The movie that permanently changed the way Tom Cruise approached his career
There aren’t many stars in Hollywood who dictate the trajectory of their own career, but it goes without saying that Tom Cruise is one of them and has been for four decades. Before he shifted his approach into becoming more of a persona than an actor, Cruise’s filmography was regularly defined by how he would go out of his way to ensure he worked with the biggest and most notable directors in the business, notching a staggering array of collaborators in the process.
Between 1985 and 2000 alone, he partnered up with Ridley Scott, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Oliver Stone, Rob Reiner, Sydney Pollack, Brian De Palma, Cameron Crowe, Stanley Kubrick, Paul Thomas Anderson, and John Woo. These are all auteurs with their own distinctive style and visual aesthetics.
That desire to pit his wits against the best directorial talents in the business may have waned somewhat in recent years as Cruise focused largely on action-packed blockbusters. Still, it was very early on in his career that he decided the only way he was going to get ahead was by seeking out the best the business had to offer.
In fact, as he admitted to Interview before Top Gun was even released in the summer of 1986, it was already at the forefront of his thinking. “I didn’t know anything about agents and business or scripts,” he explained. “Coming off Taps, I felt like, hey, everyone wants to make a great movie. Everyone who’s doing this loves their work. It’s too hard a line of work to not love it. You work as hard as you can, and you get everything, and something has to work out.”
Describing Losin’ It as “a terrible time in my life”, Cruise conceded that getting new representation and pitching himself directly to the most prominent filmmakers around was the quickest and smartest way to achieve his goals. This led him directly to Coppola and The Outsiders.
“I just went to Francis and said, ‘Look, I don’t care what role you give me. I really want to work with you. I want to be there with all these young actors.’ That was a hell of a good time. I just wanted a wide body of work,” he continued. “After Taps came out, I was offered every horror film, every killer-murderer part. I told this one agent that I wanted to work with Francis. He said, ‘Francis! He’s not going to pay you anything!’ It was never a main role, but I created something.”
The opportunity to work with Coppola was something Cruise wanted so desperately that he replaced his agent and made it abundantly clear that he was only interested in working with the best. From then on out, that’s exactly what he did.
