“At the age of four and a half, I took the sheets from my bed, climbed to the top of the roof and jumped using them as a parachute. I got a crazy blow in the face and the sheets were all dirty, imagine the joy of my mother, with four children … I always wanted to do things, it was impossible to stop ». An outlined destiny, the one that emerges from the words of the greatest movie star in the world: Tom Cruise.
The general delegate Thierry Fremaux invites a packed hall of the Festival of Cannes to put down the smartphones and to applaud properly. Tom is almost moved, “after everything we’ve been through, this seems like a dream to me.” In a total black look, the American actor is in great shape. And his dark circles don’t hurt. He is here to celebrate the release of Maverick Top Gun36 years after the first film by Tony Scott. A story of friendshipthe first, and the second “transmission” of experience, with truly surprising visual effects thanks to the six IMAX cameras mounted on the F-18s that really make the difference in air combat.
Cruise has fun. He seems to see him, that child who at four had the perfect tastes to become one movie machine. «I wanted to make films, I wanted adventure. As a child I always did dangerous things, wrote stories, climbed trees. I grew up contributing to the economy of the house, I cut the grass in the gardens, I sold Christmas cards door to door, then with the money I earned I ran to the cinema ».
At 18 he arrives Taps (it’s 1981), a drama about the military school and about the students who decide to save it from closure. It is the first film of Sean Penn and Cruise’s second, but the first was just a cameo. “I didn’t go to school but I knew the movies. I went to every single department and studied everything in detail, so that if I didn’t make another film I still knew everything ».
Traveling the world, being part of different cultures, working was all he wanted. “I’ve always shot my films in different countries, I wanted to share them with the world and understand what it affected people, wherever I was. I grew up with Buster Keaton And Charlie Chaplinand I realized that I had to understand how things worked, to make this work
Learning and studying are the two words he will use the most in an hour of conversation with an adoring audience. “I’m a guy who if he doesn’t understand isn’t afraid to ask again. It is always better to ask a question than not to ask it. Over the years I have realized that those who are really competent can also answer “I don’t know”, while the arrogant are those who don’t know much. I always repeat it to those who work with me ».
Curiously, the American actor and producer does not lose it when a new film comes out. «I put on a hat and go to the cinema, I study the names that appear in the credits to understand who does what and how he does it. When I was 19 I asked to meet Sidney Pollack for this reason ».
In times of crisis of cinemas, and with his film released late for the pandemicreiterates that he would never have given it to one platform. “For the past two years I’ve been going to the guys who sell popcorn and I told them ‘I’ll do another one Mission Impossiblehold on””.
He likes team play, and never says the word “mine” in combination with “movie”. «For me it is always our job. I spend a lot of time with the people I involve, I know what they have done and I want to understand how they contribute to the work ».
He takes nothing for granted, from any point of view. «I take lessons from dance and of I sing, I study a lot to give the viewer a unique experience. I absorb things and have been lucky enough to work with directors who took me to a room and said “I’m going to show you scenes from the movie and you won’t like them. Look at them as if you were a spectator ”. It helped me to take a leap, to understand that progressing is an extraordinary process ».
There are rare moments when a physical actor like him stops. It happens in Magnolia when he goes to see his father who is dying and remains motionless for forty seconds. “Whether you move or not, there is always a lot of physicality in an actor, it’s just that he uses his body in a different way.” It also happens in Eyes Wide Shut when the wife (Nicole Kidman) tells him about the erotic dream she had with the soldier, and he no longer moves a muscle for long minutes. “We shot that scene a thousand times with Stanley Kubrick. He would put the lights on, then I would come and talk about the tone he wanted for the film, something uncomfortable but not obvious. Ours is a work of exploration, if you throw it all away, it doesn’t matter. The important thing is that a spectator doesn’t understand what’s behind it ».
When asked why he always turns more dangerous scenes putting his body at risk, he has no hesitation. “There old Hollywood he did everything for real. With Paul Newman we drove a lot in cars, and everything I learned in life I always thought I would use it for a movie ». Maverickdirected by di Joseph Kosinski, arrives in theaters since May 2536 years after Top Gun, and tells a story in which Cruise teaches a select group of twelve Top Gun graduates. On the set he trained them all, who has a patent of aerobatic pilot.
“The studios at the time would have immediately wanted a following, I said I wanted to grow up first. The sequels require a dialogue with the audience, I would come home in the evening and think about how I would do things, those who make films make enormous efforts to make things turn out well. I have always thought that everything is possible, and that it is better to create, even if you fail, rather than not daring. I help everyone, the writers, the sound engineers and the light designers, and they help me. I have been working for many years, I have built a broader perspective on storytelling. Everyone in Hollywood wants guarantees, I like teaching how to grow a flower. And if they want to listen to me, I’m honored. “
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Source: Vanity Fair
