Why won’t Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt work together?
Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt are two of the biggest names in Hollywood. Pitt has secured his place both through blockbusters such as Troy and cult favourites Fight Club and Inglourious Basterds, while Cruise became the face of Top Gun and Mission Impossible. Though they’ve both become go-to leading men in Hollywood, the two actors have only ever worked together on one film.
In the 1994 gothic vampire film Interview with the Vampire, the two acting giants shared a screen for the first and last time. The film followed Cruise as Lestat de Lioncourt, who turns Louis de Pointe du Lac, played by Pitt, into a vampire. Directed by Neil Jordan and starring Kirsten Dunst and Christian Slater, the film was fairly well-received and even secured a couple of Oscar nominations.
Despite this, it sparked a rivalry between the two leads which would last for decades. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Pitt shared his experience of working on the movie. Filming at Pinewood Studios, Pitt found himself “miserable”, spending “six months in the fucking dark”, also known as London in winter. His quality of life during filming almost led him to abandon the film, but he persisted.
Alongside the difficulties Pitt encountered with the location of the shoot, he found himself struggling to work alongside Cruise. This was primarily because of the difference in complexity between their characters – Pitt felt that Cruise was awarded the more lucrative and interesting role.
He recalled: “In the book you have this guy asking, ‘Who am I?’ which was probably applicable to me at the time: ‘Am I good? Am I of the angels? Am I bad? Am I of the devil?’ In the book it is a guy going on this search of discovery. And in the meantime, he has this Lestat character that he’s entranced by and abhors.”
In the movie, on the other hand: “They took the sensational aspects of Lestat and made that the pulse of the film, and those things are very enjoyable and very good, but for me, there was just nothing to do – you just sit and watch.”
This disparity may have caused the initial strain on their relationship, but it also seems that the two actors were simply very different. In an interview for Premiere magazine, Pitt stated, “You gotta understand, Tom and I are… we walk in different directions. He’s North Pole. I’m South. He’s coming at you with a handshake, where I may bump into you, I may not, you know?”
He continued to explain the tension, stating: “I always thought there was this underlying competition that got in the way of any real conversation. It wasn’t nasty by any means, not at all. But it was just there, and it bugged me a bit.” Nonetheless, Pitt seemed more than willing to extend a compliment to his former co-star, stating, “But I’ll tell you, he catches a lot of shit because he’s on top, but he’s a good actor…”
It seems that Cruise isn’t the only actor Pitt refuses to work with. Aaron Taylor-Johnson, who featured alongside Pitt in Bullet Train, once told Variety: “He just wants to bring light and joy into the world and be around people who are there to have a good time. You work with many actors and after a while you start making notes: ‘I am definitely not working with this person ever again.’ Brad has this list too: the ‘good’ list and the shit list.”
With over 60 acting credits and a production company to his name, Pitt can afford to be as selective as he likes, so it’s no surprise that he now picks his collaborators carefully.
