Dakota Fanning reveals peculiar birthday gift Tom Cruise sends her every year
Ever since celebrating her 11th birthday with Tom Cruise on the set of War of the Worlds, Dakota Fanning has received the same birthday gift from the actor every year, she has revealed.
In April, Fanning opened up about the annual gift that Cruise sends her on the special day, which is a pair of shoes. Despite it being almost 20 years since the Mission Impossible star first sent her footwear, the tradition is still going strong in 2024.
During a new interview on The Kelly Clarkson Show, Fanning discussed receiving a cellphone from Cruise on set for her 11th birthday despite not having any good reason to use it.
“It was a Motorola Razr,” she explained, adding: “I didn’t have anyone to call, but I wanted a Razr so bad. I must have been talking about it a lot because that’s what he got me. It’s such a great memory.”
Fanning then said “he always sends me the same thing every year” because of one thing she mentioned in a conversation when she was younger. “I loved shoes when I was little,” she said, “and I started to be able to fit into really small adult shoes when I was on the War of the Worlds press tour, so I was really excited about them. So from that birthday on, he always sends me shoes.”
Recognising the fact that Fanning must have acquired around 19 pairs of shoes since working on the Steven Spielberg epic, Clarkson then quipped: “That’s so random, I love it. You must have a massive shoe collection brought to you by Tom Cruise!”
Cruise and Fanning played a father and daughter in the thriller, which became one of the highest-grossing movies of 2005 with over $603 million worldwide.
Fanning’s latest project sees her star in Ishana Night Shyamalan’s directorial debut, The Watchers. The highly-anticipated horror movie is set to arrive in cinemas on June 7th. The creepy film is set in Ireland, and finds Fanning’s character, Mina, trapped with three strangers whose lives become a living hell thanks to strange creatures that stalk the group.
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