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Actor Tom Cruise is the star of several box-office hits, including Risky Business , A Few Good Men , The Firm , Jerry Maguire , and the Mission: Impossible franchise.

Who Is Tom Cruise?

Thomas Cruise Mapother IV, better known as Tom Cruise, was born on July 3, 1962, in Syracuse, New York, to Mary and Thomas Mapother. Cruise's mother was an amateur actress and schoolteacher, and his father was an electrical engineer. His family moved around a great deal when Cruise was a child to accommodate his father's career.

Cruise's parents divorced when he was 11, and the children moved with their mother to Louisville, Kentucky, and then to Glen Ridge, New Jersey, after she remarried. Like his mother and three sisters, Cruise suffered from dyslexia, which made academic success difficult for him. He excelled in athletics, however, and considered pursuing a career in professional wrestling until a knee injury sidelined him during high school.

At age 14, Cruise enrolled in a Franciscan seminary with thoughts of becoming a priest, but he left after a year. When he was 16, a teacher encouraged him to participate in the school's production of the musical Guys and Dolls . After Cruise won the lead of Nathan Detroit, he found himself surprisingly at home on the stage, and a career was born.

'Taps,' 'The Outsiders'

Cruise set a 10-year deadline for himself in which to build an acting career. He left school and moved to New York City, struggling through audition after audition before landing an appearance in 1981's Endless Love , starring Brooke Shields. Around this same time, he snagged a small role in the military school drama Taps (1981), co-starring Sean Penn .

His role in Taps was upgraded after director Harold Becker saw Cruise's potential, and his performance caught the attention of a number of critics and filmmakers. In 1983, Cruise appeared in Francis Ford Coppola 's The Outsiders , which also starred Emilio Estevez , Matt Dillon and Rob Lowe —all prominent members of a group of young actors the entertainment press dubbed the "Brat Pack." The film was not well received, but it allowed Cruise to work with an acclaimed director on a high-profile project.

'Risky Business'

His next film, Risky Business (1983), grossed $65 million. It also made Cruise a highly recognizable actor — thanks in no small part to a memorable scene of the young star dancing in his underwear.

In 1986, after a two-year hiatus, the budding actor released the big-budget fantasy film Legend , which did poorly at the box office. That same year, however, Cruise's A-list status was confirmed with the release of Top Gun , which co-starred Kelly McGillis, Anthony Edwards and Meg Ryan . The testosterone-fueled action-romance, set against the backdrop of an elite naval flight school, became the highest-grossing film of 1986.

'The Color of Money,' 'Rain Man' and 'Born on the Fourth of July'

Cruise followed the tremendous success of Top Gun with a string of both critically acclaimed and commercially successful films. He first starred in The Color of Money (1986) with co-star Paul Newman , and then went on to work with Dustin Hoffman on Rain Man (1988). Cruise's next role, as Vietnam veteran Ron Kovic in the biopic Born on the Fourth of July (1989), earned him an Academy Award nomination and a Golden Globe for Best Actor.

'A Few Good Men,' 'The Firm' and 'Interview with a Vampire'

In 1992, Cruise proved once more that he could hold his own opposite a screen legend when he co-starred with Jack Nicholson in the military courtroom drama A Few Good Men . The film grossed more than $15 million its first weekend and earned Cruise a Golden Globe nomination. He continued to demonstrate his success as a leading man with The Firm (1993) and Interview with a Vampire (1994), which co-starred Brad Pitt.

'Mission: Impossible,' 'Jerry McGuire'

Next, Cruise hit the big screen with two huge hits—the $64 million blockbuster Mission: Impossible (1996), which the star also produced, and the highly acclaimed Jerry McGuire (1996), directed by Cameron Crowe. For the latter, Cruise earned a second Academy Award nomination and Golden Globe for Best Actor.

'Eyes Wide Shut,' 'Magnolia'

Cruise and then-wife Kidman spent much of 1997 and 1998 in England shooting Eyes Wide Shut , an erotic thriller that would be director Stanley Kubrick 's final film. The movie came out in the summer of 1999 to mixed reviews, but that year Cruise enjoyed greater success with the release of Magnolia . His performance as a self-confident sex guru in the ensemble film earned him another Golden Globe Award and an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

'Vanilla Sky,' 'The Last Samurai'

Cruise then starred in the long-awaited smash hit Mission: Impossible 2 in 2000, alongside Anthony Hopkins , Thandie Newton and Ving Rhames. In 2002, he starred in Vanilla Sky , his second collaboration with Crowe, as well as Steven Spielberg 's Minority Report . The following year, Cruise traveled to Australia to shoot the $100 million war epic The Last Samurai, which earned him another Golden Globe nomination.

'War of the Worlds'

Cruise proved he remained a top draw by starring in the Spielberg-directed remake of the science-fiction classic War of the Worlds (2005), which grossed more than $230 million at the box office.

His next effort, Mission: Impossible 3 (2006), also scored well with audiences. However, Cruise was faced with a professional setback in August when Paramount Pictures ended its 14-year relationship with the actor. The company's chairman cited Cruise's erratic behavior and controversial views as the reason for the split, though industry experts noted that Paramount more likely ended the partnership over Cruise's high earnings from the Mission: Impossible franchise.

Cruise quickly rebounded and on November 2, 2006, he announced his new partnership with film executive Paula Wagner and the United Artists film studio. Their first production as a team, the political drama Lions for Lambs (2007), proved a commercial disappointment despite a strong cast that included Meryl Streep and Robert Redford .

'Tropic Thunder'

Taking a break from weighty material, Cruise delighted audiences with his performance in the comedy Tropic Thunder (2008). Despite his relatively small role in a movie that featured Robert Downey Jr. and Ben Stiller , Cruise stood out by obscuring his trademark good looks to play a balding, obese movie studio executive.

'Valkyrie,' 'Rock of Ages'

In December 2008, Cruise released his second project through United Artists. The film, Valkyrie , was a World War II drama about a plot to assassinate German leader Adolf Hitler . Cruise starred as a German army officer who became involved in the conspiracy.

Cruise returned to one of his most popular franchises in 2011 with Mission: Impossible—Ghost Protocol . Breaking into new territory, he then starred in the 2012 musical Rock of Ages . Although Cruise received some positive reviews for his performance as a rock star, the movie failed to attract much of an audience.

'Jack Reacher,' 'Edge of Tomorrow'

Returning to his mainstream action roots, Cruise starred in the 2012 crime drama Jack Reacher , based on a book by Lee Child. He then headlined a pair of science-fiction adventures, Oblivion (2013) and Edge of Tomorrow (2014). Showing no signs of slowing down, the veteran actor in 2015 delivered his usual high-energy performance for the fifth installment of his blockbuster franchise, Mission: Impossible—Rogue Nation .

Latest Movies and Familiar Franchises

In 2016, Cruise reprised the role of Jack Reacher for Never Go Back . He then headlined a reboot of The Mummy (2017), which performed respectably at the box office but was savaged by critics, before earning better reviews later that year for the crime thriller American Made .

2018 brought a return to familiar territory for Cruise, who starred in Mission Impossible —Fallout that summer. Prior to its release, he tweeted a photo to mark day 1 of production on the long-awaited sequel Top Gun: Maverick , scheduled for a June 2020 release.

Scientology and Personal Life

Cruise married actress Mimi Rogers in 1987. It was through Rogers that the actor became a student of Scientology, the religion founded by writer L. Ron Hubbard. Cruise credited the church with curing his dyslexia, and he soon became one of its leading proponents. However, while his spiritual life flourished, his marriage to Rogers ended in 1990. That same year, Cruise made the racecar drama Days of Thunder alongside Kidman. Though the movie was unpopular among critics and fans alike, the two lead actors had real chemistry. On Christmas Eve 1990, after a brief courtship, Cruise and Kidman married in Telluride, Colorado.

Divorce from Kidman

For much of the 1990s, Cruise and Kidman found themselves fiercely defending the happiness and legitimacy of their marriage. They filed two different lawsuits against tabloid publications for stories they considered libelous. In each case, the couple received a published retraction and apology, along with a large monetary settlement which they donated to charity. The couple has two children, Isabella and Connor.

On February 5, 2001, Cruise and Kidman announced their separation after 11 years of marriage. The couple cited the difficulties involved with two acting careers and the amount of time spent apart while working. Following the divorce, Cruise briefly dated his Vanilla Sky co-star Penelope Cruz , followed by a much-publicized relationship with actress Katie Holmes. A month after his ties to Holmes became public, Cruise professed his love for the actress in a now-famous appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show, during which he jumped on Winfrey's sofa, shouting "Yes!"

Marriage to Katie Holmes

In June 2005, after a two-month courtship, Cruise proposed to Holmes in a restaurant at the top of the Eiffel tower. In October, they announced that they were expecting their first child together. The hasty proposal and surprise pregnancy quickly became tabloid gossip. But Cruise made even bigger headlines that year as an outspoken advocate for Scientology. He openly criticized former co-star Brooke Shields for using anti-depressants during her recovery from postpartum depression. He also denounced psychiatry and modern medicine, claiming Scientology held the key to true healing. Cruise's statements led to a heated argument with news anchor Matt Lauer on The Today Show in June 2005, for which Cruise later apologized.

In 2006, Cruise and Holmes welcomed daughter Suri into the world. That year, they were married in an Italian castle, with celebrities Will Smith , Jada Pinkett Smith , Jennifer Lopez and Victoria and David Beckham among those in attendance. However, the storybook romance wouldn't last, and in June 2012, the couple announced their separation.

QUICK FACTS

• Birth Year: 1962
• Birth date: July 3, 1962
• Birth State: New York
• Birth City: Syracuse
• Birth Country: United States
• Gender: Male
• Best Known For: Actor Tom Cruise is the star of several box-office hits, including 'Risky Business,' 'A Few Good Men,' 'The Firm,' 'Jerry Maguire' and the 'Mission: Impossible' franchise.
• Astrological Sign: Cancer

We strive for accuracy and fairness.If you see something that doesn't look right, contact us !

CITATION INFORMATION

• Article Title: Tom Cruise Biography
• Author: Biography.com Editors
• Website Name: The Biography.com website
• Url: https://www.biography.com/actors/tom-cruise
• Access Date:
• Publisher: A&E; Television Networks
• Last Updated: March 26, 2021
• Original Published Date: April 3, 2014

The Biography.com staff is a team of people-obsessed and news-hungry editors with decades of collective experience. We have worked as daily newspaper reporters, major national magazine editors, and as editors-in-chief of regional media publications. Among our ranks are book authors and award-winning journalists. Our staff also works with freelance writers, researchers, and other contributors to produce the smart, compelling profiles and articles you see on our site. To meet the team, visit our About Us page: https://www.biography.com/about/a43602329/about-us

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Why does Tom Cruise do his own stunts? ‘No one asked Gene Kelly, ‘Why do you dance?’’

Cruise spoke at the 75th edition of the Cannes Film Festival for the premiere of “Top Gun: Maverick.”

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By Kyle Buchanan

• May 18, 2022

CANNES, France — It has been 30 years since Tom Cruise attended the Cannes Film Festival, and it’s evident the festival would like to make up for lost time.

Perhaps that’s why, in advance of a conversation with the actor billed as a “Rendezvous with Tom Cruise” — which was itself happening in advance of the evening premiere of Cruise’s sequel “Top Gun: Maverick” — the festival played a nearly 15-minute-long clip reel of Cruise’s filmography, hyperbolically scored to Richard Strauss’s “Also sprach Zarathustra.” As the actor and audience watched from their seats, the reel touched on Cruise the action star, Cruise the dramatic thespian and Cruise the romantic, though the latter section, which featured him pitching woo at a bevy of leading ladies, notably left out Cruise’s ex-wife and three-time co-star Nicole Kidman.

“It’s wild seeing this reel,” Cruise said after taking the stage. “It’s like your life in ten minutes — very trippy.”

Cruise was speaking in front of a mostly unmasked crowd in the Salle Claude Debussy, which included hundreds of journalists and a team from Cruise’s agent, CAA. “After everything we’ve been through, it’s such a privilege to see your faces,” he said. He noted that “Top Gun: Maverick” had been held for two years because of the pandemic, though he refused to show it on a streaming service in the meantime. “Not gonna happen!” Cruise said to applause.

The 59-year-old star is insistent that his movies receive a lengthy theatrical window, a mandate that has sometimes put him in conflict with studio heads, who are eager to fill their streaming services with star-driven content. And in an era where big names like Leonardo DiCaprio and Sandra Bullock have no problem appearing in films for Netflix, Cruise remains a rare holdout.

“There’s a very specific way to make a movie for cinema, and I make movies for the big screen,” said Cruise. “I know where they go after that and that’s fine.” He said he even called theater owners during the pandemic to reassure them: “Just know we are making ‘Mission: Impossible.’ ‘Top Gun’ is coming out.”

Cruise is a discursive speaker who will leap out of one anecdote before it’s done to land in another, then another. (Perhaps that would make for an esoteric set piece in one of his action films?) But it was striking how often he returned to his formative experience shooting the 1981 movie “Taps,” in which he acted opposite George C. Scott and found himself fascinated by the way the filmmaking worked. Cruise said that while shooting, he thought, “Please, if I could just do this for the rest of my life, I will never take it for granted.”

And in the absence of any challenging questions from his interlocutor, the French journalist Didier Allouch — who was mostly content to burble blandishments like “You're absolutely extraordinary” to his interview subject — Cruise had the freedom to basically spin his own narrative of being a determined student of cinema and his fellow man. (And “Taps,” of course.)

“I was the kind of kid who always wrote goals on the wall of what kind of movies I liked or what I wanted my life to be, and I worked toward those goals,” Cruise said.

Though the conversation increasingly leaned toward bland generalities — “I’m interested in people, cultures, and adventure,” Cruise said more than once — it did provide one major laugh line when Allouch asked why he was so determined to do his own stunts in the “Mission: Impossible” movies, which will soon be receiving seventh and eighth installments shot back-to-back.

“No one asked Gene Kelly ‘Why do you dance?’” replied the star.

Kyle Buchanan , a Los Angeles-based pop culture reporter, writes The Projectionist column. He was previously a senior editor at Vulture, New York Magazine's entertainment website, where he covered the movie industry. More about Kyle Buchanan

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Grin and bear it

I n Cameron Crowe's Vanilla Sky, Tom Cruise keeps going to bed with the sparrow-like Penelope Cruz and waking up with the foxy Cameron Diaz, or going to bed with the foxy Cameron Diaz and waking up with the sparrow-like Penelope Cruz. This eventually drives him around the bend, to the point that he is willing to contemplate murder, suicide or both. Since going to bed with Penelope Cruz and waking up with Cameron Diaz - or vice versa - is a problem most men could handle with no problem at all, it is fair to say that Crowe has not built enormous sympathy for his protagonist.

Vanilla Sky is a pretentious, interminable remake of Alejandro Amenabar's pretentious, interminable 1997 film Open Your Eyes, which also starred the sparrow-like but then unknown Cruz. Why Crowe agreed to pilot this handpicked Cruise project is a mystery; apparently he really wanted to work with the star. A talented, respected screenwriter and a competent director best known for the charming, if schmaltzy Jerry Maguire, and the charming, if schmaltzy Almost Famous, Crowe does not seem like the sort of person who would deliberately become ensnared in a non-commercial, self-consciously arty mess like Vanilla Sky. This is clearly a desperate attempt to be taken more seriously, for the film is nothing if not an earnest attempt to deal with the big questions. It is nothing if not a big bomb.

Vanilla Sky concerns a man who has trouble sleeping, and even when he is not sleeping he cannot be sure he is awake. But whether sleeping or not, he certainly has amazing teeth. Whether flashing his headlight smile at Cruz, Diaz or both of them simultaneously, Cruise spends so much time smiling in the early part of the film that you can't wait for something really bad to happen to him so that he'll just shut his damned mouth. It's as if he were engaged in an all-out war with Julia Roberts to see who lands that coveted job as official spokesperson for the American Dental Association.

As the film begins, Cruise has inherited a huge publishing empire from his father, a ruthless billionaire who died when Tom was quite young. Scorned as a shallow playboy by his board of directors, Cruise is convinced that these "Seven Dwarves" are plotting a coup. This does not prevent him from bedding Diaz every chance he gets, or from filching the sparrow-like Cruz from his best friend, a fledgling novelist played by Jason Lee. Crowe would have us believe that Cruz is the only genuine person Cruise has ever met, the only one that is not after his money, and, apparently, the only woman he has never slept with. But remember: this could all be a dream.

Diaz, who seems to be some sort of artiste or model, does not take kindly to Cruise's dalliance with the sparrow-like Cruz. She entices him into her car, then takes him on a wild ride, seeking to read him the riot act. But disaster ensues. Now she is probably dead. And Cruise's face is horribly disfigured. And the sparrow-like Cruz no longer wants to date him.

But remember: this could all be a dream.

The movie does not become any more lucid as it trudges towards its enigmatic conclusion. Cruise is accused of murdering either Diaz or Cruz, but we do not know which, because the police refuse to divulge whether the victim was sparrow-like. A compassionate psychiatrist played by Kurt Russell tries to unlock the secret to Cruise's delusions, but he is of little help because he himself may be an illusion. The car crash and subsequent murder may stem from the machinations of the Seven Dwarves but then again it may all be a dream. For all I know, this review of Vanilla Sky may all be a dream. If it is, I sure hope it's a dream where I get paid 70,000 quid for writing it.

The film is not without its merits, most notably Crowe's clever dialogue. When Cruise first dons a "facial prosthetic" - also known as an "aesthetic regenerative shield" - to conceal his disgured face, he hollers out, "That's great. This completely takes care of Halloween." Later someone says: "You do not invite happiness in without a full body search." I am not sure what this means, but it sounds like good advice, especially if you live in Greenwich Village. Equally entertaining is the scene where Diaz snaps, "When you sleep with someone, your body makes a promise, even if you don't." I, for one, hope that this does not apply to blow jobs. Diaz addresses this very issue when she adds, "I swallowed your cum. That means something." Actually, it doesn't. Ask Bill Clinton.

People who don't care for Tom Cruise claim that he never takes risks, that he always plays the same part. This is not true. From Born On The Fourth Of July to Interview With The Vampire to Eyes Wide Shut to Magnolia, Cruise has repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to roll the dice and "stretch". Here, as in Far And Away and Cocktail, he comes up short. But the fault lies less in his acting - it is a bit over-the-top in places as Cruise mounts his Oscar campaign - than in the film's very conception. At no point does Crowe explain to us why we should care about this self-involved plutocrat or his hideous entourage. The only people in the film who are vaguely likable are the stolid Kurt Rusell and the sparrow-like Penelope Cruz. Uh-oh.

With Vanilla Sky, Cruz adds to her impressive list of duds. Adorable in Woman On Top, Cruz has continued to be adorable, but has gone down with the ship in such high-profile disasters as All The Pretty Horses and Captain Corelli's Mandolin. Despite Hollywood's best efforts to turn the sultry gamine into the next Jennifer Lopez, she is starting to look more like the next Salma Hayek, the next Maria Conchita Alonzo or the next-to-last Antonio Banderas. Proving that one sparrow does not make a spring.

· Vanilla Sky is out on Friday

• Cameron Diaz
• Penélope Cruz
• Cameron Crowe

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

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Top Gun : Maverick ’s Cannes Film Festival premiere marks another high point in the movie star career of Tom Cruise . The actor turns 60 on July 3, and unlike most leading men of that age who become quicker to call for the stunt double, Cruise shows little evidence of slowing down after 43 films. If anything, his Mission: Impossible stunts seem to grow more ambitiously dangerous, not to mention the fact that he and director Doug Liman will become the first to actually shoot a space film in space for real—aboard one of Elon Musk’s SpaceX crafts with the cooperation of NASA.

So how does Cruise continue to carve such a path?

“I’ve gotten to work with a number of actors who’ve had great success and long careers, Tom being at the top of the heap,” says Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski. “He approaches every day with the enthusiasm that it’s his first movie, and at the same time puts the effort into it like it’s his last movie. That’s a good attitude to have; never take it for granted, give 110 percent every single day. Constantly push the crew and yourself to achieve excellence. I’m amazed by that, that he’s 40 years in and still loves what he does and isn’t slowing down at all. It seems like he’s accelerating, which is pretty amazing.”

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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.”

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Highest Rated: 97% Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018)

Lowest Rated: 9% Cocktail (1988)

Birthday: Jul 3, 1962

Birthplace: Syracuse, New York, USA

Tom Cruise rose quickly to become one of the best-known American actors in the world. Born in Syracuse, New York, he moved around throughout his childhood, including a period in Canada. After graduating from high school in New Jersey, he moved first to New York and then to Los Angeles to pursue acting. He made his film debut in the Brooke Shields vehicle "Endless Love" (1981). His next role as an aggressive military cadet opposite Timothy Hutton and Sean Penn in "Taps" (1981) caught people's attention. He joined another group of young stars, including Patrick Swayze and Rob Lowe, in Francis Ford Coppola's adaptation of the S.E. Hinton novel "The Outsiders" (1983). His starring role as schoolboy-turned-pimp Joel in "Risky Business" broke him as one of Hollywood's newest celebrities. The long shoot schedule of Ridley Scott's fantasy epic "Legend" (1985) briefly took him out of the public eye, but he bounced back with one of the iconic roles of the 1980s. Playing Navy fighter pilot Maverick in Tony Scott's "Top Gun" (1986) turned Cruise into a superstar. He began branching into roles with more heft at the same time when he joined Paul Newman for "The Color of Money" (1986). He continued in that vein during the next several years, working with high profile directors and co-stars in prestige projects. He partnered with Dustin Hoffman for "Rain Man" (1988), Oliver Stone for "Born on the Fourth of July" (1989), and Jack Nicholson for "A Few Good Men" (1993), the first two of which were Oscar-winners for Best Picture. The actor picked up his first Academy Award nomination for "Born on the Fourth of July." While it didn't garner the same level of critical acclaim, his role as Anne Rice's vampire Lestat opposite a young Brad Pitt in "Interview with a Vampire" (1994) became as well-remembered as any of the actor's roles. His 11-year marriage to Nicole Kidman saw the couple partner on three films including Ron Howard's "Far and Away" (1992) and Stanley Kubrick's "Eyes Wide Shut" (1999). By the '90s, he had his pick of roles and began mixing in big-budget populist fare like "Mission: Impossible" (1996), based on the '60s television show of the same name. His role as secret agent Ethan Hunt proved popular enough for a series of sequels that would extend for more than two decades. Cruise also notched a second Oscar nomination for his role as a sports agent gaining a conscious in Cameron Crowe's "Jerry Maguire" (1996). He worked with another rising filmmaker when he played motivational speaker Frank Mackey in Paul Thomas Anderson's "Magnolia" (1999), a role that earned him another Academy Award nomination. After the turn of the century, Cruise bounced between effects-heavy fare like "Minority Report" (2002) and "War of the Worlds" (2005) to dramas such as "Lions for Lambs" (2007) with Robert Redford and Meryl Streep. He also proved himself willing to puncture his own inflated image, with comedic cameos in "Austin Powers in Goldmember" (2002) and "Tropic Thunder" (2008), and his musical turn in "Rock of Ages" (2012). He similarly adopted a self-effacing posture when fans began noticing that there was a scene of the actor running in nearly all his films. Over the years, he found himself a magnet for the tabloids thanks to his close ties to the Church of Scientology and his celebrity marriages to Kidman and Katie Holmes. Cruise added another action franchise to his resume when he jumped into the role of Lee Child's literary tough guy "Jack Reacher" (2012). He would reprise the role in "Jack Reacher: Never Go Back" (2016). After starring in the big-budget reboot of "The Mummy" (2017) and the drama "American Made" (2017), he returned to the role that once cemented his superstar status. More than 20 years after the original, Cruise climbed back into the cockpit to revive Maverick for a sequel to his 1986 hit "Top Gun: Maverick" (2020).

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Tom cruise, ‘top gun: maverick’ and the uneasy echoes of hollywood past.

The flag-draped 1986 blockbuster ushered in the testosterone-fueled glory years of producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer — and cemented the industry’s most enigmatic (and complicated) star.

By Kim Masters

Kim Masters

Editor-at-Large

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T op Gun: Maverick , set to open May 27, sits at a sky-high 96 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. After seemingly endless pandemic miseries, it feels like there are whole audience quadrants hungry for an old-school, PG-13 popcorn movie, a throwback for parents who can revel in nostalgia while their kids enjoy the action.

But Top Gun also cooks up a pretty complicated stew of feelings for some — feelings about politics, about the fate of the business and, for me unexpectedly, emotion that had nothing to do with the action onscreen. (Truth: I had never even seen the original film until I watched it on Netflix the night before I went to the sequel’s May 4 premiere in San Diego.)

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While most critics obviously liked the movie, the politics of the film created a sense of unease for more than one. Writing that the original had “all the narrative complexity of a music video crossed with a military recruitment reel,” The Hollywood Reporter ’s David Rooney said the queasiness (despite the film’s multiracial cast) has only intensified in the post-Trump age, “with patriotism curdling into white supremacy” (a point he made weeks before the latest white-nationalist terror attack, in Buffalo). Justin Chang of the Los Angeles Times concurred that it was “best not to think too long or hard about … the fetishization of U.S. military might.” And he raised another key point on the minds of many: “Is this movie one of the last gasps of a dying Hollywood empire? Or is its emotionally stirring, viscerally gripping and proudly old-fashioned storytelling the latest adrenaline shot that the industry so desperately needs?”

The audience at the premiere I attended just seemed ready to surrender to the star power of Tom Cruise , who (with Mission: Impossible 7 still unfinished ) is enjoying a spectacular international ride, including the helicopter landing in San Diego, a royal premiere in England plus a role in the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee celebration and, in Cannes, eight fighter jets overhead expelling smoke in red and blue to match the colors of the French flag and a “surprise” honorary Palme d’Or.

It was a long road, getting to this moment. Skydance’s David Ellison , as a very young heir to billions, years ago sought out the original’s director, Tony Scott , and persuaded him to consider the idea of a reprise. But in 2012, Scott stunned Hollywood by leaping to his death from the Vincent Thomas Bridge in San Pedro. Cruise had been with him just two days earlier, scouting locations for the film. This version of the movie was finally greenlighted in the Jim Gianopulos regime, and much about the premiere and the film’s splashy rollout was already planned two years ago. (As Cruise has noted, there was no world in which Paramount wasn’t going to hold the film for a full theatrical run. Because he’s Tom Cruise.)

Now Paramount is poised to enjoy what looks like a global hit just months after Shari Redstone ousted Gianopulos partly for being (in her mind) too old-school about theatrical releases. She committed to a full push into streaming just before Wall Street’s infatuation with it started to cool. Paramount+ is building subscribers, but on the theatrical-movie front, the company has been dining very well on meals prepared by the departed chef. It’s a cliche in Hollywood that executives hit a hot streak after they’re fired, but Gianopulos’ run in this respect has been pretty remarkable. Even the old-fashioned The Lost City is a whisker away from $100 million in domestic box office, and that’s not supposed to happen anymore, at least for a comedic romp that is neither a franchise nor a superhero movie.

At the premiere in San Diego, to which Gianopulos was unsurprisingly not invited, someone asked me how I was enjoying the party. “Feeling a little bad for Cinderella,” I answered.

For many — including me — Cruise himself evokes a heavy mix of feelings. He’s been a movie star since he was 21, still huge in an era when there aren’t many left. His commitment to being a movie star is unflagging. He’s taken chances on a variety of material but still delivered the blockbusters, decade after decade. Still, a lot of people can’t forget — and those old enough to remember 2005, couch jumping and all, were vividly reminded by Cruise himself — that he is also deeply committed to Scientology. Lawrence Wright , Alex Gibney , Leah Remini and others have had plenty to say about what’s disturbing about the organization, and I’ve written a lot of words about Cruise and Scientology myself.

The issue isn’t what Cruise believes in private. Celebrities have always been valued by the group as “ornaments,” says longtime chronicler and Scientology critic Tony Ortega , but Cruise is the church’s biggest celebrity and crown jewel. If Cruise were to leave and denounce the group, Ortega says, “I doubt Scientology could survive it. That’s how important he is.” (There’s no sign he’s considering it.) He adds that Top Gun is “a huge boost for individual Scientologists, who will see the success of the Top Gun sequel as a vindication of Scientology, even if the movie has nothing to do with it.”

At the May 4 premiere at the San Diego Civic Center, Cruise stood onstage and, with immaculate politeness, thanked everyone involved. (He thanked Redstone and Paramount CEO Bob Bakish , who were there, but saved his most lavish praise for Ellison.) The audience included rows of naval officers in their immaculate white uniforms, and of course Cruise thanked the Navy, too. I wondered whether any of those officers gave a thought to Scientology or if they were just dazzled, like millions around the world, by that high-wattage smile and the undeniable movie-star magic.

For me another wave of emotion came when the lights went down and the screen was filled with “ Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer ” in giant letters. Bruckheimer wasn’t obligated to give Don credit on the screen more than 25 years after his death, but he did.

I wasn’t in Hollywood for the original Top Gun , but I was around for the aftermath, when Simpson and Bruckheimer were in their testosterone-fueled glory, with massive deals at Paramount and then Disney. At Paramount, the two sat at a long shared desk. Don was brilliant and funny and profoundly self-destructive. He was also one of my most important early sources on this beat, a true professor of Hollywood-ology. He absolutely gloried in the gossip and social comedy of the town. I knew about the madness, the hookers and the blow, and he knew that I knew and took a dim view. It was understood, but it wasn’t my job to look after him or scold him. It was my job to learn and report.

When Nancy Griffin and I were working on Hit & Run , our book about Jon Peters and Peter Guber , we were invited at one point to Jon’s house. Don called me before and after, insisting on knowing and interpreting who sat where and what, if anything, we were offered to eat or drink. He deconstructed the whole encounter. As a regular customer, he arranged an introduction to the troll-like Madam Alex , the precursor to Heidi Fleiss , and I had tea at her house, poured by one of her “creatures,” as she called them. Alex — then already in a turf war with Fleiss — lay in her bed and filled me in on the Hollywood sex trade, specifically as it related to the characters in our book, and then some. It was invaluable.

When Disney chairman Michael Eisner fired studio chief Jeffrey Katzenberg in 1994, Don worked the phones and filled me in on what had gone down and what they were saying about each other. I couldn’t believe it, but they didn’t seem to suspect that he was reporting back to me. I still remember his enthusiasm, his delight, his outright joy when the story came out in Vanity Fair .

One January afternoon in 1996, we spoke at great length in anticipation of his first interview about his recent, painful split with Bruckheimer — who, very understandably, couldn’t cope with the insanity anymore. I told him he’d have to address the matter of the doctor who had been found dead from drugs in his pool house the previous August. “What do I say?” he asked. I told him I couldn’t advise him, but I offered to let him off the hook entirely; I didn’t want to put more stress on a person whose health had long been a worry. But Don said he’d do the interview, and we planned to meet. Only hours after we hung up, someone called me and said Don was dead. “No, he’s not,” I said. “I was just talking to him.”

That was more than 26 years ago. He was just 52 years old. But Don and Jerry were together again, on the screen, at the Top Gun premiere. And despite the politics, the L. Ron Hubbard of it all, the uncertainties confronting the world, it felt, at least for a flickering moment, that things were as they should be.

This story first appeared in the May 25 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.

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Producers Guild Awards honor 'Top Gun' Tom Cruise, give top prize to 'Everything Everywhere All At Once'

LOS ANGELES – "Top Gun: Maverick" producer and star Tom Cruise was honored Saturday with a career achievement award at the 34th annual Producers Guild of America Awards.

However, the producers awards show bestowed the top prize of the night to  "Everything Everywhere All At Once," widening the sci-fi drama's lead as best picture front-runner.

The PGA is often seen as an Oscar bellwether. Eleven of the past 14 PGA winners have gone on to win best picture – meaning losing  the award  might have crushed the best picture hopes for "Top Gun: Maverick" at the Oscars on March 12.

How 'Top Gun: Maverick' can win best pic: The PGA is crucial

Tom Cruise is 'Top Gun' schmoozer: Academy calls Will Smith response 'inadequate'

Former Paramount CEO Sherry Lansing presented the David O. Selznick Achievement Award to Cruise, 60. Lansing recalled casting the actor for the 1981 drama "Taps."

"He had that magical undefinable quality called charisma.  Equally important, Tom had an incredible work ethic. Even then, he was always the first on the set, always well prepared and respectful to everyone," said Lansing. "Over 42 years later, despite phenomenal success, Tom Cruise is still that very same person."

Tom Cruise on making his dreams come true

Lansing greenlit 1996's "Mission: Impossible," the movie that began Cruise's producing career. As a studio head, Lansing admitted she was initially concerned that Cruise, already one of the biggest stars in the world, wanted to take on a movie version of the classic TV ensemble drama.

But Lansing's fears of diluting Cruise's star power with a movie ensemble disappeared when she read the first draft script Cruise sent over.

"I have to admit that I was delighted to find that in the very first few pages of the script, the entire 'Mission: Impossible' team is killed, except for Ethan Hunt, which is Tom's character," said Lansing. "And he spends the rest of the movie avenging their murders."

Cruise recalled his early days shooting "Taps" with Timothy Hutton and then-newcomer Sean Penn.

"I was certain this was something I wanted to do for the rest of my life," Cruise said, recalling that he studied the movie-making process. "I was overwhelmed by what I didn’t know."

Tom Cruise thanks movie audience for 'Tom Gun: Maverick'

Cruise thanked Jerry Bruckheimer, his producer of the original 1986 “Top Gun” and his producing partner on the long-awaited sequel "Maverick."

"You opened the door for me," Cruise told Bruckheimer. "You welcomed me in and I will be grateful forever."

Cruise paid tribute to the producers in the ballroom along with mentors like Steven Spielberg and Lansing,

"You’ve all enabled me the adventurous life that I wanted,” he said.

Cruise has been lauded for fighting to keep the theatrical window for "Top Gun: Maverick" despite pandemic theater closures. At the PGA, Cruise gave thanks to movie audiences "for whom I work first and foremost. Thank you for letting me entertain you, and I promise I'll always do everything I can to accomplish that goal."

Other movies (and TV) honored by the PGA:

•  "Navalny" won for best documentary feature,
• “Guillermo del Toro’s Pinocchio,”  took best animated film.
• "Till" won the Stanley Kramer Award honoring a production or producer that illuminates and raises public awareness of important social issues.
• TV's “The Bear” won for best comedy.
• “The White Lotus” won for best drama.
• “Lizzo’s Watch Out For The Big Grrrls” won for best reality or competition series.
•  “Stanley Tucci: Searching for Italy” won for non-fiction series, “The Dropout” won best limited series and “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story” won best TV movie.
• Mindy Kaling received the Norman Lear Achievement Award in Television for her work producing shows including “The Mindy Project,” “The Sex Lives of College Girls,” “Never Have I Ever,” “Velma” and “The Office.”

Tom Cruise Is Remaking A Wild Clint Eastwood Action Thriller | GIANT FREAKIN ROBOT

A few months ago the trades announced that Tom Cruise signed a strategic partnership with Warner Bros. to develop and produce original and franchise theatricals for Cruise to star in. At the time, what exactly he was planning to develop remained unknown.

Now GIANT FREAKIN ROBOT can exclusively report that one of those movies will be a remake of the 1977 Clint Eastwood action thriller The Gauntlet . Tom Cruise will take over the role originally played by Eastwood in the movie, that of alcoholic Detective Ben Shockley.

The original version of The Gauntlet was also directed by Clint Eastwood, but our source tells us Christopher McQuarrie will direct the Tom Cruise version. Tom Cruise will, of course, produce as part of his new deal with Warners.

McQuarrie has become Tom Cruise's go-to director over the years. He directed Tom Cruise on movies like Jack Reacher and three Mission: Impossible (soon four) movies. Now Christopher McQuarrie is working with Cruise on The Gauntlet .

This information comes from the same proven source that has broken several other, now confirmed , WB-related stories for us. GIANT FREAKIN ROBOT ‘s editorial policy prohibits me from printing stories submitted by sources without a proven track record.

The Gauntlet is not one of Eastwood's better-known projects. It received mixed to favorable reviews on its release. The story involves a detective ordered to escort a prostitute to a trial, where she's expected to testify against the mob.

As you'd expect, things don't go well, and Detective Shockley ends up under attack and on the run. The movie's filled with some pretty big action set pieces, including high-speed pursuits with helicopters and motorcycles. There's even a road warrior-style chase in a hastily armored bus. It's easy to imagine Tom Cruise turning that into one of his stunt-laden action flicks, only with perhaps a grittier twist than what we've come to expect from him in the Mission: Impossible films.

GIANT FREAKIN ROBOT

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Sort by Year - Latest Movies and TV Shows With Tom Cruise

• Movies or TV
• IMDb Rating
• In Theaters
• Release Year

1. Top Gun 3

Action | Announced

Plot kept under wraps.

Stars: Glen Powell , Tom Cruise , Miles Teller

2. Live Die Repeat and Repeat

Action, Adventure, Sci-Fi | Announced

Plot unknown. A follow-up to the 2014 sci-fi film, 'Edge of Tomorrow'.

Director: Doug Liman | Stars: Emily Blunt , Tom Cruise , Rolando Davila-Beltran

3. Untitled Tom Cruise/SpaceX Project

Pre-production

Tom Cruise and director Doug Liman travel far beyond Earth to film the first ever Hollywood motion picture in outer space

Director: Doug Liman | Star: Tom Cruise

4. Luna Park (I)

A group of renegade employees who venture to the moon to steal an energy source.

Director: Doug Liman

5. Untitled Alejandro G. Iñárritu Film

Plot under wraps.

Director: Alejandro G. Iñárritu | Star: Tom Cruise

6. Untitled Les Grossman Project

Comedy | Announced

A comedic biography of renown movie producer Les Grossman.

7. Adventurer's Club

Adventure | Announced

8. The Late Late Show with James Corden (2015–2023) Episode: Tom Cruise/Monica Barbaro/Teddy Swims

TV-14 | Comedy, Talk-Show

Actor Tom Cruise and actress Monica Barbaro (movie, "Top Gun Maverick"); Teddy Swims performs;

Stars: James Corden , Reggie Watts , Tom Cruise , Monica Barbaro

9. Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part Two (2025)

Action, Adventure, Thriller | Post-production

The 8th entry in the long running Mission Impossible franchise.

Director: Christopher McQuarrie | Stars: Hannah Waddingham , Vanessa Kirby , Tom Cruise , Nick Offerman

10. 2024 EE BAFTA Film Awards (2024 TV Special)

Explore the winners and nominations for the 2024 EE BAFTA Film Awards, celebrates the very best in film of the past year.

Director: Tony Grech-Smith | Stars: David Tennant , Hannah Waddingham , Nick Mohammed , Judi Dench

11. Entertainment Tonight (1981– ) Episode: Episode #43.107 (2024)

News, Talk-Show

Willie Geist, Martin Scorsese, Paul Giamatti, Lily Gladstone, Mark Ruffalo, Bradley Cooper, Zac Efron, and Jeremy Allen White hit the red carpet for the National Board of Review Awards Gala... See full summary  »

Stars: Kevin Frazier , Nischelle Turner , Denny Directo , Rachel Smith

12. Entertainment Tonight (1981– ) Episode: Episode #43.154 (2024)

On the red carpet for the Billboard Women in Music Awards; actress DeWanda Wise (movie, "Imaginary"); Drew Barrymore on her Oscar preview show; Garth Brooks at the grand opening of his bar ... See full summary  »

Stars: Kevin Frazier , Nischelle Turner , Rachel Smith , Cassie DiLaura

13. Entertainment Tonight (1981– ) Episode: Episode #43.170 (2024)

The latest on King Charles and Kate Middleton's cancer battles; the premiere of "Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire"; Katy Perry, Luke Bryan, Lionel Richie, and Ryan Seacrest dish on "American... See full summary  »

14. Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One (2023)

PG-13 | 163 min | Action, Adventure, Thriller

Ethan Hunt and his IMF team must track down a dangerous weapon before it falls into the wrong hands.

Director: Christopher McQuarrie | Stars: Tom Cruise , Hayley Atwell , Ving Rhames , Simon Pegg

Votes: 246,739 | Gross: $172.14M

15. 2023 MTV Movie & TV Awards (2023)

The 31st edition of the MTV Movie and TV Awards, and the sixth to jointly honor film and television. It was originally scheduled to be held on May 7, 2023 at Barker Hangar in Santa Monica, California, and be hosted by Drew Barrymore.

Director: Joe DeMaio | Stars: Drew Barrymore , Adrian Blanco , Sofia Carson , Erica Christensen

16. The Coronation and Crowning of King Charles III & Queen Camilla (2023 TV Special)

Documentary, Music, News

Coronation of Charles III and his wife, Camilla, as king and queen of the United Kingdom and the other Commonwealth realms, on May 6th, 2023 at Westminster Abbey following the death of Charles' mother, Elizabeth II.

Stars: Kirsty Young , Huw Edwards , Abdullah II King Of Jordan , Mishal Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah

17. The Last Last Late Late Show with James Corden Carpool Karaoke Special (2023 TV Special)

A prime time special that aired before James Corden's final episode.

Directors: Glenn F. Clements , Tim Mancinelli | Stars: Adele , James Corden , Tom Cruise

18. König Charles III - Tag der Krönung (2023 TV Special)

420 min | Family, News, Reality-TV

"König Charles III - Tag der Krönung" is a TV Special on WeLT Television (formerly known as N24).

Stars: Abdullah II King Of Jordan , Mishal Al-Ahmad Al-Jaber Al-Sabah , Tamim Bin Hamad Al-Thani , Patrick Allen

19. SAT.1 - Das ist die Krönung! (2023 TV Special)

390 min | Family, News, Reality-TV

"SAT.1 - Das ist die Krönung!" is a TV Special on SAT.1 (DE,AT,CH).

20. etalk presents: Mission: Impossible - All Access (2023 TV Special)

30 min | News

We're in Rome with Tom Cruise, Hayley Atwell and the rest of the 'Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One' cast. They break down all the wild stunts, bemoan Toronto traffic and Tom even learns a little Hindi from Sonia Mangat.

Stars: Hayley Atwell , Angela Bassett , Sonia Beeksma , Tom Cruise

21. Jimmy Kimmel Live! (2003– ) Episode: Tom Cruise/Camila Morrone/Walk Off the Earth (2023)

TV-14 | 45 min | Comedy, Music, Talk-Show

Actor Tom Cruise (movie, "Top Gun: Maverick"); actress Camila Morrone (TV mini-series, "Daisy Jones and The Six"); Walk Off the Earth perform;

Director: Danny Jelinek | Stars: Jimmy Kimmel , Tom Cruise , Camila Morrone , Walk Off the Earth

22. Extra (1994– ) Episode: Episode #29.140 (2023)

TV-PG | 20 min | News

Happy Valentine's Day; interviews with Tom Cruise, Angela Bassett, and Colin Farrell; Rob Lowe's untold pizza delivery story; Carrie Underwood;

Stars: Billy Bush , Renee Bargh , Charissa Thompson , Jana Kramer

23. Formula 1: Drive to Survive (2019– ) Episode: Bounce Back (2023)

TV-MA | Documentary, Sport

Mercedes principal Toto Wolff works to combat the team's unexpected struggles, while Lewis Hamilton navigates a bumpy ride in the team's redesigned car.

Stars: Mattia Binotto , Will Buxton , Jost Capito , Tom Cruise

24. Entertainment Tonight (1981– ) Episode: Episode #42.143 (2023)

TV-PG | News, Talk-Show

Alec Baldwin appears in court for the "Rust" shooting; the cast of "Daisy Jones and The Six"; the Producer's Guild Awards; the NAACP Image Awards; the SAG Awards; singer Adam Lambert; singer Quincy Jones;

Stars: Kevin Frazier , Nischelle Turner , Matt Cohen , Will Marfuggi

25. Entertainment Tonight (1981– ) Episode: Episode #42.145 (2023)

The SAG Awards; actress Courteney Cox receives her star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame; actor Tom Cruise hits the red carpet for the Producers Guild Awards; back stage at the 450th episode ... See full summary  »

26. Extra (1994– ) Episode: Episode #29.161 (2023)

Tom Cruise, Rihanna, and Jimmy Kimmel prepare for the Oscars; David Letterman and rock legends U2;

27. Extra (1994– ) Episode: Episode #29.182 (2023)

James Corden talks about his final shows; a Tom Cruise surprise; Jennifer Garner's new collaboration with Reese Witherspoon on the TV series, "The Last Thing He Told Me";

28. Dish Nation (2011– ) Episode: Episode #11.178 (2023)

TV-PG | News

Tom Cruise is spotted with Shakira; Kroy Biermann seeks full custody of his children in his split from wife, Kim Zolciak; Doja Cat says that her latest two albums were money grabs; Jennifer... See full summary  »

Stars: Da Brat , Gary With Da Tea , Heidi Hamilton , Porsha Williams

29. Entertainment Tonight (1981– ) Episode: Episode #42.213 (2023)

Tom Cruise's "Mission Impossible: Deadly Reckoning - Part One"); Sydney Sweeney ("Reality"): Marcia Gay Harden ("So Help Me Todd"); Matt Dillon and Patricia Arquette ("High Desert");

Stars: Kevin Frazier , Nischelle Turner , Rachel Smith , Hallie Stephens

30. Extra (1994– ) Episode: Episode #29.229 (2023)

Summer movie preview; Tom Cruise; Harrison Ford; Margot Robbie; Sydney Sweeney;

31. Entertainment Tonight (1981– ) Episode: Episode #42.223 (2023)

"Mission Impossible -- Dead Reckoning: Part One"; "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny"; "Barbie"; "Transformers: Rise of the Beasts"; "Gran Turismo"; "Joy Ride"; "Asteroid City"; "Oppenheimer"; "No Hard Feelings"; "Equalizer III";

32. Entertainment Tonight (1981– ) Episode: Episode #42.237 (2023)

Happy Flag Day; Tom Hanks, Scarlett Johansson, and more at the premiere of "Asteroid City"; Samuel L. Jackson, Olivia Colman, and the cast of "Secret Invasion"; Gordon Ramsay (TV series, "... See full summary  »

Stars: Kevin Frazier , Nischelle Turner , Matt Cohen , Rachel Smith

33. Extra (1994– ) Episode: Episode #29.247 (2023)

Juneteenth; Tom Cruise (movie, "Mission: Impossible -- Dead Reckoning: Part One"); Robert Downey Jr's new reality series, "Downey's Dream Cars";

34. Extra (1994– ) Episode: Episode #29.248 (2023)

Tom Cruise (movie, "Mission: Impossible -- Dead Reckoning: Part One"); Sarah Jessica Parker (TV series, "And Just Like That..");

35. Extra (1994– ) Episode: Episode #29.249 (2023)

Tom Cruise (movie, "Mission: Impossible -- Dead Reckoning: Part One"); "And Just Like That..";

36. Extra (1994– ) Episode: Episode #29.250 (2023)

Sofia Vergara tells of launching her own beauty line; Jeremy Allen White (TV series, "The Bear");

37. Access Hollywood (1996– ) Episode: Episode #27.242 (2023)

The cast of "And Just Like That"; Tom Cruise and the cast of "Mission: Impossible -- Dead Reckoning: Part One"; Harrison Ford and the cast of "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny"; Erin ... See full summary  »

Stars: Mario Lopez , Kit Hoover , Scott Evans , Sibley Scoles

38. Entertainment Tonight (1981– ) Episode: Episode #42.242 (2023)

"Mission: Impossible -- Dead Reckoning: Part One"; "And Just Like That"; "Tudum"; Jonathan Majors faces another hearing; "Jack Ryan"; a tour of the Hollywood Memorabilia House; "Secret Invasion"; "Downey's Dream Car";

Stars: Kevin Frazier , Nischelle Turner , Deidre Behar , Hayley Atwell

39. Entertainment Tonight (1981– ) Episode: Episode #42.243 (2023)

"Mission: Impossible -- Dead Reckoning: Part One"; Jennifer Lawrence (movie, "No Hard Feelings"); "LA Fire and Rescue" and the West Hollywood Fire captains; Anthony Anderson and Mama Doris ("Trippin' with Anthony Anderson and Mama Doris");

Stars: Kevin Frazier , Nischelle Turner , Rachel Smith , Matt Cohen

40. Entertainment Tonight (1981– ) Episode: Episode #42.244 (2023)

Tom Cruise (movie, "Mission: Impossible -- Dead Reckoning: Part One"); Christina and Josh Hall (TV series, "Christina in the Country"); Morning Save's Amy Paffrath has "60 Seconds of Steals";

Stars: Kevin Frazier , Nischelle Turner , Hallie Stephens , Cassie DiLaura

41. Entertainment Tonight (1981– ) Episode: Bahamas Week - Day 2 (2023)

Actor Edwin Hodge (TV series, "FBI: Most Wanted"); actors Andy Devine, Pierce Brosnan, and Nina Dobrev, and producer Adam Sandler (movie, "The Out-Laws"); actresses Ashley Park, Stephanie ... See full summary  »

42. Entertainment Tonight Canada (2005–2023) Episode: Episode dated 27 June 2023 (2023)

Family, News

Stars: Hayley Atwell , Angela Bassett , Luke Bryan , Carlos Bustamante

43. Access Hollywood (1996– ) Episode: Episode #27.255 (2023)

Interview with Kate Bosworth; the cast of "Mission: Impossible -- Dead Reckoning: Part One"; interviews with Sylvester Stallone and family;

44. Entertainment Tonight (1981– ) Episode: Episode #42.259 (2023)

Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling (movie, "Barbie"); Matt Damon and Emily Blunt (movie, "Oppenheimer's"); Thunder From Down Under's series. "Flip the Strip", with celebrity guests; "Mission: ... See full summary  »

Stars: Kevin Frazier , Nischelle Turner , Hallie Stephens , Scott Evans

45. Entertainment Tonight (1981– ) Episode: Episode #42.260 (2023)

"Mission: Impossible -- Dead Reckoning: Part One"; the cast of "Barbie"; Larsa Pippen and Marcus Jordan discuss their formerly secretive relationship; Tiffany Haddish (movie, "Haunted ... See full summary  »

46. Entertainment Tonight (1981– ) Episode: Episode #42.261 (2023)

Patrick and Brittany Mahomes at the premiere of his TV series, "Quarterback"; the cast of "Mission: Impossible -- Dead Reckoning: Part One";

47. Entertainment Tonight (1981– ) Episode: Episode #42.263 (2023)

The new cast members of "The Real Housewives of New York City"; the cast of "Mission: Impossible -- Dead Reckoning: Part One"; Melissa Joan Hart and her family do charity work in Zambia; ... See full summary  »

Stars: Kevin Frazier , Nischelle Turner , Rachel Smith , Brice Sander

48. Extra (1994– ) Episode: Episode #29.266 (2023)

Tom Cruise (movie, "Mission: Impossible -- Dead Reckoning: Part One"; how Margot Robbie (movie, "Barbie") got Ryan Gosling to be her Ken;

49. Extra (1994– ) Episode: Episode #29.269 (2023)

Tom Cruise's "Mission: Impossible -- Dead Reckoning: Part One" co-stars talk about working with him; Sterling K. Brown's new movie puts his survival skills to the test;

50. Entertainment Tonight Canada (2005–2023) Episode: 4th July 2023 (2023)

Stars: Anne-Marie , Hayley Atwell , Carlos Bustamante , Belinda Carlisle

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