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Man behind viral Tom Cruise deepfake videos calls the technology ‘morally neutral’

The man behind the viral Tom Cruise deepfake videos on TikTok believes the positive outweighs the negative when it comes to the technology that allows him to so convincingly impersonate the Hollywood superstar.

Miles Fisher, the Cruise lookalike who has fooled millions with his TikTok videos , spoke about the possibilities and downsides of the deepfake technology in an exclusive interview with NBC News correspondent Jacob Soboroff.

"As I find myself the unofficial face of this deep fake movement, it’s important to learn and I’m fascinated by this," Fisher told Soboroff on TODAY Tuesday. "This is the bleeding edge of technology."

In a series of digitally manipulated videos, images and audio released earlier this year, it appeared like Cruise himself was showing off magic tricks, working on his golf swing and playing guitar. Except that wasn't the "Mission: Impossible" star at all. It was Fisher.

"I think we’ve created the first deepfake that’s so realistic, that a large majority of people have seen," he said.

Fisher, who bears a strong resemblance to Cruise in real life, said the similarities to the star often hampered him as he tried to make his own way as an actor.

Last year he decided to lean into the connection to Cruise, contacting Belgian visual effects specialist Chris Umé to create the viral Cruise videos for fun. The technology has also improved to the point that what once would've taken Umé weeks to make can now be created much quicker.

"About five days, maximum six days, I could turn around something like this," Umé told Soboroff on TODAY.

Cruise, who did not respond to a request for comment from NBC News, has not asked the duo to stop. Fisher and Umé also have not monetized the TikTok account @deeptomcruise, which has more than 3 million followers.

However, Fisher and Umé are now working together in a company started by Umé called Metaphysic that uses deepfake tech.

"How can we use this technology by creating kind of identity rights?" Fisher said. "Let’s say Tom Cruise gave us the consent for this likeness, where we could move beyond just small parody clips. Everybody gets paid for that intellectual property."

Deepfakes in recent years have also created impersonations of Jennifer Lawrence, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mark Zuckerberg and former President George W. Bush that drew notice.

The potential threat of the technology has been debated in Congress, which raised the specter of its use for political propaganda, fake revenge porn and other nefarious purposes.

“Deepfakes can cause real, concrete harm. Whether that’s a deepfake sex video, or a fake porn video targeting political enemies, or a well-timed deepfake, maybe used to cause harm to an IPO,” University of Maryland law professor Danielle Citron told NBC News ahead of congressional hearings about it in 2019. “And in unrest, if you time it just right, you can incite violence.”

The FBI told NBC News in a statement that it is tracking the technology closely and "will continue to investigate any violations of federal law and actors that may use them for nefarious acts."

Some companies are working on safeguards that will allow people to identify a deepfake like adding data to video and pictures so it will be clear when something has been digitally altered.

Fisher and Umé say they will only take on projects with positive applications.

"The thesis of this company that Chris started begins with ethics," Fisher said.

"I think the technology is morally neutral," he continued. "As it develops, the positive output will so far outweigh the negative, nefarious uses."

Scott Stump is a trending reporter and the writer of the daily newsletter This is TODAY (which you should subscribe to here! ) that brings the day's news, health tips, parenting stories, recipes and a daily delight right to your inbox. He has been a regular contributor for TODAY.com since 2011, producing features and news for pop culture, parents, politics, health, style, food and pretty much everything else.

Artificial Intelligence /

Tom Cruise deepfake creator says public shouldn’t be worried about ‘one-click fakes’

Weeks of work and a top impersonator were needed to make the viral clips.

By James Vincent , a senior reporter who has covered AI, robotics, and more for eight years at The Verge.

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Want to see a magic trick? Tom Cruise impersonator Miles Fisher (left) and the deepfake Tom Cruise created by Chris Ume (right).

When a series of spookily convincing Tom Cruise deepfakes went viral on TikTok , some suggested it was a chilling sign of things to come — harbinger of an era where AI will let anyone make fake videos of anyone else. The video’s creator, though, Belgium VFX specialist Chris Ume , says this is far from the case. Speaking to The Verge about his viral clips, Ume stresses the amount of time and effort that went into making each deepfake, as well as the importance of working with a top-flight Tom Cruise impersonator, Miles Fisher.

“You can’t do it by just pressing a button,” says Ume. “That’s important, that’s a message I want to tell people.” Each clip took weeks of work, he says, using the open-source DeepFaceLab algorithm as well as established video editing tools. “By combining traditional CGI and VFX with deepfakes, it makes it better. I make sure you don’t see any of the glitches.”

Ume has been working with deepfakes for years, including creating the effects for the “Sassy Justice” series made by South Park ’s Trey Parker and Matt Stone . He started working on Cruise when he saw a video by Fisher announcing a fictitious run for president by the Hollywood star. The pair then worked together on a follow-up and decided to put a series of “harmless” clips up on TikTok. Their account, @deeptomcruise , quickly racked up tens of thousands of followers and likes. Ume pulled the videos briefly but then restored them.

“It’s fulfilled its purpose,” he says of the account. “We had fun. I created awareness. I showed my skills. We made people smile. And that’s it, the project is done.” A spokesperson from TikTok told The Verge that the account was well within its rules for parody uses of deepfakes, and Ume notes that Cruise — the real Tom Cruise — has since made his own official account, perhaps as a result of seeing his AI doppelgänger go viral.

Deepfake technology has been developing for years now, and there’s no doubt that the results are getting more realistic and easier to make. Although there has been much speculation about the potential harm such technology could cause in politics, so far these effects have been relatively nonexistent . Where the technology is definitely causing damage is in the creation of revenge porn or nonconsensual pornography of women. In those cases, the fake videos or images don’t have to be realistic to create tremendous damage. Simply threatening someone with the release of fake imagery, or creating rumors about the existence of such content, can be enough to ruin reputations and careers.

The Tom Cruise fakes, though, show a much more beneficial use of the technology: as another part of the CGI toolkit. Ume says there are so many uses for deepfakes, from dubbing actors in film and TV, to restoring old footage, to animating CGI characters. What he stresses, though, is the incompleteness of the technology operating by itself.

Before and after: you can see how impersonator Fisher (left) compares to the deepfake Cruise (right).

Creating the fakes took two months to train the base AI models (using a pair of NVIDIA RTX 8000 GPUs) on footage of Cruise, and days of further processing for each clip. After that, Ume had to go through each video, frame by frame, making small adjustments to sell the overall effect; smoothing a line here and covering up a glitch there. “The most difficult thing is making it look alive,” he says. “You can see it in the eyes when it’s not right.”

Ume says a huge amount of credit goes to Fisher; a TV and film actor who captured the exaggerated mannerisms of Cruise, from his manic laugh to his intense delivery. “He’s a really talented actor,” says Ume. “I just do the visual stuff.” Even then, if you look closely, you can still see moments where the illusion fails, as in the clip below where Fisher’s eyes and mouth glitch for a second as he puts the sunglasses on.

Although Ume’s point is that his deepfakes take a lot of work and a professional impersonator, it’s also clear that the technology will improve over time. Exactly how easy it will be to make seamless fakes in the future is difficult to predict, and experts are busy developing tools that can automatically identify fakes or verify unedited footage .

Ume, though, says he isn’t too worried about the future. We’ve developed such technology before and society’s conception of truth has more or less survived. “It’s like Photoshop 20 years ago, people didn’t know what photo editing was, and now they know about these fakes,” he says. As deepfakes become more and more of a staple in TV and movies, people’s expectations will change, as they did for imagery in the age of Photoshop. One thing’s for certain, says Ume, and it’s that the genie can’t be put back in the bottle. “Deepfakes are here to stay,” he says. “Everyone believes in it.”

Update March 5th, 12:11PM ET: Updated to note that Ume and Fisher has now restored the videos to the @deeptomcruise TikTok account.

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Tom Cruise Has a Look-Alike & He Looks Identical to Maverick from 'Top Gun'

Click here to read the full article.

Prepare for a double take. Tom Cruise’s look-alike wore a Top Gun costume to Comic-Con and pretty much fooled everyone there. Jerome LeBlanc, a professional Cruise impersonator from San Diego, California, had fun with his Cruise-esque looks at San Diego Comic-Con last week. Not only did he wear the costume that Cruise’s character LT. Pete “Maverick” Mitchell wears in 1986’s Top Gun , but LeBlanc also went to the exact location where several key scenes in Top Gun were filmed, according to the OC Register.

Per the OC Register, LeBlanc surprised fans at San Diego’s Kansas City Barbeque (where some barroom scenes in Top Gun were shot) on Thursday, July 18, dressed head to toe like Maverick. Dressed in aviator glasses and pilot’s jacket — with his hair pushed back to Cruise’s signature quiff — LeBlanc looked like a dead ringer for the Oscar-nominated actor. ( See photos here .)

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The Agony and Ecstasy of the World’s Biggest Tom Cruise Impersonator

Evan Ferrante is in the Tom Cruise business, and business is booming. “Busiest and most lucrative year of my adult life,” he tells Inverse .

Four years ago, times were tight for Evan Ferrante, an actor and producer who credibly calls himself the “leading Tom Cruise impressionist in the world.” His phone wasn’t ringing. He had just turned 40 and feared his career spent putting on the Cruise wig and jumping on couches was finally drying up.

“I was still impersonating Cruise, but very seldomly,” recalls Ferrante, now 44, whose stage name is “Not Tom Cruise.” “I had to take on three other side hustles. I’ve never worked so much in my life. I was a Lyft driver. I was a dog walker. I was hustling nonstop.”

These days, Ferrante’s business is still being Tom Cruise — and business is booming. During the first year of the pandemic, he pivoted to Cameo, which kept him and other celeb impersonators afloat. Ferrante was flooded with requests to cheer up bored, quarantined fans on birthdays and holidays — always in character as the Mission: Impossible star — and the response was heartening. (As one of his many five-star reviewers writes, “This was our second awesome video Not Tom Cruise has done for our son who is a military aviator in training. This guy is a total pro!”)

Then, in 2022, as the world was opening back up and Ferrante was resuming live event appearances, Top Gun: Maverick sold out theaters and restored Cruise to mainstream prominence. Ferrante couldn’t believe his luck.

“There wasn’t a day that went by last year that I didn’t receive an offer to perform live or in a commercial, film, TV, etc. — all thanks to Top Gun: Maverick ,” he says. “Busiest and most lucrative year of my adult life.”

A brief perusal of his Cameo videos or TikTok channel confirms that Ferrante, clad in dark shades and a Risky Business -style wig, has Cruise down cold (or at least a “heightened version of Cruise,” as he calls it). The manic delivery, the choked laugh, the abrupt tonal shifts, and high-pitched “ Whoo! ” He can shift seamlessly between Top Gun , Jerry Maguire , and other characters, and he can cater his shtick to current events (a recent video shows him visiting the WGA picket line in character as Cruise, riffing on Magnolia ).

At events, corporate crowds eat him up. “Many treat me like a dancing monkey or a wind-up doll,” Ferrante says. “Many are respectful. A lot of them are just super-pumped to see a Tom Cruise look-alike with them. They want to do all the lines with me. They’re very handsy with me.”

“People turn and look, and they go, ‘Oh, my God, is that Tom Cruise?’” says Colin Paolo, a creative director in the corporate sphere who has hired Ferrante for nearly a dozen events. “These are grown people that will stand in line. I’m never 100 percent sure whether they actually grasp he is an impersonator. I’ve seen grown men — 6-foot-1, 6-foot-2 — on the phone to their wives saying, ‘I’m getting my picture taken with Tom Cruise!’” (Ferrante never aims to deceive anyone, though he says it happens sometimes, especially when he performs overseas.)

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Ferrante’s flourishing act speaks to Tom Cruise’s improbable endurance as a bankable — and perpetually youthful — screen icon now entering the fifth decade of his career, with blockbuster movies like Top Gun: Maverick and the upcoming Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One introducing him to new audiences.

It’s also reflective of a parasocial, celeb-obsessed culture in which people are hungry for personalized attention from their favorite stars. As A-listers like Cruise become increasingly sequestered and untouchable, doppelgangers such as Ferrante step in to provide the one-on-one connections with fans that neither the real Cruise, nor creepily realistic deepfake simulations , will.

“It’s just a fascinating character to explore, Tom Cruise,” Ferrante says. “I provide a window into his world, right? It’s almost like Mary Poppins with her bags of endless things. I can dip into this bag, and with enough imagination, I can come up with a thousand scenarios that would be funny with Cruise. You don’t know what Cruise’s life or existence is like, and I’m going to fill in the blanks. I’m going to create this mythology, this lore.”

Ferrante with the real Tom Cruise.

Born 17 years after Tom Cruise, Evan Ferrante was raised by an Italian Catholic father and Russian Jewish mother in Armonk, New York. He became a child actor in the 1980s, appearing in commercials and soap operas, like the short-lived Swans Crossing , but says his ethnically ambiguous features made it hard to book roles.

In 1993, he received his SAG card, but the endless auditions became grueling. “It takes its toll on you psychologically,” Ferrante says. “You lose a little bit of your childhood.”

“I sometimes don’t know where Evan Ferrante begins or ends or Tom Cruise begins or ends.”

In 1997, Ferrante was a freshman at Boston University when his hallmate, an aspiring filmmaker named Alex Merkin, noticed that his voice and mannerisms resembled Tom Cruise’s. “ Jerry Maguire had just come out, and it was doing really well,” recalls Merkin. “I told him he should try to learn some of those lines. So he did, and it was, like, uncanny. Almost immediately, it was insane.”

At the time, Merkin did a bad Jean-Claude Van Damme impression. The two teamed up, aiming to impress girls.

“We would try to break the ice by knocking on doors, and we would both do impressions and try to meet women and go on dates,” says Merkin. “It was so good that everywhere we would go, through the next four years and after, it would be like: ‘OK, do the Tom Cruise impression.’ It would just become a party trick. I actually had him record my voicemail greeting as Tom Cruise.”

Once Ferrante embraced the talent, “it was one of those things where it’s like you have a twin that died in the womb, and it’s like you have an evil twin brother — you can’t escape it,” Merkin says. “He was not going to be able to separate himself from it. Not that he wanted to.”

After graduation, Ferrante was ready to leave his Tom Cruise act behind. He was tired of it. But then came the early YouTube days, which coincided with heavy tabloid interest in Cruise’s couch-jumping exploits. In 2006, at a girlfriend’s urging, Ferrante uploaded a crudely shot “demo reel” of his various Cruise characters to YouTube. The video currently has more than 200,000 views.

“It got the attention of some friends of mine in the industry, who had ideas to create a series around this persona that I created, this heightened version of Cruise,” he says.

Soon enough, Ferrante was hired to portray Cruise in a Funny or Die video series, and his party trick became a career. Since then, Ferrante has performed at countless corporate events, parodied Cruise in commercials and cartoons, and pumped out thousands of Cameo messages (current rate: $100 for a personalized video, $387 for a live video call). Movie studios have even hired him to serve as Cruise’s voice match in early cuts of movie trailers.

At times, he was hard up for cash and said yes to appearances he later regretted. There was, for instance, the demoralizing time he agreed to dance in his tighty-whities at several ’80s-themed nights in the Midwest.

“It was all unhappily married, nicotine-stained women in Dubuque, Iowa, and Fredericksburg, Indiana,” Ferrante recalls. “They were just clawing at my underwear. I felt like a Chippendales dancer.”

“They were just clawing at my underwear. I felt like a Chippendales dancer.”

Sometimes, playing Tom Cruise is a joy. Other times, it’s a source of psychic confusion.

“It’s an identity crisis, like Jekyll and Hyde,” Ferrante says. “I sometimes don’t know where Evan Ferrante begins or ends or Tom Cruise begins or ends.”

Last year, when Top Gun: Maverick came out, Ferrante remembers thinking, “‘How big could this possibly be?’ And it was way bigger than I ever imagined. Almost every day, I’d get some sort of inquiry — mainly corporate appearances. Commercial work, voiceover work. There was an incessant demand for Maverick. And it did not stop for well over a year!”

Recently, Ferrante’s life has been a little like George Clooney’s in Up in the Air , except instead of traveling around the country firing employees, he travels around getting employees fired up — usually in character as Maverick, the ace naval aviator. He’ll play “Danger Zone,” the bombastic Top Gun theme, as his entrance music, and fist-bump all the middle managers as he races up to the stage. Or sometimes he’s in character as Ethan Hunt from Mission: Impossible .

Cruise’s oeuvre “pairs well with corporate America.”

Last year, Ferrante performed at so many corporate events in so many cities that he has to start rifling through his 1099 forms just to remember them all. Much of it’s a blur. There was the Snapchat event, the opening of an Alamo Drafthouse somewhere he can’t recall, the fintech company that flew him in a helicopter and feted him with caviar, and the FedEx event where he was tasked with entertaining FedEx presidents from all over.

“All these events, they’re all properly liquored up,” Ferrante says. “Everyone is pretty three sheets to the wind. They come here to let loose.”

“I’ve used him on ‘Remission: Possible’ for pharmaceutical companies,” says Paolo, the creative director. “In the corporate sphere, not to be catty or anything, but they’re pretty much behind the times — they like things that have been done and proven. Like Hollywood, right? They like Top Gun . They like Mission: Impossible. Risky Business is something that not a lot of them understood. But those other two — and since every two years is a new Mission: Impossible — the world opens up for Evan.”

Cruise’s oeuvre “pairs well with corporate America,” Ferrante observes. “With Top Gun , you have ‘I feel the need…’; Jerry Maguire , ‘show me the money’ for anything in fintech or finance.”

View on TikTok

While technology companies pay him handsomely, the tech industry may also be Ferrante’s undoing as artificial-intelligence-generated deepfake software grows increasingly sophisticated. In 2021, a company called Metaphysic worked with a Cruise look-alike named Miles Fisher to create startlingly convincing videos of Cruise teeing off at a golf course, among other activities. It wasn’t really Cruise — just his face digitally “mapped” onto Fisher’s — but the videos fooled countless viewers. (Chris Umé, the co-founder of Metaphysic, did not respond to requests for comment.)

Though Ferrante had nothing to do with those videos, he was initially blamed and had his Instagram account temporarily deactivated. The actor had participated in other deepfake projects previously. “I was probably the very first actor to work with a deepfake technician/engineer,” Ferrante says, referencing a 2019 video in which he helped artificially place Tom Cruise’s face over Christian Bale’s in American Psycho .

Soon, he believes, studios will pay enormous sums to license the digital likeness of famous movie stars in perpetuity. “They’ll pay Tom Cruise $10 billion, whatever, for the forever usage of his likeness. That is certainly coming into being right now. It’s not science fiction.”

Ferrante reenacts an infamous Tom Cruise moment.

Ferrante knows he can’t do this forever. As Rear Adm. Cain (Ed Harris) tells Maverick in the new Top Gun , “The future is coming, and you’re not in it.”

“I’m winding down,” Ferrante says. “I would say I’m in the twilight of my career.”

For one thing, he’s a dad now — he and his partner have a 2-year-old son — and he doesn’t have the same energy he once had. (No, the toddler doesn’t know who Tom Cruise is: “I have this Tom Cruise pillow here. He thinks that’s Daddy,” Ferrante says.)

For another, Ferrante figures he’ll need a more stable income to support his growing family. He now complements his Cruise income by working as a real estate agent for a luxury firm based in Beverly Hills. It’s not exactly clear which is the day job and which is the side hustle.

“One day the phone may stop ringing.”

If Ferrante does hang up his Cruise wig, he wants to go out with a bang. He muses about writing a book someday espousing what he’s learned as a Cruise impersonator and what successful attributes Cruise has that could be parlayed into corporate America. (“It’ll almost be like a mission statement, like from Jerry Maguire .”) He then wants to design a keynote presentation around it and begin presenting his own speech to corporate audiences. He believes Cruise’s “incredible discipline” is the main attribute separating him from the man himself.

For now, Ferrante is just riding the wave of Cruise fever wherever it takes him.

“I was in Chicago a week ago,” he tells me. “I don’t know where I’ll end up next. I’m sure I’ll get a call tomorrow. One day the phone may stop ringing, and I’m prepared for that and I’m transitioning, but every time I transition, they end up sucking me back in.”

This article was originally published on June 28, 2023

Man Who’s The ‘Face’ Behind Tom Cruise Deepfakes Talks About How Huge Of A Burden It’s Been--Even Around A-Listers Like Leonardo DiCaprio

The deepfake Tom Cruise actor opens up about the burden of emulating the Hollywood icon.

Tom Cruise in Mission: Impossible - Fallout

Tom Cruise has been thriving, as Top Gun: Maverick is still breaking records for Paramount . And while the star finds success, Miles Fisher, who's become famous for his Cruise deepfakes is getting considerable buzz a well. Of course, going viral for his uncanny recreations of the actor has helped raise his profile. But as Fisher now tells it, fooling people into thinking he’s Cruise has proved to be a burden, even around A-listers like Leonardo DiCaprio.

Miles Fisher definitely seems appreciative of the attention and work he's received, thanks to his resemblance to the Mission: Impossible star . However, whenever he's working with Hollywood titans, there's something that he just can't seem to shake. As Fisher explained:

Nevertheless, I enjoyed a decent run acting opposite some extraordinary people. I got to work with Leonardo DiCaprio, Clint Eastwood, and Angelina Jolie. I improvised with Vince Vaughn, Laurence Fishburne, and Keegan-Michael Key. I played serious with Elisabeth Moss, Courtney Vance, and Owen Wilson. You know what they all had in common? Every one of them thought it was crazy how much I looked like Tom Cruise. I had pursued acting to prove that I wasn’t just the Tom Cruise guy. I failed.

Working alongside the likes of Leonardo DiCaprio , Angelina Jolie , and Laurence Fishburne seems to have been mostly enjoyable for him. However, it seems that what's become burdensome for Miles Fisher is that they can't see past the Tom Cruise resemblance. Celebrity can definitely be a tool that can bring people opportunities in a positive way. Though Fisher opened up more in his THR op-ed, saying that the constant comparisons have put him in a very interesting state as a person:

The vast majority of people who notice my resemblance to Tom Cruise feel good for having made the connection (ha) and give little consideration to what a strange burden and liability it’s been for me both personally and professionally. For my entire adult life, I’ve lived in a quasi-Groundhog Day state, with people stopping me daily to compare me to the most famous actor alive. I’m constantly reminded that to everyone else, I’m that guy. And it always comes off feeling like a punch in a face.

The star's Groundhog Day comparison really puts his situation into perspective, and it definitely sounds tiring. I can say that if I were constantly compared to another person based on my looks I'd probably feel the same way that he does. It's worth noting that the viral performer even showed a willingness to take down the viral videos , as to not offend the real actor. He also may have made that considering due to the security concerns that analysts had due to the seamless nature of the clips.

Before he went viral for his Tom Cruise TikTok videos, Mike Fisher gained early internet success through his music video spoofs on YouTube. Oftentimes, he would parody Hollywood production, including TV shows and movies, with the Maverick actor being a huge hit for Fisher even then. He broke down how impersonating the Hollywood icon so well early on affected his burgeoning acting career:

I spoofed American Psycho and Saved By the Bell. I spoofed Hollywood agencies and, of course, Tom Cruise. I loved seeing that view count cross the million mark. I felt it was proof of concept that there was an audience who enjoyed watching me. But was it really me they were watching? The Tom Cruise resemblance was becoming a real hindrance professionally. It seemed that no matter how well I spoofed others, I was simply too good at spoofing him. Once you saw me do that, you couldn’t unsee him, and there was little I could do to shake it off. Believe me, I tried.

Shaking his Tom Cruise lookalike status has certainly been hard for him. Clearly, he wants to be seen as Mike Fisher the actor and not the “Deepfake Cruise” guy. It can be difficult for stars to escape such labels, and one can only hope that Fisher can break out of it.

Still, leaning into those deepfakes has worked for Mike Fisher as he’s teamed up with celebrities like Keegan-Michael Key and Paris Hilton for major viral moments. But viral success doesn’t equate to happiness as some might say. Hopefully, his strong will translate into a Hollywood career, one that isn't defined by his resemblance to the star.

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If you want to see the actual Tom Cruise in action, check out Top Gun : Maverick , which is currently in theaters. You can check out the 2022 movie schedule to see what other movies the Top Gun star will be in next.

A boy from Greenwood, South Carolina. CinemaBlend Contributor. An animation enthusiast (anime, US and international films, television). Freelance writer, designer and artist. Lover of music (US and international).

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The world's foremost Tom Cruise impersonator tells us about those viral Tom Cruise deepfakes

A two-part collage of Tom Cruise and his Impersonator

With your sound off and limited familiarity of his golf swing, the Tom Cruise deepfakes taking TikTok by storm are convincing enough. There he is at the tee, stumbling in a hallway, and performing a magic trick — with the trademark scrunched-face laughter and off-center incisors, to match a suitably realistic haircut. Fire up the sound, and the voice isn’t quite there, but with a username like @deeptomcruise, it’s unlikely these were ever intended to mislead to such an extent. (Oh, but they have .)

The frighteningly uncanny facial impression of Cruise is a minor viral sensation, with one such video raking in more than 6 million views in three days. After seeing a few of these zip around the timeline, my first instinct was to call up another Tom Cruise impersonator, Evan Ferrante, who’s been featured on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon , It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia , and recently performed voice work for The Animaniacs .

To examine the trend and talk about the tough work of becoming the Mission Impossible actor, we spoke with the 41-year-old impersonator, who has the definitive take on the sprinting maniac. Operating as Not Tom Cruise , with a successful YouTube channel and Cameo profile (my first introduction to Ferrante, as an anniversary gift), he’s into his third decade of professionally donning the shaggy wig and black shades. Ferrante walked us through the nuances of celebrity impression deepfakes, the keys to a great Cruise impression, and an unlikely run-in with the man himself.

How long have you been working on your Tom Cruise impression?

I've been doing the Tom Cruise impersonation thing as a career since, roughly, 2004 or 2005 when YouTube and Funny or Die launched. I started putting up some videos. I was an actor prior to that, but I just didn't think the videos would lead to anything. One was just a montage of Tom Cruise's best performances, without a wig and glasses — it was really just about my acting, my impersonation. And it was in commemoration of him and Katie Holmes tying the knot, right after he jumped on the couch on Oprah . I thought it would be the opportune time in the zeitgeist to exploit that.

He’s just a very excitable, energetic character. I really need to be in the right headspace and have enough cups of coffee and stimuli to properly function as Tom Cruise.

Viral wasn't even a word back then, other than having a virus or bacterial infection. That did very well and then got the attention of my friend in high school — a director named Richie Keen ( Fist Fight , It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia ). And they had an idea for a series called “ Tom Cruise Is a Cockblock .” That video spawned a trilogy because it was so successful on Funny or Die , and reached immortal status within a week — which is a high mark for that site.

There are other lookalikes out there that do cosplay work — there’s a guy now, a terrific actor, who’s recently got some acclaim, because he’s using the very advanced deepfake software. He's an accomplished actor in his own right, but he tends to look like Tom Cruise a little bit more. He doesn't really have the voice down, but he's got the look. It really transforms him into an imperceptible kind of illusion of Tom Cruise.

The actor you alluded to is the same one going viral on TikTok right now?

Yeah, his name is Miles Fisher. He’s been on Mad Men , some other TV shows, Final Destination . He’s an actor I admire, and did a great Christian Bale a number of years ago.

I've also been using deepfakes, working with the best people in the industry doing it, from Collider TV and Corridor Digital to just individuals who work with software and are the go-to technicians out there. But this one is getting a lot of acclaim, because again, the technology just keeps getting better and better. People are drawn to illusion and people are drawn to lookalikes for some reason, because people like to be fooled or question things.

View on TikTok

What, to you, are the most important elements to dial down for a Tom Cruise impersonation?

I would say the most important aspects are going from laughter to being really serious in an instant, also the pregnant pause Tom Cruise has, where he’s like [ switches to Cruise voice in Jerry Maguire] “Put me on the line with Bob Sugar” — of course, his big smile, his laugh, his woos. He’s just a very excitable, energetic character, so channeling that energy is something that I've had to work very hard in doing and I can't really do it sustainably for very long. It requires a great deal of energy. So I really need to be in the right headspace and have enough cups of coffee and stimuli to properly function as Tom Cruise.

From the looks of your website, you actually got to meet him at one point. How did that happen?

We met each other at the Chateau Marmont one evening, I think back in 2015, I think it was in November. We met at 2 in the morning in the lobby of the hotel. I tried to buy a bottle of champagne, prior to that, a few hours earlier in the garden, when we were both having dinner. I was having drinks with my friends and he was having dinner with a hodgepodge of celebrities — Jeremy Renner, people from The Office , Zero Dark Thirty — a big gathering of writers, directors, producers. I tried to buy a bottle of champagne, thinking it'd be a nice way to commemorate our meeting. And I was shot down immediately by the waiter, who said that I’d be banned for life, and he’d be fired, and it just wouldn’t happen. I was resigned to the fact that I’d just be breathing the same oxygen as him, two ships passing in the night. But my girlfriend at the time said there’s no way in hell we’re leaving tonight without meeting him.

As the night goes on, I'm a little bit drunk, I’m tipsy. I was very happy I was just in the same room with him. But everyone leaves the garden except for my friend and my friend gets a phone call. He gets a phone call from my girlfriend who went to the bathroom, since my phone was dead. And he says to me, Tom Cruise is waiting for you in the lobby. So I get out of my chair, knowing that he's telling the truth, and sprint from the garden shop to the lobby and Tom Cruise is waiting for me there. He does a slow turn, always in slow motion to me. And we embrace one another, and shake each other, and we say it’s an honor and privilege to meet you. We took a great picture together — he was wearing platforms, since he’s a little bit taller than me in the picture. Jeremy Renner was standing right behind him.

The deepfake works wonderfully when there’s an impersonator underneath who can bring the deepfake or the character to life underneath it.

You’ve described deepfakes as an enhancement to your impression, and it kind of edits out your original facial expressions. So are there some ways this works like autotune, where a layperson might not understand the nuances to mastering it?

There’s a spectrum with regard to the quality of deepfakes. And again, the deepfake works wonderfully when there’s an impersonator underneath who can bring the deepfake or the character to life underneath it. Anyone can wear a deepfake mask — you, myself, my mother — could wear a Tom Cruise mask. Doesn’t mean it will be any good, it just means the technology will map it onto whoever wears the mask.

Also, age has a lot to do with it, the way your body moves, your mannerisms. So, for instance, the movie The Irishman got a lot of criticism, because you had older actors wearing a young deepfake mask. There was a disconnect because you were watching an older actor move in the mask, and it didn’t really work. There was a disconnect when Robert De Niro was beating someone up as only a 70-something man would beat somebody up.

People are skeptical of deepfakes for political reasons, but also perhaps for taking away work for real-life impersonators. Do you worry it might remove the novelty for career impersonators?

It’s an interesting question because a lot of people don’t care. It’s a testament — look, Miles’s video is excellent — to how viral and popular something’s become simply because it meets the criteria of fooling someone based on technological prowess and style over substance. Now it's all about the substance, in my opinion, but these days substance means far less than it used to.

Is it crucial that you nail his facial quirks when you’re filming, or can they edit it in afterwards?

It’s really not. If I were to explore deepfake and make it pretty imperceptible or perfect, I could probably figure out what facial expressions I would absolutely need to make it stronger. The software is so good that it merges his facial expressions with mine. If I open my mouth up too much using the Impressions app, it doesn’t work as well and the lighting has to be great. But when I’m working with a professional team, using top-of-the-line software and 4K cameras, I don’t have to worry about it too much.

In Miles’s recent videos, are there any tics or body language that don’t square with Cruise that you’ve picked up over the years?

Honestly, I think we do similar things — and I’m not going to say anything bad about his impression. He does a very good impression, but the voice isn’t quite there and is a giveaway for me. He’s got the perfect Tom Cruise hair, and the energy and the pauses down and the laugh. Again, it’s not a Tom-petition, I always say when people talk to me about other impersonators.

Here’s How Those Surreal Tom Cruise Deepfake Videos Were Made

On the left, the Tom Cruise impersonator Miles Fisher. On the right, a deepfake image of actor Tom cruise. (Video images from De Persgroep Video, courtesy of Chris Ume)

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Man behind viral Tom Cruise deepfake videos calls the technology ‘morally neutral’

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