The only actors Tom Cruise broke his golden rule for: “I’m running next to Mr Movie Running Man”
Hollywood’s most famous overcompensator has been running onscreen for so long that he’s embraced the meme, and at this stage, there’s no point even sending a script to Tom Cruise unless it features at least one scene where he gets to cut loose and sprint as fast as he possibly can.
If there’s ever an occasion where a screenplay does land on his desk that doesn’t allow him to indulge his favourite filmic pastime, he’d probably have one written anyway. It’s a bizarre fascination, to say the least, because anyone who’s been to a cinema at any point in the last three decades is aware that Cruise can run very fast. We get it, Tom, you aren’t beholden to the ravages of time, even in your 60s.
The formula for the ‘Tom Cruise Movie’ has become increasingly simple: whereas he used to work with the industry’s most venerated auteurs throughout the 1980s and 1990s, the alchemy has been reduced to mostly three things: a death-defying stunt, a running scene, and Christopher McQuarrie’s involvement.
Nobody spends almost 40 uninterrupted years at the summit of the industry’s A-list without having self-confidence and ego in abundance, which means it’s become one of Hollywood’s highest honours for any actor to be afforded the rarest of opportunities: pounding the pavement in the same frame as Cruise.
In fact, it’s only happened twice. Annabelle Wallis took the initiative when she was cast in the dismal The Mummy and inquired if she could share the spoils, only to be told: “Nobody runs onscreen with me.” Cruise’s stance eventually softened, though, leaving her “so happy” that she was bestowed with such an accolade.
Several years later, Hayley Atwell couldn’t believe it when she was told that her Mission: Impossible debut in Dead Reckoning would grant her entry to the exclusive club. “At one point, they said to us, ‘We really want you to have a sequence where you and Tom run with each other, and you’re going to be handcuffed to him,” she told Rolling Stone. “And you’ll be in heels. On the streets of Rome.”
Understandably, she was beyond thrilled. “I was like, ‘I’m running next to Mr Movie Running Man,'” she exclaimed. “The iconic Tom Cruise run.” Sadly, when the time came for the inevitable Mission: Impossible running scene in The Final Reckoning, the leading man hogged the spotlight all to himself when he powered his way across London’s Westminster Bridge and beyond.
Will anyone else join Wallis and Atwell in the ranks of actors graciously allowed to run onscreen alongside Cruise? It depends on whether he’s in a sharing mood, even if it’s most likely something that comes up behind closed doors whenever someone discovers they’re sharing a scene with him.
