When Def Leppard shouted “fuck you” at Tom Cruise: “It was a very cool moment”
There are some actors, like Matthew McConaughey and Brad Pitt, who make movie stardom seem downright casual. Tom Cruise does not. He dwells in the profoundly effortful branch of fame, hurtling off cliffs, launching out of planes while on fire, and dangling from skyscrapers, all in the name of Hollywood and himself.
In doing so, he’s earned his place as one of the last movie stars, a they-don’t-make-them-like-this-anymore kind who can still reliably get butts in seats at the cinema. Throughout his multi-decade career, his movies have grossed more than $13.2 billion at the box office. More importantly, Stephen Spielberg, that de facto cinematic deity, personally thanked him for single-handedly saving Hollywood in the wake of the pandemic with Top Gun: Maverick.
Cruise really has had to work for it, though, and that labour isn’t just evident in that stunt work and global press touring. In recent years, he’s embraced the art of making fun of himself, presumably to preempt anyone else from doing it first. He was a bit late to the party but still managed to get the point across on several occasions, most notably when he played an overbearing movie producer with a penchant for hip-gyration in the 2008 comedy Tropic Thunder.
In 2012, he really went for it, taking up a role in the jukebox musical parody Rock of Ages. Directed by Adam Shankman, the film follows two starry-eyed musicians trying to make it in the Los Angeles music industry of the 1980s. Cruise plays Stacee Jaxx, the middle-aged frontman of a once-zeitgeisty rock band called Arsenal, which is embarking on a farewell tour.
One concert scene involves Jaxx singing the Def Leppard song ‘Pour Some Sugar on Me’ in front of a packed audience. With long, straggly hair, no shirt, and a large tattoo on his chest, Cruise looks like a combination of Axl Rose, Brett Michaels, and Joe Elliott trying (and, to be blunt, failing) to recapture their former glory. As usual, he’s giving it his 120%, which makes the audience feel a bit like a third wheel.
According to Cruise, Def Leppard gave him their seal of approval by shouting expletives at him, as is customary. As it turns out, they wanted to be on set the day he recorded their song, so they are somewhere in the audience in the final cut of the movie. As Cruise remembered it, “They went to the back of the Bourbon Room, and I looked at my band and was like, ‘Hit it.’ All the crew was watching them, watching me.”
As the Mission: Impossible star began to thrash about, Joe Elliott pointed at him and shouted, “Fuck you! Fuck you!” Presumably unnerved by the display, Cruise quickly relaxed when he noticed that the musician was smiling.
“I realised I’d gotten their stamp,” he said, adding, “It was a very cool moment. It was important they knew I was honouring their music and not making fun of them.”
As usual, Cruise had earned every ounce of validation that he got. He put in five hours of vocal work daily to nail the sound that came out of his mouth, proving yet again that he can make anything more challenging than it needs to be.
