The “iconic” actor Tom Cruise never misses a movie by: “I’ve seen all her pictures”
Now that Tom Cruise has decided to leave the UK and everything we have to offer, like free healthcare, Mr Whippy ice creams and polite post office queuing, we won’t get to see him running really fast with his arms tucked in while filming one of his big-budget movies, which is a shame really.
He’s owned a flat in London (if you can call something that costs $35million a flat) for many years while finishing off the Mission Impossible franchise, but has now decided to up sticks and head back to the land of corndogs and private armies disappearing people off the streets, which doesn’t say much for Starmer when you think about it.
Aside from the jaw-dropping Top Gun: Maverick, the Mission Impossible movies have been the only films Cruise has appeared in over an almost ten-year period, so now that they’ve come to an end, it will be interesting to see what the diminutive Scientologist comes up with next. Supposedly, there will be another Live Die Repeat, which was a great action movie with Emily Blunt, and there will definitely be a film at the end of this year called Digger, which could be a real departure for him.
That’s because the man directing it is Alejandro G Iñárritu, of Birdman and The Revenant fame, meaning it will be visually fascinating, and also it’s down as a black comedy, which means we might see Cruise in a return to the kind of performance he put in many years ago in Paul Thomas Anderson’s Magnolia, in which he excelled as a motivational speaker.
Given the Academy Awards’ predilection for handing Iñárritu Oscars (seven nominations and four wins so far for the Mexican director), perhaps it will result in an award for Cruise, who hasn’t had an Oscar nomination for acting since that PTA film all the way back at the start of the century.
Admittedly, Cruise’s genres of choice tend to be popular action or sci-fi, which don’t often trouble the notepads of the folk who hand out awards when March comes around, but he is without doubt an actor of distinction, collecting ‘Best Actor’ nominations for the war epic Born on the Fourth of July and sports agent comedy Jerry Maguire.
But he can’t compete with one of the most awarded actors of all time in Meryl Streep, with whom he starred back in 2007 in the much-maligned Lions for Lambs, a drama about the war in Afghanistan with a noteworthy cast that also featured the late Robert Redford and Andrew Garfield.
Streep is a legend of cinema who holds the record for the most Oscar nominations in history at 21, including three wins, spread over an incredible 40-year period. Cruise paid tribute to her after filming the movie, saying, “Everything that could be said about that woman has been said. To sit there – and I’ve seen all her pictures – and see that iconic, beautiful profile, and from the inside to see her develop a character, and to share in that experience and to be party to that generosity was a treat.”
Adding, “Because it’s one thing to watch someone’s work or to study their work and then to have an opportunity to be on the floor working with them, and particularly Redford, Streep, it’s always edifying.”
Lions for Lambs should have worked, but it didn’t, despite having Redford directing, with many critics feeling like the storyline wasn’t as eventful as it needed to be. It did manage to double its budget at the box office, however, a sign of what filling a cast with star power can do.
