PR.04.05.TomCruise.lay 2/18/05 6:26 PM Page 2 ID #25 BRAD PITT RUSSELL CROWE NICOLE KIDMAN JOHNNY DEPP MERYL STREEP JACK LEMMON WILL SMITH CLINT EASTWOOD GARY COOPER PETER SELLE JANE FONDA STEVE MCQUEEN JAMES DEAN WARREN BEATTY TOM HANKS GREGORY PECK ERROL FLYNN BETTE DAVIS DORIS DAY FRED ASTAIRE JUDY KTATHARINE HEPBURN OHUMPHREY BOGART GRAMCE KELLY JAMES CAGNEY HENRYC FONDA JAMES STEWRART GRETA GARBO JUULIA ROBERTS PAUL NIEWM MAYBE T #3 BUT HFINAL.PR.03.05.TESOMT CRUISE.LAILY L KICKSASS PR.04.05.TomCruise.lay 2/18/05 6:26 PM Page 3 ID #26 OOD GARY COOPER PETER SELLERS ELIZABETH TAYLOR DENZEL WASHINGTON ROBERT DE NIRO AL PACINO SEAN CONNERY HARRISON FORD RITA HAYWORTH SHIRLEY TEMP DORIS DAY FRED ASTAIRE JUDY GARLAND CLARK GABLE SIDNEY POITIER SPENCER TRACY AUDREY HEPBURN ROBERT REDFORD JACK NICHOLSON MARLON BRANDO RBO JUULIA ROBERTS PAUL NIEWMANS INGRID BERGMAN JEOHN WAYNE TOM C RUISEMARILYN MONROE CARY GRANT BRAD PITT RUSSELL CROWE NICOLE KIDMAN JOHNNY DEP THERE’S NO ONE LIKE HIM. He’s got the smile, the hair, the charm, and the confidence to back up any Risky Business he wants to get into. Now, the star of War of the Worlds is ready to save the world. E BYTOM ROSTON PHOTOGRAPHS BY TONY DURAN L SS PR.04.05.TomCruise.lay 2/18/05 6:26 PM Page 4 ID #27 BRAD PITT RUSSELL CROWE NICOLE KIDMAN JOHNNY DEPP MERYL STREEP JACK LEMMON WILL SMITH CLINT EASTWOOD GARY COOPER PETER SELLE TEMPLE JANE FONDA STEVE MCQUEEN JAMES DEAN WARREN BEATTY TOM HANKS GREGORY PECK ERROL FLYNN BETTE DAVIS DORIS DAY FRED ASTAI BRANDO KATHARINE HEPBURN HUMPHREY BOGART GRACE KELLY JAMES CAGNEY HENRY FONDA JAMES STEWART GRETA GARBO JULIA ROBERTS PA 1962-present ESSENTIAL FILMS: Risky Business (1983), Top Gun (1986), Rain Man (1988), Jerry Maguire (1996), Mission: Impossible(1996), Minority Report (2002) Collateral (2004) OSCAR DISH: Three nominations, for Born on the Fourth of July (1989), Jerry Maguire, and Magnolia (1999). DVD YOU HAVE TO SEE RIGHT NOW: Magnolia. Cruise, as a creepy self-help guru, gives a truly magnetic and honest perfomance. TOM CRUISE, OVERWHELMED WITH EMOTION, his trailer, Cruise tries to explain what Worlds Washington or the angelic looks of Pitt. But he’s beats his open hand over his heart. His eyes well means to him. “You have to understand.” He definitely the most attractive. There’s a lumi- S T Y L E up with tears. They widen, glisten, and then pauses to emphasize each word: “I . love . nosity and fierceness to him. Think of a wolf. D B Y squeeze shut in a taut expression of sympathetic movies.” He slips off the couch, and crouches in There is a feral quality to him, after all—strong J E A N pain. And the guy isn’t even on camera. This is a baseball catcher’s position, with fingers bone structure, thick hair, big teeth, and expres- N E Y A Cruise between takes, interacting with his War of pressed together, practically willing his words sive, urgent eyes—that makes him seem a little N G F O the Worlds costar, ten-year-old Dakota Fanning, into physical existence. “I love telling stories.” bit wild (something both women and men can R C L whose performance is bowling him over. Cruise, O Tom Cruise is intense. And he doesn’t keep it appreciate for different reasons). And then there U T I E the biggest movie star of our time, is verklempt. inside—he wears his intensity like a second skin. is his exuberant, cocksure smile, which radiates R A G E The setting is a dirty old cellar on the ugly We’ve seen it onscreen time and again: whether off the screen, wrapping audiences in its glow, N C Y . C side of an alien invasion—there are broken it’s the adolescent joy he exudes dancing in his signifying to all that there’s a movie star up O M ; S boards, crumbling bricks, puddles of water on underwear in Risky Business, or the cocky deter- there, and he’s loving the part. T Y L I S the ground, and a blinding background light that mination he embodies in Top Gun, or the “When you hear that someone has a strong T ’ S A S casts shadows and reflects ominously on the Shakespearean self-denial he wraps himself in, presence, it can bring to mind military or busi- S I S T walls. Cruise and Fanning are acting out a scene A and then rips apart, in Magnolia. His characters ness leaders, heads of state,” Spielberg says. N T , S in which he has just committed a violent act— I are tightly wound, often on the brink, but they “It’s that je ne sais quoi you experience in a M O N there’s blood dripping from his eyebrow—and ultimately have perfectly calibrated clocks, and, crowded room, when one person who you have E K A L Fanning’s character is coping with the trauma. I unless they’re antiheroes, they are always able to never seen before stands out. It’s like they’re N O W After several more takes, director Steven solve the crime, save the world, get the girl, and plugged into a wall outlet while everyone else S K I ; G Spielberg yells, “That’s the one,” and Cruise strut off the screen smiling. around them appears to be standing in the dark. R O O smiles, emitting a rat-a-tat-tat laugh of emotional PREMIERE M There’s a reason that ’s editors Tom just happens to burn brighter than most, I N G B release that echoes off the farthest corners of the believe 42-year-old Cruise is the greatest movie and that’s before you even factor in how talented Y L O I vast Soundstage 15, on the Fox lot in Los Angeles. star working today. He may not have the lovable an actor he is.” S B U R A half hour later, sitting on a leather couch in warmth of Hanks or the heroic dignity of Ask Cruise whether audiences see him as an W E L L actor or a movie star, and he says, after a long A T T pause, in an almost inaudible whisper: H E M . I “It doesn’t really matter to me.” L T O S N N N O Talking to Cruise about what a big movie star A G G E N he is is a little unseemly. It’s stating the obvious. C Y Y E ; T P A R Tell him that audiences go to his movies not so O R D U C A much to see his characters, but to see him, and T V I O S N E H his eyes narrow. B Y S S E H “That’s a real honor,” he says. “Some people O T T N B S I will hook into a character or story more. I don’t K A ” T S S , I L E know. But actor-movie star . I just do it.” M A R T T Tell him how much audiences adore seeing F S I R E S P him propel down that wire in Mission: T O E I N S E ; Impossible, and he resorts to a deafening laugh: T U P X E T P “HE HA HA HA HA HA HA. That’s funny. D O O , C That’s funny.” (Cruise is that rare person who O S T A S U H actually laughs literally as written—with clearly M E N A M enunciated, hard “h” and elongated “ee” and T I O H N G “aa” sounds.) A L I ; S Push him to uncomfortable limits on the sub- H I R T T , ject, saying that you heard that on the set of D O R L C Collateral, Jamie Foxx’s friends were riffing on E A S N D how much they loved to see “the Tom Cruise G B A B B run,” and he laughs again: A U N A ; “He he ha ha ha ha ha ha.” B O N J W And remind him of how iconic his smile is: T I E , S “Ha ha ha ha ha.” A K R S F I And that it’s been talked about how his bris- F T M H tling physicality lights people up, notably when A V U E N his characters freak out, as in the bathroom in U E O P R I V B Jerry Maguire or on the road in Rain Man: A T E T “HA HA HA,” he bellows. Then, shifting in his L A B E seat, he says quietly, “That’s nice to hear.” L ; S “ H (But what’s he supposed to say? “That’s O E S , P right, mortal. Bow before your god”?) R A D Cameron Crowe, who (Continued on page 110) A PR.04.05.TomCruise.lay 2/18/05 6:26 PM Page 5 ID #81 Tom Cruise work, that it’s almost off-putting. At the same (Continued from page 80) time, he’s friendly and accommodating; during the course of an interview, he allows himself to directed Cruise in Jerry Maguire and Vanilla Sky, be steered from one subject to another, without recalls a similar jocular exchange while working trying to control the conversation. He’s boyishly on Maguire, when Cruise joined him in the physical, warmly double-punching this writer’s editing room and watched himself flash his bril- chest when discussing the joys of fatherhood.