a strong through-line between them.

More on Tom Cruise

Backstage podcast: Tom Cruise, Scarlett Johansson, Maya Hawke and Jennifer Lawrence

Tom Cruise says release of Mission: Impossible 7 'a beautiful moment' after COVID restrictions

Pedro Pascal accepting one of a trio of MTV awards for hit show The Last Of Us

MTV Movie and TV Awards: Pedro Pascal and other stars stick up for striking writers in last minute pre-recorded show

Movie Reviews

Tv/streaming, collections, great movies, chaz's journal, contributors, tom cruise: color him bankable.

"For years, all I had were a bed, a desk and a chair," Tom Cruise said. "When I was making a movie, they put me in hotel rooms. Between jobs, I moved back into my apartment, and my lifestyle dropped considerably."

Cruise was not talking about decades of struggle and poverty here. He is only 24, and his years in the room with the chair and the desk began when he was 18 -- when he moved to New York and started looking for work as an actor. New York is filled with young actors sitting on their beds and staring at their chairs and dreaming of the big time, but for Cruise, it happened quickly. He got a day's work on " Endless Love " the 1981 teenage romance film starring Brooke Shields . Then he played the crazy kid in " Taps ," opposite two other newcomers, Sean Penn and Timothy Hutton . Then he was steered into a horny teenager movie called "Losing It," but after that came 1983's " Risky Business " and then " Top Gun ," which probably will be the box-office champion of 1986. Now here he is, 24 years old, co-starring with Paul Newman in Martin Scorsese 's " The Color of Money ." To Hollywood's money men, no other young actor is more bankable than Tom Cruise.

"It's a strange thing, being handed so much power, to do whatever you want to do," he said, clasping his hands together and looking at the floor. "I'm offered a lot of movies, but I haven't worked in six or seven months, because I want to sit back and evaluate where I want to go next. My point of view and my values haven't changed. Everybody wants to push and pull me, but I refuse to change my lifestyle."

One day you were eating grilled cheese sandwiches, and the next day you became a famous movie star?

"Don't get me wrong. I want to be in this position. But I get inundated with so much information. I spend the day weeding through it. Charities, benefits, job offers, requests. And I don't want a huge company in front of me. I trust the people who work for me, and I spend time with them, and I want to hear their ideas and keep in touch. A lot of the challenge for me right now is simply to get my life together."

For Cruise, " Risky Business " was the breakthrough, a sensational debut in which he was all over the screen as a guilt-ridden, likable kid who got in lots of trouble. But " Top Gun " put him over the top, using sensational special effects and aerial sequences to tell the story of Navy F-14 pilots fighting to be the best. Cruise played the rash, talented young pilot nicknamed " Maverick " who not only had to prove himself, but vindicate the memory of his father. " Top Gun " has made Cruise the top box-office star of the year, and it's Hollywood folklore that with a hit that big, an actor can write his own ticket for a few years.

Even before " Top Gun " was released, however, Cruise was at work in " The Color of Money ," sort of a sequel to the 1961 movie " The Hustler ." In " The Color of Money ," Cruise plays a kid named Vincent Lauria, who is a brilliant pool player but a complete flake. Paul Newman reprises the role of "Fast Eddie" Felson - who, 25 years ago in " The Hustler ," was as hot as Vince is today.

The director of " The Color of Money " is Martin Scorsese, who knows pool halls; he staged a sudden, violent pool hall fight scene in his 1973 film " Mean Streets ." The director provides Vince with another Scorsese trademark, a punishing streak of jealousy. Like the Robert De Niro character in " Raging Bull ," Cruise is insecure about his hold on a sexy girlfriend ( Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio ), and Newman uses that insecurity as a way to manipulate him.

As an actor, Cruise has the qualities to walk the line between leading man and insecure kid. For this interview, he came dressed right out of " Top Gun ": cowboy boots, jeans and a brown leather bomber jacket. His hair is short, dark and preppy, and his face is interesting because when he smiles he has a wide-open, almost goofy sincerity. When serious, he can look so intense that you almost suspect the smile is a mask -- that his life has not been as sunny as it seems.

Cruise said he had a lonely childhood, and perhaps his acting is inspired by whatever resources he found to draw on during those years; maybe that's why he suggests greater depth than your average young movie actor. He was born in Syracuse, N.Y., the only boy among four children, and his parents divorced when he was young. Memories of these years were divulged reluctantly. "We stayed with my mother, and she moved around a lot. I went to five different high schools. Thirteen different schools in all. Growing up was . . ." Cruise paused. "I wouldn't go back to those years for anything. Life was always from one extreme to the next. I never really had any friends. I spent most of my time alone, doing different things, especially little plays and skits.

"In high school, I discovered drama. I was a singer, a solo tenor, and I was in glee clubs and choirs, and a teacher suggested I try out for a high school production of 'Guys and Dolls.' I got the role of Nathan Detroit. And onstage, working, playing the role, I felt just really happy. At last I was working in something I understood. See, school for me was really difficult because of my problems with reading. I was dyslexic. Finally, on the stage, I felt I had something I felt good about.

"So, I'd saved up a little money from various jobs, and I had no particular plans for college. I was thinking of spending the money for a trip to Europe. But after I finished appearing in the play, I told my folks, 'I'm going to New York to study to be an actor. I want to see how it goes.' "

And he did, taking the ancient and traditional route, living in poverty, working at odd jobs, attending acting classes, going to auditions.

"My first movie was a hell of an experience," Cruise said with a frown. "I got one day's work on ' Endless Love ,' and the director was always grabbing my chest. I wondered, what's going on around here? He did it a couple of times, and I walked away. It was all pretty strange. I was so naive, I didn't understand.

"Then I did ' Taps ,' which was a good experience, and then my agents at the time wanted me to do 'Losing It,' which was a teenage sex film. I felt uncomfortable with the subject matter, but the agents said, 'Do it, do it -- it's good for your career.' As it turned out, it was, because I learned a lot of things, including what kinds of movies to avoid."

In the meantime, Cruise said, he had told director Francis Coppola that he wanted to work for him and would take any role -- it didn't matter. Coppola invited him to workshops and rehearsals for the movie " Rumble Fish ," which starred Matt Dillon , Vincent Spano and Mickey Rourke , but then Cruise was offered the lead in " Risky Business ," and took it. That was probably the turning point in his career.

"A lot of people thought I was crazy to walk away from a Coppola movie to take what looked like another teenage sex comedy," Cruise said, "but I read the script and it was so well-written. So I took a chance."

Then came the sincere but unsuccessful youth movie " All the Right Moves ," with Cruise as a small-town Pennsylvania kid who depends on high-school football as his ticket out of town. "The thing I remember about that one," he said, "was the studio's insisting we put in a love scene, no matter whether it had anything to do with the story or not. It seemed so stupid and out of place."

Although " Risky Business " was his only really big box-office winner, Cruise was clearly in the top ranks of young Hollywood stars. " Top Gun " pushed him over the top. "It was the first time I'd played a character who was larger than life," he said, "and it was the first movie where I'd been involved from the early planning stages. Also, I was playing a slightly older character for a change - somebody about my age."

I told him the film had fallen into two parts for me. I liked all of the aerial sequences, with Cruise as the hot, young F-14 pilot, but the scenes on the ground -- especially his love affair with a flight instructor ( Kelly McGillis ) -- didn't seem convincing.

"Yeah. We had some problems there," he said. "Kelly is a fantastic actress. It wasn't her fault. I just remember scenes like the dinner scene we had together. It just never worked. Our relationship didn't have the dimension the other relationships in the movie had. The script wasn't right from the beginning. It was hard to make people believe a sexy woman like that would, first of all, be a flight instructor, and, second, be interested in a kid like me. It never really felt like a love story."

Was this another case of trying to force a romantic situation where none was really necessary?

But audiences didn't hold the romance against " Top Gun ," which has earned more than $150 million at the box office. Now here comes " The Color of Money ," with the dynamic teaming of Paul Newman and Cruise. The movie is not, strictly speaking, a sequel, but simply another chapter in Felson's lifelong obsession with pool. The story was clearly Paul Newman's home turf. I asked Cruise how they got along, and whether Newman made things easy for him.

"He didn't go out of his way to make me feel comfortable, or uncomfortable," Cruise said carefully. "He is who he is. I was nervous when I went to make the movie - I'm always nervous at the beginning of anything new - and here was Paul Newman, and I'd seen all of his movies, and you think about the characters he's played - not only the strong and good ones, but also the movies like 'Slap Shot' and ' The Verdict ,' with the grungy characters, foul-mouthed and drunk. He's got such a wide range. And when you meet him, he's intelligent, dignified, very elegant. He could have easily intimidated me. But he put me at ease. What he's most concerned about is his rapport with the audience. He wants the audience to connect with him."

So there wasn't any shop talk between the young actor and the great old veteran?

"With acting, there are no tricks of the trade. That's what I think. You learn the basics of creating the character, and you do the best you can. He never said, 'This is how I do things.' He never pulled the wise old guy routine."

So how did you create the character?

"I didn't want Vince to come over as an arrogant young hot-shot. There is always a kind of arrogance in youth, of course, and here's this kid who knows how good he can play pool. His weak point is the woman, the woman of all women for him, and she was the controlling element in his life that he needed.

"Scorsese talked with me about the woman: 'She's those girls at the soda shop when I was growing up, tough girls who hung out and really weren't so tough after all.' For this character I play, apart from pool, his contact with reality is 'The A-Team' and ' Star Wars .' He works in a toy store, and here is this incredible woman he is so possessive about. That vulnerability is what keeps him from being too arrogant."

In " The Hustler ," Willie Mosconi did a lot of the shots, but in " The Color of Money " no shots are faked, and the audience can see that you and Newman are really hitting the balls yourself.

"Actually, Newman made his own shots in ' The Hustler ,' too," Cruise said. "I think there was only one shot by Mosconi. For this movie, I spent months learning to shoot pool. Mike Siegel, the world straight pool champion, was my coach. There is one scene where the camera goes in a 360-degree circle without a single cut, and I have to clean off the whole table. We shot it 18 times."

Until you finally got it right?

Cruise laughed. "I cleared the table 17 out of 18 times. It was just a case of getting everything lined up at once - the table, the camera, the placement of the camera. You couldn't plan it all in advance, because if one shot was a half-inch off, it changed the next shot."

Have you ever hustled pool for money?

"Once. We shot the movie in Chicago, and I went to the Blues Bar. I won $1.50. I was pretty proud of myself."

And now you have " Top Gun " and " The Color of Money " in the theaters. And you're still living with a bed and a desk and a chair?

"I've moved into a new apartment and I'm remodeling it. And it's a funny thing, the movies. The contractor was there yesterday with his young son, and I was showing him some models of the F-14 fighter, because he'd seen the movie and he really liked it. And the contractor told me that after they went home, the kid said he'd really like to meet that Maverick guy. And the contractor said, 'That was him -- that was Tom Cruise. He was the guy who played Maverick.'

"And the kid said, 'Naw, Dad. Maverick's cool.' "

Roger Ebert

Roger Ebert was the film critic of the Chicago Sun-Times from 1967 until his death in 2013. In 1975, he won the Pulitzer Prize for distinguished criticism.

Latest blog posts

Speed Kills: On the 25th Anniversary of Go

Joanna Arnow Made Her BDSM Comedy for You

The Movies That Underwent Major Changes After Their Festival Premiere

Netflix's Dead Boy Detectives Is A Spinoff Stuck In Limbo

Latest reviews.

Challengers

Matt zoller seitz.

Boy Kills World

Simon abrams.

Monica Castillo

The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed

Brian Tallerico

Unsung Hero

Christy lemire.

Director Joseph Kosinski on set with Tom Cruise and Chris McQuarrie during the filming of Top Gun: Maverick

Filed under:

Top Gun: Maverick’s director explains how he convinced Tom Cruise to come back

“I had 30 minutes to pitch this film. When I got there, I found Tom really didn’t want to make another Top Gun .”

Share this story

Share this on Facebook
Share this on Reddit
Share All sharing options

Share All sharing options for: Top Gun: Maverick’s director explains how he convinced Tom Cruise to come back

Nearly 40 years ago, Top Gun made moviegoers feel a small fraction of the thrill that comes with being a fighter pilot — in part thanks to Kenny Loggins’ anthem “Danger Zone,” but also largely due to the talents of the cast and crew, under the direction of the late Tony Scott. Arriving in theaters decades later, Top Gun: Maverick has to do right not just by the fans, but by the first film’s creators. How do you make audiences accustomed to the casual magic of CGI feel like they’re in the cockpit with these pilots in 2022 the way Top Gun did in 1986? For director Joe Kosinski, the answer was: You do it for real.

As his previous films Tron: Legacy and Oblivion prove, Kosinski is accomplished at both making unlikely sequels to decades-old films and delivering blockbuster action starring Tom Cruise. Top Gun: Maverick shows the director combining these talents for a throwback summer blockbuster that feels real in a way big-budget movies haven’t in some time.

In a call with Polygon, Kosinski dove into the way Top Gun: Maverick makes viewers feel like they’re in those jets, how he convinced Tom Cruise to star, and how the right villain for a Top Gun movie might just be no one.

Polygon: Let’s start with your connection to Top Gun . What was your experience like with the first movie?

Joseph Kosinski: I saw the movie for the first time as a 12-year-old kid, and for me, it was the prototype for the ultimate summer movie. It made Tom Cruise a superstar, and [producer Jerry] Bruckheimer and [producer Don] Simpson had done Beverly Hills Cop and Flashdance at that point. When you saw that dual lightning strike at the beginning of a movie, it meant you were gonna have a good time.

But otherwise, it was not necessarily a movie that I had revisited a lot, until Jerry sent over an early version of a script in 2017 that he wanted me to take a look at. I’d made [ Oblivion ] with Tom at that point, and obviously had an incredible experience doing that.

Was everyone on board for Maverick from the start?

So I read the script, I had some ideas, and Jerry liked those ideas. He said, “You know what, you gotta go pitch this to Tom directly.” So we flew to Paris, where Tom was shooting Mission: Impossible , we got about a half hour of his time between setups. And I basically had 30 minutes to pitch this film, which I didn’t realize when we were flying over. But when I got there, I found that Tom really didn’t want to make another Top Gun .

It’s one of those moments as a director, you have one on every film, where you’re on the spot to make a case for why this movie should be made. I had 30 minutes to do it. And at the end of the pitch, he picked up the phone, he called the head of Paramount Pictures and said, “We’re making another Top Gun .” It’s pretty impressive to see the power of a real movie star in that moment.

How did you pitch it to Tom Cruise? Did he tell you what convinced him?

Well, I worked with Tom, and I knew to start with character and emotion. I just pitched this idea of Bradley Bradshaw (Miles Teller) growing up to become a naval aviator, and him and Maverick having this fractured relationship that had never been repaired. With Maverick getting called back to train this group of students to go on a mission that he knows is very, very dangerous.

The conflict [is about] the difference between being an aviator who goes in and risks his own life, and someone who’s in a more senior position that has to send others in to risk their lives. I talked to some Navy admirals who talked about that difference. It’s a different sort of pressure, it’s almost harder to send others in rather than go yourself. And to me, it felt like that leveraged the emotion of the past film and those relationships that we all love, but took it in a new direction. So that’s where I started.

A behind the scenes shot of Tom Cruise standing in front of a memorial at the Top Gun school in Top Gun: Maverick.

I think that was honestly the element that really grabbed Tom, because it gave him an emotional reason to return to this character. The second thing was, what’s Maverick been doing? You know, where do we find him? And this is kind of my own passion, you know, coming through and pitching the Darkstar sequence [in the beginning], just being someone who has always loved airplanes and aerospace and studied aerospace engineering and mechanical engineering and loved The Right Stuff . So the idea of finding him as a test pilot on the bleeding edge of what’s possible seemed to me like the perfect way to find him, and Tom loved that.

He also must’ve loved how you planned to shoot this.

I showed him some videos of Navy pilots who put GoPros in their cockpits, and I said, “You know, this is out on the internet for free. If we can’t beat this, there’s no point in making this.” And he agreed. And then finally, I just had the title, you know, which I think kind of summed it all up. “We aren’t going to call it Top Gun 2 , we’re going to call it Top Gun: Maverick .” It’s a character-driven story, a drama with this giant action film around it. And that to me was what a Top Gun movie is.

Let’s talk a little bit about that Darkstar sequence. Jerry Bruckheimer says you were heavily involved in its conception.

Yeah, I mean, it was my dream. Skunk Works is this division of Lockheed that makes these planes that are top secret. They fly at night, no one knows they exist. We find out about them 20, 30 years after they fly.

I had just done a movie that was financed by Fred Smith, who is the founder of FedEx. And he told me he had a contact at Lockheed. He had just done a tour there — it helps to have friends in high places. He set up a meeting between Jerry, I, and Skunk Works, and we drove out into the middle of Palmdale and met with their senior staff. And I just said, “Listen, I want to put an airplane in this film that does this , this , and this . I know you guys have some experience in that area. We’re gonna give people a glimpse of something they’ve never seen before.”

Tom Cruise does some mechanic stuff, hotly, in Top Gun: Maverick.

And they said yes. I think the real reason they helped us was so we could make it as real as possible, but not too real, you know? We changed a couple of details so we’re not giving any secrets away, but it has a lot of features and details for people who really are into this world. I think they’ll get a kick out of it.

How do you get people excited about these pilots and the planes? Like other people I’ve talked to about it, I had an experience watching this, like, “Apparently I really like planes. Have I always been this way?”

Our approach is a classic movie approach. The only thing they could do in the ’80s was capture this stuff, at least the exterior shots, for real. You just can’t fake what it feels like to be in one of these jets, the forces, the way the light changes, the vibration, the sense of speed, all of that. There’s just no replacement for that.

I’ve noticed that people see this movie, and they just keep saying the same thing over and over: “It just feels so real.” And it’s funny, because maybe we’ve lost track of that a little bit with fantasy films or superhero films, where they’re creating images that you can’t capture for real. So you rely on CGI. But there’s just something different about capturing it for real. And for this film, we found a way to do it. And it just feels different.

In the original Top Gun , the villains aren’t really named. In Maverick , the pilots are training for a mission against a vague “shadow state.” What went into that decision?

It was specifically designed to be a faceless, nameless enemy, just like the first film. You know, this is a movie about friendship and sacrifice and teamwork and competition, just like the first film. It’s not a movie about geopolitics. We didn’t want it to be. So we designed it that way — the jets are fictional, they’re faceless enemies. The mission itself is about keeping the world safe.

And that was all by design, just because we wanted the focus to be on on the Maverick story, and his relationship with these characters. We made the movie in 2018. We started filming in 2018. And, you know, the world changes constantly. It’s really hard to make something that feels relevant, because the world is always changing.

IMDbPro Starmeter 99 2

Tom Cruise at an event for Top Gun: Maverick (2022)

Contact info
64 wins & 119 nominations total

Photos 1992

Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman in Eyes Wide Shut (1999)

Nathan Algren

Jerry Maguire

Chief John Anderton
Post-production
Cage (rumored)
In Development
Pre-production

Tom Cruise, Ving Rhames, Rebecca Ferguson, Simon Pegg, Hayley Atwell, Pom Klementieff, Vanessa Kirby, and Mariela Garriga in Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)

Capt. Pete 'Maverick' Mitchell

Tom Cruise and Pom Klementieff in Au Revoir, Chris Hemsworth (2020)

Team Member

Tom Cruise, Ving Rhames, Henry Cavill, Rebecca Ferguson, and Simon Pegg in Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018)

Nick Morton

Tom Cruise in Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (2016)

Jack Reacher

Tom Cruise, Alec Baldwin, Ving Rhames, Rebecca Ferguson, Simon Pegg, and Jeremy Renner in Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015)

Stacee Jaxx

Tom Cruise, Simon Pegg, Jeremy Renner, and Paula Patton in Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011)

Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg
producer (produced by)

Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible III (2006)

producer (uncredited)

Hayden Christensen and Peter Sarsgaard in Shattered Glass (2003)

executive producer

Ray Liotta and Jason Patric in Narc (2002)

In-development projects at IMDbPro

Personal details

Tomu Kurûzu
5′ 7″ (1.70 m)
July 3 , 1962
Syracuse, New York, USA
Spouses Katie Holmes November 18, 2006 - August 20, 2012 (divorced, 1 child)
Children Isabella Jane Cruise
Parents Thomas Mapother III
Relatives William Mapother (Cousin)
Other works Played Nathan Detroit in a high school production of "Guys and Dolls"
12 Print Biographies
9 Portrayals
32 Interviews
145 Articles
21 Pictorials
764 Magazine Cover Photos

Did you know

Trivia His acting idol is Paul Newman . Much to the delight of Cruise, they became good friends during work on The Color of Money (1986) . Newman got him into racing, and Cruise ultimately raced on his team.
Quotes The thing about filmmaking is I give it everything, that's why I work so hard. I always tell young actors to take charge. It's not that hard. Sign your own checks, be responsible.
Trademarks Often plays romantic leading men with an edge
Salaries Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part Two ( 2025 ) $13,000,000 + % of back end
How old is Tom Cruise?
When was Tom Cruise born?
Where was Tom Cruise born?

More to explore

Add demo reel with IMDbPro

How much have you seen?

Top Gun's Kelly McGillis Confirms What We Suspected About Tom Cruise's On-Set Behavior

Fans are eagerly awaiting Tom Cruise's fighter to kick the tires and light the fires in the long-awaited sequel "Top Gun: Maverick," which, after many delays , is finally set to hit theaters in May. Cruise is indisputably one of Hollywood's biggest stars and, at times, a polarizing figure due to his personal life. The three-time Oscar nominee has starred in over 50 movies and is also a successful producer (via IMDb ).

Cruise is known for his work in well-known films like "Risky Business," "The Outsiders," "Legend," and "All the Right Moves," but his performance as daredevil Navy aviator Pete "Maverick" Mitchell in 1986's "Top Gun" is remembered as the one that made him a full-fledged movie star. The action flick, directed by the late Tony Scott, also stars Anthony Edwards, Kelly McGillis , Val Kilmer, and Meg Ryan. In this year's "Top Gun: Maverick," Cruise is poised to return to the Naval Fighter Weapons School as an instructor who will train the latest crop of hotshot pilots.

McGillis, who played Charlotte "Charlie" Blackwood in the original film, revealed to Entertainment Tonight in 2019 that she wasn't asked to reprise her role in the "Top Gun" sequel. Instead, Cruise's character has a new lady in his life, Penny Benjamin, played by Jennifer Connelly ("A Beautiful Mind"). According to CinemaBlend , Benjamin owns a bar near the famous flight school.

Due to some high-profile off-screen hijinks and a long association with the controversial Church of Scientology, Cruise has earned a bit of a mixed public reputation. With that in mind, you might expect that his on-set behavior matches his eccentric tabloid headlines. Not so, reports McGillis, who has only nice things to say about her former on-screen love interest, confirming our long-held belief that Cruise might be a little more down-to-Earth than his reputation suggests.

Kelly McGillis called her Top Gun co-star 'wonderful'

In a 2013 interview with the Los Angeles Times , Kelly McGillis recalled that, except for Tom Cruise and Val Kilmer, the "Top Gun" cast stayed at the same hotel during the shoot and had a lot of time to bond. "There was definitely a big ensemble group camaraderie," she said.

She went on to say that Cruise was "incredibly respectful, polite, and very honest." Similarly, she had nothing but good things to say about the actor in a 2013 interview with Yahoo! Movies . "I think Tom is terrific. He's the sweetest guy," said McGillis. "He is very genuine and sincere and respectful. And I just loved working with Tom. I think he is wonderful."

Although the upcoming sequel has thrust McGillis back into the spotlight, the actress doesn't appear much interested in fame these days. In 2019, McGillis told ET, "To me, my relationships to other people became far more important than my relationship to fame."

McGillis also admitted that she hasn't kept in touch with her former co-stars, and at the time, she hadn't seen the trailer for "Top Gun: Maverick" and appeared somewhat ambivalent about watching the finished product.

Notably, "Top Gun: Maverick" actress Jennifer Connelly appears to share her predecessor's high opinion of Cruise , particularly when it comes to his professionalism and unparalleled work ethic on set.

"I've never seen anyone work harder, be more committed to his work," Connelly told CinemaBlend in 2020. "Every moment is an opportunity to do all that he can do to deliver the best thing that he can possibly deliver."

McGillis compared filming Top Gun to being at summer camp

In addition to enjoying her time working alongside Tom Cruise, Kelly McGillis told Yahoo! Movies that the entire "Top Gun" cast was close. She recalled that, after shooting, they would throw parties and play sports to unwind.

"We just had a good time. We all hung out and we would play tennis and basketball and it was just fun," she told the outlet. McGillis went on to say that it was like being at a summer camp where everyone worked together and played together afterward.

In 2019, she told ET that movies create unique relationships because they bring people so close for brief moments in their lives. "I think I've spoken to a couple of people occasionally, but the truth is, movies are very odd work situations because you have a lot of people who come together from all different parts of the world," she said.

Despite her positive memories of being on set and her appreciation for the life-changing role, McGillis has been honest about why she wasn't brought back for a sequel. Back in 2013, she speculated that she wouldn't be invited back because of her age and appearance.

"You hear women of my age talk about this all the time," she told the Los Angeles Times. "I think this industry is not particularly kind to women who are over 50. I am not into the coloring of my hair, doing the Botox and getting a facelift."

While she isn't involved with the upcoming sequel, McGill told ET that she's happy for Connelly to have the part.

"Top Gun: Maverick" begins playing in theaters on May 27.

War News | Military History | Military News

Checkout this interview footage of the ‘top gun’ cast onboard the uss enterprise (cvn-65).

In 1986, moviegoers went bananas over the release of Top Gun . The film, which offered the general public a look into what the US Navy ‘s TOPGUN school is like, expedited Tom Cruise ‘s ascent into superstardom and made serving as a naval aviator so appealing that the service actually set up recruitment tables in the lobbies of movie theaters.

Now, 36 years later, the film’s sequel, Top Gun: Maverick , has debuted in theaters. Once again starring Cruise as Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, it has fast become a blockbuster hit, earning hundreds of millions of dollars worldwide. Its success is down to a number of factors, largely the incredible air scenes featuring real-life naval aviators and the nostalgia watching the film brings about for those who watched the first in theaters.

Those feeling nostalgia for the movie are going to love this decades-old interview , which was unearthed by The Drive in 2018.

The interview takes place onboard the USS Enterprise (CVN-65), the Navy’s first nuclear-powered aircraft carrier . It was filmed prior to Top Gun ‘s release, and features co-stars Tom Cruise, Tim Robbins and Anthony Edwards, as well as director Tony Scott, discussing their experiences filming the movie.

There are also behind-the-scenes clips that show the cast during the filming process, complete with 1980s-era music.

Anthony Edwards and Tom Cruise as Pete "Maverick" Mitchell and Nick "Goose" Bradshaw in 'Top Gun

Cruise discusses why he took on the role, at first joking that he only accepted the part for money, before sharing that it came at the right time, as he’d just finished filming the 1985 movie, Legend . After this, he compliments his co-stars, explaining how much he enjoyed working with everyone.

Edwards, who was then most famous for portraying Gilbert Lowe in 1984’s Revenge of the Nerds , cracks plenty of jokes throughout the interview, not unlike his character, Nick “Goose” Bradshaw. He proudly states that he feels his role is the best in the entire film, eliciting chuckles from his co-stars.

Robbins, who became a star in his own right two years later for his portrayal of Ebby Calvin “Nuke” LaLoosh in Bull Durham , then goes on to comment on how his role is much smaller than his co-stars. In fact, he goes so far as to compare Samuel “Merlin” Wells to a magician, saying he disappears at the beginning of the film, only to reappear at the end.

Anthony Edwards as Nick "Goose" Bradshaw in 'Top Gun'

More from us: Tom Cruise Created Intense Flight Training Program for ‘Top Gun: Maverick’ Co-Stars

When asked about their reaction to seeing the Enterprise for the first time, the cast largely shared the same awe-struck reaction, with Edwards even noting that he “had an erection” at the time. They were later questioned about how they adjusted to life on an aircraft carrier – something that’s difficult for Navy sailors – and they responded that, “yes,” it took some time to get used to it.

We don’t know about anyone else, but we could rewatch this interview over and over again.

site categories

How ‘the daily show’ is thriving post-trevor noah with return of jon stewart, revolving hosts and an election season – contenders tv: doc + unscripted, breaking news.

What Makes Tom Cruise’s Star Shine So Brightly? Directors Share Their Insights – Cannes Disruptors

By Mike Fleming Jr

Mike Fleming Jr

Co-Editor-in-Chief, Film

Valeria Golino Masterclass, Claude Barras' 'Sauvages' & Daniel Burman's 'Transmitzvah' Added To Cannes Lineup

Here, a group of directors, producers and actors look back on their Cruise experience and why Hollywood won’t see another global superstar quite like this one.

Top Gun & Top Gun: Maverick

“Tom was our first and only choice for Top Gun , that’s who Tony Scott liked, and Don and I really pursued him,” recalls Jerry Bruckheimer, who produced the original hit with late partner Don Simpson. “I don’t think he was a pilot back then, but he just had the charisma and we loved what we saw in his film career. You could tell he was a terrific actor and that is so much of what it is all about.”

It was to become Cruise’s signature immersion into the process of preparation. “He went down to Miramar in advance and hung out with a lot of the pilots, found out what they liked and why they did what they did. He just cares so much, and not only about his character but the whole movie. A lot of actors walk into a role and just worry about themselves and how they’re perceived. Never Tom. That was the way he was back in ’85 when we made the first one, and he showed it again this time.”

On the first film, Cruise was the only cast member who didn’t lose his lunch while filming dialogue scenes inside those roaring jets. Mindful of that unpleasant experience, he made it his mission to make sure the new crop of actors playing Top Gun pilots in the sequel fared better.

“We learned on the first one,” Bruckheimer says. “He was the only one we got good footage on; we couldn’t use the footage on the other actors because he was the only one who didn’t throw up. So, Tom designed a flying program for all the actors this time. It took months to do this. First, they went up in a single engine prop plane, just to get a feel for flying. Then, an aerobatic prop plane, and then a jet, and once they were comfortable in that jet, he put them in the F-18. Tom designed [the process] himself to acclimate the actors to the G forces they would experience.”

Kosinski previously directed Cruise in the 2013 sci-fi film Oblivion . In the Top Gun sequel, the director says Cruise put so much into mentoring the young actors on set who were in awe of him. “Tom is an actor that, if you can get him interested in your project, then you can do almost anything,” Kosinski says. “When you combine that with something beloved like Top Gun , it becomes an unstoppable force when you go to make it. We needed that on this movie because what we were doing was very intense and there were a lot of things that hadn’t been done before. Having Tom there to push through the ideas and techniques we were going to use was really helpful. Tom knew just how difficult capturing those images would be, just how physically grueling it would be for the actors.

“I remember one day on the carrier, when Tom was sitting with these young actors, most of them just starting their careers,” Kosinski adds. “Miles Teller has a lot under his belt, but the rest were new. For them, every day was like a master class, and he would make time for them every day. He would sit down and have these impromptu sessions with the actors, either to talk about the scenes we were shooting that day, the technical aspects of shooting an aerial sequence, or broader advice, like how to build a career. I remember Tom asked Glen (Powell), what kind of career do you want? Glen said, ‘I want your career, Tom.’ So, Tom said, ‘How do you think I got that?’ Glen said, ‘By choosing great roles.’ And Tom said, ‘No. That’s not how I did it. I did it by choosing great films. Then, I took the roles and made them the best I could.’ That advice blew Glen’s mind. If you look at Tom’s career, that’s exactly what he did. He chose great films and directors he admired. Regardless of the size of the role, especially on a movie like Taps . And then he created something with it, made the role his own. That’s something these younger actors hadn’t thought about and can only get from someone who spent 30 years as a movie star. I thought it was really interesting to watch.”

Jerry Maguire

Cruise’s turn as the star sports agent who loses his throne after an existential crisis would mark his second Oscar nomination and one of his best-remembered performances.

Cruise shows a different side in the romantic comedy. Writer-director Cameron Crowe wrote many lines that were execution-dependent, that would be the difference between heartwarming and cringe-worthy, and Cruise embraced all of them. That includes the climactic scene, when Maguire pleads with his estranged wife (Renée Zellweger) to give him another chance, a plea delivered in a crowd of pessimistic women who’ve all had their hearts broken by cads.

“Oh, Tom couldn’t wait for that scene,” Crowe says. “I was a little nervous about some of the lines, like, ‘You complete me.’ It’s a slippery slope; if you lean wrong into a line like that, it’d probably be the first thing you cut. But he said, ‘I want to say I love you in this movie, and I want to say it with that line.’ And by the time he got to it, it was two in the morning, at the end of a long week.

“Tom surprised the women because we didn’t tell them that he would be there to do the scene with them that day. In he comes, and in the most loving way, this heavyweight was ready for the knockout. He gently crushed it. The ladies were crying. The crew members were crying. And Renée was a mess. He just took great pleasure in being able to deliver a line that he knew I was on the fence about. He’d said, ‘Just give me a shot, man. You’ll see if I got it, or if I didn’t.’ And, you know, I’m still just so proud of it.”

Crowe recalls other ways that Cruise endeared himself to those around him, from one late night when an In-N-Out Burger truck showed up, courtesy of the actor, or the way he handled the first young actor who pulled out of the precocious child part that eventually went to Jonathan Lipnicki.

“Tom stayed in touch with the mother of the kid who had asked to be replaced,” Crowe says. “Tom wrote him and called and sent him stuff. I only knew this because his mother called to say, ‘Thank you for everything Tom Cruise has done to make my son feel good about even being in the movie and working with him as much as he did.’ I went to Tom on the set and said I couldn’t believe what he’d done, spending the last few weeks making sure his spirits were high. Tom just said, ‘Well, I just don’t want that guy growing up, looking at movies and feeling disappointed about what happened. I want him to love movies.’ Wow.”

When Russell Crowe changed his plan from playing the assassin who conscripts a cab driver to drive him to a series of murders in Collateral , director Michael Mann went right to the doorstep of Cruise, even though it would be a decided departure from the actor’s résumé of hero roles.

“In Tom, I saw Lee Marvin,” Mann says. “When Tom zeroes into a certain kind of person, if they are far enough away from him so that it’s a turn-on for a man of adventure, to be on some kind of a frontier with a character he can get to know but is very different from him, I could tell that within him it becomes a real adventure. To play Vincent, this solipsistic sociopath, who has all the f*cking answers and is so methodical and good at what he does, it felt like Tom was a perfect fit. He’s a perfectionist about knowing how to do the things he is supposed to do, which is why he does his own stunts in Mission: Impossible . The sociopathy of this guy was so unique, in his cosmic indifference and outrageous statements that still crack me up when I see some of the scenes with Jamie Foxx in the taxi cab. ‘You ever hear of Rwanda? So, what do you care about one fat guy who gets thrown out the window?’ Or answering Jamie’s accusation of ‘you killed him’ with, ‘I didn’t kill him. The bullets killed him and then he fell out the window.’ The flat irony of Tom’s delivery on those lines is so perfect. It was a very different character for him, and I knew Tom would throw himself into whatever I needed to take him through to become that assassin.”

When I mention the memorable shootout scene in the nightclub and that Cruise’s proficiency with weaponry is reminiscent of the acumen shown by Keanu Reeves in the John Wick films, Mann is quick to correct the record.

“ John Wick’ s are not real techniques,” he says. “What Tom did, those are real techniques and there was a lot of training with my friend Mick Gould, who was the head of close-quarter combat training for the British SAS. The scene in the alley, there’s no cut in that scene… It came down to doing the work. There was nothing he was doing that wasn’t established close-quarter combat moves that came from months of training. That included blending in. Obviously, people know Tom, but I wanted him to feel what it would be like to blend in, to mix with people and have conversations. He went to Central Market and trained to be a FedEx delivery guy. He said to me, ‘They’re gonna know it’s me.’ I said, ‘No, they’ll see the sign that says FedEx, and you’ll wear sunglasses and a cap and carry that portable computer that drivers used to have when they made deliveries.’ Tom went in and delivered something to a liquor stand and sat down and struck up a conversation with a couple people and insinuated himself into the lives of others. There was a lot of psychological training he did. Tom is a dream. He sees the adventure in what we do, just the way I do, and I imagine other directors do. He just goes for it.”

Mission: Impossible

After scripting the Cruise World War II thriller Valkyrie , Christopher McQuarrie became the actor-producer’s creative partner on the Mission: Impossible franchise with 2015’s Rogue Nation , 2018’s Fallout , the recently completed Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One and the eighth installment currently in production. Cruise had stepped up his commitment to outrageously ambitious stunts right before McQuarrie got there, when Brad Bird directed Ghost Protocol , and Cruise scaled the glassy exterior of the world’s largest skyscraper in Dubai, 123 floors up. But it was on McQuarrie’s watch that Cruise hung from the exterior of a flying Airbus A400M in midair for Rogue Nation , and when Cruise broke his ankle after a leap during a chase in which he crashed into a wall. It was a rare mishap, and McQuarrie feels that Cruise is so meticulous in his stunt prep and so confident in his ability to walk away unscathed, that the director swallows hard and says yes.

“I was asked once by a film student: ‘How do you know when you’ve made it?’” McQuarrie says. “I said, ‘You don’t make it. You’re making it. Actively. All the time. May you never make it. May you always be making it. May you look back one day on all you’ve made and go right on making more.’ Tom embodies that. There is no finish line, no pinnacle, no summit. He applies all he’s learned to something new, then studies it with brutal honesty: Where did we go wrong? Where did we go right? How do we apply it to the next thing? How do we push the limits of what is possible? How do we create the most immersive, engaging experience for the widest possible audience? How do we do all that with an emphasis on character and story first? Tom’s not still here by accident.”

McQuarrie could not recall a stunt Cruise insisted on doing that the filmmaker tried to talk him out of. “I get asked that a lot,” he says. “Honestly, no. Is there anything I wish I hadn’t suggested? Absolutely. When I’m sitting in an A400M with the engines running and my friend is strapped to the fuselage, I’m thinking, Maybe I should have kept this one to myself. The truth is, that stunt seems tame now. What we’ve done since, I still can’t believe. If my hair could get any whiter, it would… Tom understands how all of the individual parts function. His level of preparation is exceedingly present and aware. The bigger the stakes, the higher the awareness. That awareness is contagious and enormously clarifying.”

J.J. Abrams made his feature directorial debut on Mission: Impossible III , the one in which Phillip Seymour Hoffman went mano a mano with Cruise after kidnapping the agent’s wife (Michelle Monaghan). Abrams says the stunts weren’t as eye popping as the ones in the films directed by McQuarrie and Bird (Abrams is a producer of all of those films). While Abrams was a hotshot TV director and showrunner with Alias , Cruise pushed for him to direct, despite his being untested on the big screen.

“I blame Tom Cruise entirely on my having a career,” Abrams says. “He did all the impossible heavy lifting I don’t think anyone could have done to give me a shot. I will be forever grateful for everything he did.”

They met when Cruise and Steven Spielberg wanted Abrams to script War of the Worlds (scheduling didn’t work) and they cooked up a Mission: Impossible movie different from the one Paramount thought it was going to make. “While I was shooting the Lost pilot, Tom watched Alias and asked if I would be interested in Mission: Impossible . They were meant to shoot that other version of Mission . Steven was meant to shoot Munich and then War of the Worlds , and somehow Tom convinced both Steven and the studio, and it seemed like a herculean task only Tom could do, but he managed to reorder the films. Steven agreed to do War of the Worlds first, and Mission: Impossible got moved to after. What I remember is that I had a meeting with Tom and Sherry Lansing, who was high on this other version of the movie. I remember Tom basically saying, that he and I were going to do Mission: Impossible together. I remember Sherry saying she liked the other script and Tom saying, ‘This is the one we’re going to do.’ And she said, ‘OK.’ I’m sitting there, watching him take a wild chance on someone who had never directed a feature before, and I couldn’t believe it was me. I came to learn that kind of thing is a normal Tuesday for Tom.”

Any fear Abrams had that the film’s star and producer would impose himself on a young director was quickly allayed. Abrams says Cruise had a clear understanding of the lanes each occupied, and that he relied on good directors to push him to do his best work.

“Any first film is a surreal experience,” Abrams says. “To have it be something where the first day you are filming in Rome with Tom Cruise on a Mission: Impossible set, now that is incredibly surreal. On the second film I directed, which was Star Trek in 2009, I remember getting to the set the first day and feeling the palpable sense of the absence of Tom Cruise. Which is to say, I had only known shooting a movie with Tom, which was a kind of gift you can’t find anywhere else. You have someone who you always know is working as hard — if not harder — trying to make something work, and he is number one on the call sheet. It’s an incredible rarity.”

American Made

Doug Liman, who directed Cruise in the fact-based American Made , the sci-fi Edge of Tomorrow and the upcoming film they’ll shoot in outer space, got to see more than most filmmakers what it is that makes Cruise tick.

“I lived with Tom when we made American Made ,” Liman says. “When you work with Tom, it’s a seven-days-a-week job. No matter how hard a worker you are, and I consider myself that, it’s nothing compared to Tom. After 40 or 50 straight days, we were coming up on July 4 weekend. It happens his birthday is July 3 and I’m thinking that since his birthday happened to fall on a holiday, maybe Tom will want to have a long weekend off to celebrate his birthday somewhere. I mention to Tom, ‘Are you thinking of going away for your birthday?’ Tom says, ‘No. I was thinking since we have the day off on July 3, we can use that time to have the eight-hour aviation meeting that we’ve been having trouble scheduling.’ I am beyond tired and I’m like, ‘You want to have an eight-hour meeting on your birthday?’ He said, ‘Yes, that’s what I want for my birthday. I want to be making a movie. That’s the best birthday present.’ There was no blowing out candles, either.”

“Cake? No, Tom doesn’t eat cake. You don’t get to look the way he looks, by eating birthday cake. You have to make a life choice there. You know the suit of armor, the exoskeletons he wore on Edge of Tomorrow ? They were extremely heavy, cumbersome, took 10 minutes to get on and off and was too heavy for him to sit in between takes. He would get out of the armor and go, we’re wasting all this time, me getting in and out of this suit. So, Tom gets this idea that, between setups, it would save time if, instead of getting in and out of his suit, we converted a child’s swing set into something with hooks that he could hang from, in between setups.”

For the result, picture the gangster Carbone, hanging from a meat hook in the freezer truck in Goodfellas .

“Yeah, that is the visual,” Liman says.

“Living with Tom on American Made , I came to the conclusion that it would be like if you imagined a premise for a high concept movie, where you got to wake up and be Tom Cruise for the day. He gets up with so much energy. He was a real taskmaster when it came to chores in the house. We didn’t have a housekeeper, for security reasons, and we had to clean the house. He would constantly pull out a pot that I had already cleaned and put back, and say, ‘This is not clean.’”

Liman is circumspect about timing and the story he and Cruise will film in space, but not the intent. “The thing both of us have in common is, we’re not interested in the gimmick of shooting a movie in outer space,” he says. “For Tom and me, it’s a challenge to make sure we make a movie that is so frigging good it can survive the inevitable criticism, ‘Did they really have to go into space to shoot that?’”

Barry Levinson, who directed Rain Man with Cruise, saw the film win Oscars for Best Picture, Best Director and Best Actor for Dustin Hoffman’s turn as the autistic savant. Cruise wasn’t nominated for playing Charlie Babbitt, the hustler who kidnaps his brother Raymond and drives him to L.A. to claim an inheritance, but in Levinson’s mind, “Tom had the harder job,” he says. “It was a difficult role because he basically had to drive the movie. Otherwise, Raymond would just be content to sit in a motel. His obligation is to continually drive it and push him, and at the same time not exhaust the audience with a one-beat, ‘C’mon, we’re going.’ It was a very hard role, and he never got the credit he deserved for that film.”

Levinson got the job after Martin Brest, Spielberg and then Sydney Pollack were in and then out because of the tricky nature of the material. Levinson says they found the movie while shooting on the road trip, and what surprised him was Cruise’s skill in improv, and willingness to try most anything they could think of.

“When Sydney dropped out, we were seven weeks out from shooting and we hit the road and kept working on dealing with the relationship between the two of them as we went along,” Levinson says. “We did an extensive amount of ad-libbing and improv work for that film, and Tom jumped in there and ran with it. It was at that point very different for him, not only to be that type of character, but also because the movie was a two-hander. It’s just these two guys basically, and they’ve got to carry the movie. Tom was never resistant to the idea of, well let’s just see what happens if we do this. I said to him once, ‘Let’s get in a car, I wonder if the audience is thinking, the brother hasn’t done anything for Raymond. I think he needs to do something so at least he has made an attempt to deal with him.’ He said, ‘Well, what about if I gave him fresh underwear? That will lead to an argument. Raymond can’t wear that because he gets his underwear in Cincinnati.’ That was the basis of the idea to just have a little something, riding in the car. The two worked really well with each other. I know it sounds like it can’t be true, but it was as good a relationship between the two guys and in terms of what we were trying to accomplish. They were both contributing, and Tom was the one who had to push this movie all the time and I think Dustin would acknowledge that. You keep slowly seeing the changes, as he becomes more emotionally attached to his brother.”

A Few Good Men

To A Few Good Men director Rob Reiner, there is just about nothing Tom Cruise can’t do as an actor, and so he was not at all surprised by the way he went toe-to-toe with Jack Nicholson in his prime during that electric courtroom scene.

“I’ll tell you something. He’s a great actor,” Reiner says. “I know in the last many years he has been doing his Mission: Impossible movies and different things. It seems every really good actor, whether it’s Chris Evans or Mark Ruffalo, they are all in these big action pictures. The thing Tom used to do is, he used to balance that out. I would love to see him do some things that aren’t the franchise films. I’d seen him do things like Taps , Risky Business , and I never worried about him going up against Nicholson because Tom has an incredible work ethic. At that time, I’d never met a young actor with as much dedication as he had to the process. He worked his ass off in rehearsals. He was not only on time, but early every day, and always had his lines nailed. Never had I seen a young actor with a work ethic like this guy. He may tell you behind the scenes that he was intimidated by Jack, but I never saw it.

“When Jack came and we had the first reading of the script, he came fully loaded to work, with a performance at the table. In a table read, you’re usually just kind of marking it. And when Jack got into his performance, it just sent a message to every other young actor. Kiefer Sutherland, Tom, Demi (Moore) and Kevin Bacon and Kevin Pollack, everybody involved knew, you better step up here. We’re not messing around. Tom was always right there with it. I would love to see him play more complex characters than the ones he’s doing now because people don’t realize how great an actor this guy is.”

The Outsiders

When Francis Ford Coppola adapted the S.E. Hinton novel The Outsiders , he wound up with a cast filled with the most promising young actors in the business, from Patrick Swayze to Rob Lowe, Matt Dillon, Emilio Estevez, Ralph Macchio and C. Thomas Howell. Cruise’s role was smaller by comparison, but Coppola had an inkling he might be special based on how the rest of the cast buzzed about how it was Cruise who got the starring role in Risky Business , while the rest of them were confined to ensemble work.

“It’s hard for me to remember that time since I was so focused on casting all of the boys’ roles, of which there were many,” Coppola says. “In those days, I was very experimental about the way I handled auditions. I felt strongly that everyone who showed up be given a chance to show their strengths, so we held them in an open arena where everyone was able to watch the other actors’ auditions for the same roles. The method was as new to them as it was for me. Through that process, I discovered a wealth of talent from which to choose. It’s the luck of the draw I guess, but certainly Tom more than justified his promise. Risky Business was a great showcase for him, and as I recall, he left our set a few days early in order to begin production on that film.”

What stood out to Coppola was the young actor’s openness to messing with what would become his signature thousand-watt smile, to fit the character.

“I was impressed by his willingness to go to extremes in creating a character,” Coppola says. “If the role called for a chipped tooth, he would willingly chip his tooth. He is also very athletic, which you can clearly see in the scene where he backflips off a car. He did not go light or easy in his commitment. I liked his look, and I liked his performance in Taps . He might have been suitable for the older brother role, except he was a little young compared to Patrick Swayze.

“I can’t say that I would have predicted [what was to come for Cruise] at the time, but back when we worked together, he did impress me as a very committed actor with many gifts. Certainly, the incident of the self-inflicted chip in his tooth is an example of his whole-hearted commitment to character.”

Born on the Fourth of July

Oliver Stone badly wanted to tell the story of wounded Vietnam vet Ron Kovic’s transformation from gung-ho soldier to anti-war protester, and each time the film faltered, he could feel it crush the film’s subject. “I had written it with Al Pacino in mind,” Stone says. The movie fell apart when Pacino dropped out, and the project languished for years. Until Cruise sparked to it. The actor was coming off a string of hits that included Risky Business , Cocktail , Top Gun and Rain Man . He was the brightest young superstar in the business and used that clout to empower a picture that allowed him to test his acting mettle in a new way.

“I was broken hearted, and Ron was a basket case,” Stone says. “I said to Ron, ‘If I ever get the chance, I’ll come back and do it.’ Platoon opened up the world for me, and it was either Charlie Sheen or Paula Wagner who suggested Tom Cruise, who was her client. I had met with Tom, and he liked Platoon so much. Maybe no one was going to give the performance as Kovic that I’d seen Al Pacino do in rehearsals, but Tom had other qualities. He was the right age, he looked far younger [than Pacino] and he worked his ass off prior to rehearsal. He hung out with Ron Kovic for a few weeks, going around L.A. in a wheelchair and getting the moves down, getting the mentality down. Ron was such an enthusiastic teacher and Tom took everything he could and kind of fell in love with Ron in a way that he absorbed him into his performance. And they stayed in touch for many, many years.”

Stone says the shoot was grueling, but Cruise was game. “We started the film overseas in the Philippines, where Platoon was made, and for Tom and everyone else, it was a very tough shoot because of the subject matter. I remember the scenes in the hospital being especially difficult, but Tom stuck through it. I was not surprised because I saw his dedication. Tom is a person with a tremendous willpower and once he committed to the role, he really committed.”

Stone says he wondered if Cruise was saying yes to anything the director asked. “In the early scenes, I was worried because I hadn’t seen him wrestle,” Stone says. “He tells me, ‘I can wrestle.’ Well, I’ve been told that kind of thing by a lot of actors, and when you get there on the day of the shoot, when you have no f*cking time to adjust, you find out they can’t wrestle. So, I’m worried. He said, ‘Just trust me. Don’t put pressure on me, I put pressure enough on myself.’ And sure enough, he actually wrestled very well. So never doubt Tom Cruise, I suppose is the lesson.”

Minority Report

For a young actress playing a difficult role as a precognitive woman in the Spielberg-directed Minority Report , measuring up in a blockbuster can be a daunting task. For that reason, Samantha Morton says she often thinks of how much easier a difficult shoot became because of the film’s star.

“I suppose I didn’t fully appreciate how rare Tom was, but now having been in the industry so long, he’s incredibly rare,” Morton says. “Not only is he unbelievably professional, and at a time when a lot of very famous men around me were not being very professional, he was unbelievably generous to me as an actor and as a creative person in that space. And it wasn’t fake or false in a kind of job way. He is genuinely one of the nicest, kindest people I’ve ever worked with, and I cherish those memories of that experience because the job itself was very tough.”

“Mr. Spielberg was incredibly kind and supportive and they made me raise my game because they believed in me. When an actor of his caliber is on set, oftentimes those individuals can be all about the self, and here’s the opposite of that. Because of (Tom), it was, ‘What do we need to make us better?’

“I was 22 when I worked with him, and I didn’t have a huge wealth of knowledge in regards to his cinema history at the time, and I was just there to get my job done. I’ve since seen how exceptional his body of work is. He’s insanely talented and continues to be so, and I have more praise for him as the years go by. He wasn’t being like that because he had to, back then, it was just how he is.”

Morton mentions Cruise sending a coffee truck on a particularly trying day. “People do that now, but nobody did that stuff back then,” she says. “My character was always very emotional and vulnerable. And maybe I was being a bit too method for my own good at the time. But there were scenes where the character couldn’t walk, and he physically carried me all through this shopping mall because I wasn’t taking my own weight. I said, ‘Oh God, I’m so sorry,’ after I don’t know how many takes of the scene. He just smiled. A lot of other actors would have moaned, said something to the director who would have come back and said, ‘Is there any way Sam can just walk on this take?’ Not Tom. And I can tell you, his generosity and exuberance were contagious.”

Must Read Stories

Joe biden & colin jost roast donald trump; red carpet + party photos.

CBS Axes Series After 3 Seasons; Lachey “Gutted”; Stars, Creators React

Zendaya’s ‘challengers’ looks to hit $15 million in its opening set, 86 top “career producers” launch collective to address fees, benefits & more.

Subscribe to Deadline Breaking News Alerts and keep your inbox happy.

Tom Cruise Said in 1990 Making a Sequel to Top Gun Would Be 'Irresponsible'

Cruise suggested a sequel to top gun would give kids a warped 'fairy tale' view of war..

Promotional photo of actor Tom Cruise for the original Top Gun film, released in 1986.

Tom Cruise’s latest movie, a sequel to his classic 1986 action pic, Top Gun , is finally getting a release later this month after delays related to the covid-19 pandemic. But Cruise, who’s now 59 years old, felt very different about doing a sequel to the film back in 1990. In fact, Cruise said making a sequel would be “irresponsible” and suggested any continuation of the story could be interpreted as pro-war propaganda.

The Definitive Voice of Entertainment News

site categories

Duane Byrge

Related Stories

THR Newsletters

More from The Hollywood Reporter

Entertainment

New on Yahoo

Flashback Friday: Young Tom Cruise Talks 'Top Gun' in 1986

Recommended Stories

NFL Draft: Bears take Iowa punter, who immediately receives funny text from Caleb Williams

NFL to allow players to wear protective Guardian Caps in games beginning with 2024 season

NFL Draft: Spencer Rattler's long wait ends, as Saints draft him in the 5th round

Cowboys owner Jerry Jones compared his 2024 NFL Draft strategy to robbing a bank

Michael Penix Jr. said Kirk Cousins called him after Falcons' surprising draft selection

Korey Cunningham, former NFL lineman, found dead in New Jersey home at age 28

NFL Draft: Brenden Rice, son of Hall of Famer Jerry Rice, picked by Chargers

Based on the odds, here's what the top 10 picks of the NFL Draft will be

NFL Draft fashion: Caleb Williams, Malik Nabers dressed to impress, but Marvin Harrison Jr.'s medallion stole the show

From the Archives: Cruise-ing in the media stratosphere

More to Read

Emma Stone would like to be called by her real name, if you don’t mind

Review: In the well-researched ‘We Grown Now,’ a family hangs tough in Chicago’s projects

What ‘Civil War’ gets right and wrong about photojournalism, according to a Pulitzer Prize winner

More From the Los Angeles Times

Oh, Zendaya knows all about that ‘Spider-Man’ female lead-to-tennis player ‘prophecy’

After scandal, movie producer Randall Emmett is flying under the radar with a new name

This is what Billie Eilish talks about when she’s not promoting ‘Barbie, Barbie, Barbie’

Review: Generic from its title onward, ‘Boy Kills World’ does little to differentiate its gore

Get the magazine!

New Again: Tom Cruise and Cameron Crowe

Related Posts

What Drove Justin Kuritzkes to Write the Year’s Horniest Movie?

Ella Purnell Takes Chloë Grace Moretz Into the Wasteland

“What Are You Laughing At?” Sarah Paulson, in Conversation With Pedro Pascal

Marisa Abela Tells Myha’la Herrold How She Found Amy Winehouse

Nicholas Galitzine and Anne Hathaway Give Us a Lesson in Chemistry

Carla Gugino and Lena Headey Trade Hollywood War Stories

Screen Rant

More Top Gun: Maverick Interviews

Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski: ‘Of all Tom Cruise’s characters, Maverick might be closest to his real personality’

Comments (…)

Tom Cruise reveals that taking on Top Gun: Maverick was a 'daunting task'

More on Tom Cruise

Related Topics:

Related Topics

Movie Reviews

Roger Ebert

Latest blog posts

Speed Kills: On the 25th Anniversary of Go

Joanna Arnow Made Her BDSM Comedy for You

The Movies That Underwent Major Changes After Their Festival Premiere

Netflix's Dead Boy Detectives Is A Spinoff Stuck In Limbo

Challengers

Boy Kills World

Monica Castillo

The Feeling That the Time for Doing Something Has Passed

Brian Tallerico

Unsung Hero

Top Gun: Maverick’s director explains how he convinced Tom Cruise to come back

Share this story

Share All sharing options for: Top Gun: Maverick’s director explains how he convinced Tom Cruise to come back

Photos 1992

Personal details

Did you know

Related news

More to explore

Add demo reel with IMDbPro

How much have you seen?

Recently viewed

Top Gun's Kelly McGillis Confirms What We Suspected About Tom Cruise's On-Set Behavior

Kelly McGillis called her Top Gun co-star 'wonderful'

McGillis compared filming Top Gun to being at summer camp

War News | Military History | Military News

site categories

What Makes Tom Cruise’s Star Shine So Brightly? Directors Share Their Insights – Cannes Disruptors

Mike Fleming Jr

More Stories By Mike

Related Stories

Valeria Golino Masterclass, Claude Barras' 'Sauvages' & Daniel Burman's 'Transmitzvah' Added To Cannes Lineup