Tom Cruise addresses 'intense' on-set behaviour in rare comment
Tom Cruise is breaking his silence on the reputation that’s followed him for years.
The star of huge blockbusters like Top Gun and Days of Thunder spoke candidly about how he approaches his work in a rare interview and what this means for his co-stars.
The 64-year-old confessed that he is in fact ‘intense’ but said he’s upfront about it with his co-stars before the cameras start rolling.
“So movies are — this is about humanity,” he told GQ. "I have nothing against cable or TV or Netflix. I think it’s great. Create jobs and everything. But what I like about cinema is it is all of us coming together in a room and sharing an experience.
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“When I’m working with people, I’m not afraid to, as I’m acting, to look foolish, to do it. It’s like: That’s not what this is about. It’s finding our tone, finding these tools together and having an experience. And look, I work hard, and people that work with me, they know. I expect a lot and I’m upfront about it. It’s like: ‘The rumours are true. And do you want this?’ I’m like, ‘Trust me, the rumours are true. I’ll be here before you. What experience do you want?'”
He continued: “I’m very open. It’s not like we don’t have a plan. We have scripts, we have plans, we’re going through it. But I also feel that level of responsibility for — I guess, for everyone,” Cruise continued. “Even when I was a kid, they were like, ‘Oh, come on, Tom. You’re so intense.’ I’m like, ‘I don’t know what to say. I am intense.’ [Laughs.] I got a very good sense of humour about it, but it was like: When I’m interested in something, I want to learn it. I want to understand it. And you want to blast through the confusion and build up that ability.”
Cruise said he keeps his phone ‘as far away from me as possible’ to stay connected.
“I’m looking and listening, and I want the least amount of time on it,” he said. “And my crew and people know it’s like, ‘Don’t send me a detailed email. Come talk to me.’ I like to talk to people."
Several of Cruise’s collaborators have lifted the lid, revealing what it’s really like to work alongside one of Hollywood's most iconic actors.
Rebecca Ferguson, who co-starred in Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, had great things to say.
In a 2015 interview with RTÉ, she described the set as potentially intimidating when she first arrived, but said Cruise and Simon Pegg welcomed her quickly.
“They create a dynamic, a team effort that Mission is, and they have their roles in this, and it can be quite intimidating coming in. But they welcome it and I found my place very fast,” she shared.”
For this specific film I never felt like a woman in a group of men. I didn't. I was an agent who trained equally as much as Tom did and whether I was a woman or a man had nothing to do with it.”
Ferguson and Cruise co-starred in three Mission: Impossible films and earlier this year during an interview with Harper’s Bazaar UK, she said of Cruise, “he’s a boy who just loves playing, and offers up a safe and professional set. That’s a really good balance [of qualities] to make you want to try new things.”
Meanwhile, In a Wired interview, Simon Pegg was asked whether he's friends with Cruise.
After joking ‘Hate the guy,’ he explained that they've worked together for 20 years and that it's been a pleasure getting to see ‘behind the myth.’ He also talks about Cruise's old-school movie-star mystique.
“Tom Cruise is a mythic figure, and he's very smart in the way that he kind of curates that because it maintains a degree of mystery about him,” Pegg revealed.
“And in that regard, he feels like a movie star in the old-fashioned sense. You know, back before social media,
back before the kind of celebrity journalism you have these days when you only ever saw these people at award ceremonies, you know? It's been a pleasure to kind of see behind the curtain.”
Topics: Celebrity, TV And Film
Greg Harris