| Trivia that mentions this person: |
| Star Trek [2009] |
| To prepare for his role as Captain James Kirk, Chris Pine watched classic episodes and read encyclopedias about the [Star Trek] universe. However, his research was rudimentary, as he wanted his performance to be original and not an imitation of William Shatner. He based his performance on Tom Cruise's Maverick and Harrison Ford's Han Solo and Indiana Jones, heroes who Pine felt possessed the archetypal hero qualities Kirk has (humour, arrogance, decisiveness). |
| Edward Scissorhands [1990] |
| Tom Cruise and Robert Downey Jr. were considered for the role of Edward Scissorhands. |
| Ghost [1990] |
| When it came time to cast the film, writer Bruce Joel Rubin suggested Patrick Swayze for the role of Sam Wheat. Director Jerry Zucker felt that Swayze was completely wrong for the part. Many actors that included Tom Hanks, Tom Cruise, Kevin Bacon, Al Pacino, Bruce Willis, Harrison Ford and Alec Baldwin were all offered the part but all turned it down feeling that playing a ghost would be cheesy. Zucker then decided to audition Swayze though he thought he would blow the audition. To Zucker's surprise, Swayze did a great audition and he was cast immediately in the part. |
| Hulk [2003] |
| Tom Cruise was offered the role of Bruce Banner. |
| The Matrix [1999] |
| Ewan McGregor was offered, but turned down, the part of Neo to work on Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace. Leonardo DiCaprio was also considered for the role of Neo. As was Tom Cruise. |
| Mission: Impossible [1996] |
| While filming the famous scene where Tom Cruise drops from the ceiling and hovers inches above the ground, Cruise's head kept hitting the floor until he got the idea to put coins in his shoes for balance. |
| Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol [2011] |
| Jeremy Renner's character Brandt, was specifically created as the eventual replacement for Tom Cruise's character Ethan Hunt for when Cruise decides to step away from the franchise. |
| Tom Cruise performed the sequence where Ethan Hunt scales the outside of the Burj Khalifa tower himself without the use of a stunt double. The Burj Khalifa tower is the tallest building in the world. |
| The code Ethan uses at the pay phone to get his latest mission is actor Tom Cruise's birthday, 07362. |
| Only Tom Cruise and Ving Rhames have been featured in all four [Mission: Impossible] films, while Simon Pegg and Michelle Monaghan are the only actors (besides Cruise and Rhames) to reprise their roles from the prior third installment. |
| Mission: Impossible-2 (M:I-2) [2000] |
| For the 'knife-in-the-eye' scene, Tom Cruise insisted that a real knife be used, and that it stop exactly quarter inch from his eyeball, instead of somewhere vaguely near his eye, as John Woo suggested. |
| The famous rock climbing sequence was filmed at Dead Horse Point in Utah. Tom Cruise was on cables which were then digitally removed. [?] Ron Kauk was the climbing double and the overhang stunt was performed by main stunt double, Keith Campbell. John Woo was so scared each time but "Tom insisted on doing it". |
| Nicole Kidman, at the time Tom Cruise's wife, suggested Thandie Newton as the love interest for Ethan Hunt. She was cast before the script was written. |
| Mission: Impossible III (M:I:III) [2006] |
| When Ethan wakes up tied to the chair and Brownway shoots the charge up his nose, the hand seen holding the gun to Tom Cruise's nose is not Eddie Marsan's, but Cruise's own hand. The same goes later when Musgrave puts the phone to Ethan's ear, then Ethan bites Musgrave's hand. The hand that Cruise bit was not Billy Crudup's, but again was his own hand. |
| Mortal Kombat [1995] |
| [?] Brandon Lee was originally cast as Johnny Cage, but died before production began. Jean-Claude Van Damme turned down the role of Johnny Cage to do Street Fighter. Tom Cruise and Johnny Depp were both considered for the role of Johnny Cage. |
| The Others [2001] |
| Executive produced by Tom Cruise, this marked the last collaboration between him and Nicole Kidman prior to their divorce. |
| Nicole Kidman and Tom Cruise's high profile divorce was finalized the same week that The Others was released. |
| Sabrina [1995] |
| Tom Cruise was asked to play David. |
| Sahara [2005] |
| At first, Hugh Jackman was close to signing for the role of Dirk Pitt, and as of Summer 2001, filming was proposed to begin by October of that year. However, due to the 9/11 attacks, filming was postponed. It was later delayed again when Jackman was busy with X2, and he eventually pulled out so that he could appear on Broadway in The Boy From Oz. Some time later, Tom Cruise was reported to be attached to star as Dirk Pitt, but those rumors were quickly squashed. |
| War of the Worlds [2005] |
| During the filming of the underwater scenes (where the ferry capsizes) Steven Spielberg played a prank on Tom Cruise and Dakota Fanning by playing the dramatic music from Jaws (also one of Spielberg's films) through the massive underwater speakers on the sound stage. |
| While filming nearby, Tom Cruise, along with a 20-member entourage, including Steven Spielberg, visited a Lexington, Virginia, Dairy Queen. Cruise saw a jar on the counter with a photo of [?] Ashley Flint and her story. Flint was in a go-cart accident a few months earlier, leaving her family with a mountain of hospital bills. Cruise put $5000 cash into the jar. |
| Tom Cruise's sixth consecutive film to break the $100m barrier domestically since 2000 and his 13th movie to break that barrier in total. |
| Watchmen [2009] |
| Casting rumors over the years included Sigourney Weaver (Sally Jupiter); John Hurt, Robin Williams, [?] Doug Hutchison, Daniel Craig, Simon Pegg, [?] Glen Hansard (Rorschach); Arnold Schwarzenegger, Dolph Lundgren (Dr. Manhattan); Tommy Lee Jones, Gary Busey, Ron Perlman, Thomas Jane (Comedian); Richard Gere, Kevin Costner, John Cusack, [?] Joaquin Phoenix (Nite Owl); Nathan Fillion (either Comedian or Nite Owl); Jamie Lee Curtis, [?] Hilary Swank, Jessica Biel, Hilary Duff (Silk Spectre); Tom Cruise, Jude Law (Ozymandias). In the finished film, Jackie Earle Haley is the only one of the seven primary cast members who was even in the film industry when the movie was first attempted. |
| Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation [2015] |
| Tom Cruise and Simon Pegg performed all their own driving stunts. The stunt coordinator told Simon Pegg that Cruise was going to do all the driving because he didn't have a driver better than him. |
| Tom Cruise stated in an interview that it was his intention to do the stunt hanging onto the Airbus A400M in a way to outdo himself after the Burj Khalifa climb stunt in the previous film. However, his idea raised objections by the crew due to safety. Being a certified pilot himself, he wanted to get the feel of being out on the wing or on the side of the airplane. A major obstacle to filming would be bird strikes and wind resistance on the runway. To capture the action, a wind-resistant custom frame for the camera was built and mounted onto the left wing of the plane. The other major problem would be keeping Cruise's eyes open in the presence of fast wind and runway particles, so his eye specialist designed a special lens that can cover the entire eyeball. Eight takes of the stunt were filmed. Christopher McQuarrie was very concerned that the actor might panic suddenly, but was assured by Cruise to not stop filming until the stunt had been finished. |
| Tom Cruise was injured 6 times during the making of the movie. |
| Tom Cruise was struck in the body by a small pebble while filming one of the takes hanging from the plane. Cruise claimed that the impact hurt so badly he was certain he had been badly injured and was afraid to look once the take was over. Fortunately the pebble merely embedded in his clothing and he was amazed by how small it was. |
| The film's producers originally wanted Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol director Brad Bird to return to helm the follow up film. Bird declined the offer in order to do Tomorrowland. Christopher McQuarrie was then brought in by the film's producers under the franchise's leading man Tom Cruise's request for the director's job. |
| Tom Cruise is only five years younger in this film than Jon Voight was in the original Mission Impossible film. |
| Poltergeist [2015] |
| Tom Cruise and Richard Armitage were considered for the role of Eric Bowen. |
| Edge of Tomorrow [2014] |
| While filming the car chase scene which includes a mini-van, Emily Blunt was instructed to drive fast and then to take a right hand turn so that the van would shake. However, Blunt missed her mark and she drove the car right into a tree. She later said that it was both hilarious and terrifying, as she almost killed Tom Cruise, who was in the passenger seat, but both of them started laughing after the incident. |
| Emily Blunt admitted that after putting on the metal suit, she started crying because it was so heavy (it weighed 85 pounds) and that she would be required to perform action scenes in it for five months. She was jokingly told by Tom Cruise to "stop being such a wuss". |
| Tom Cruise was one of the first people to learn about Emily Blunt's pregnancy. The cast and crew had to return a few months after principal photography had wrapped to do some pick-up shots. During the months between the two shoots, Blunt became pregnant and was only a few weeks along when they had to return for the additional filming. Because of the pregnancy, she opted to not do her own stunts for this portion of the shoot, but didn't tell anyone why, since the pregnancy was still in the early stages. This confused Cruise, since she had done most of her own stunts during principal photography. She revealed to him that she was in the early stages of pregnancy, which, according to her, made him the only person besides her husband John Krasinski and one close friend to know about the pregnancy. |
| Tom Cruise admitted that Emily Blunt was an actress he wanted to work with for a long time, and he recommended her to the producers for the role of Rita. |
| Tom Cruise began pre-production on the film on July 20, 2012, less than a week after wrapping his film Oblivion. |
| The kiss between Cage and Rita before the final battle was unscripted and a surprise to Tom Cruise and the director, with Emily Blunt saying afterwards, "It just felt right. It felt right and I did it." |
| Minority Report [2002] |
| The film was originally planned to be a direct sequel to Total Recall where Tom Cruise's character was going to be played by Arnold Schwarzenegger and the Precogs were going to be Martian mutants with psychic abilities (a concept established in the former film). |
| The Man from U.N.C.L.E. [2015] |
| Tom Cruise was cast as Napoleon Solo but chose to focus instead on Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation, so he dropped out. Henry Cavill, who was at first considered for the other role, was cast. Henry Cavill is now starring in the new [Mission Impossible] movie alongside Tom Cruise. |
| The Mummy [2017] |
| Hyde calls Nick "young" during their fight scene - even though in real life, Tom Cruise (Nick) is a year older than Russell Crowe (Hyde). |
| When Jake Johnson was offered his part in the movie, he loved the idea and the opportunity to work with Tom Cruise, knowing that Cruise does most of his own stunts. He signed on immediately, but when he read the full script and learned what kind of dangerous actions were expected of him, he admitted to getting cold feet. However, Cruise allowed Johnson access to his private facilities for a rigorous 4.5 month training course, making him well prepared for all the stunts he was required to do. |
| The zero gravity scene took sixty-four takes and was shot for two days in a falling plane. Reportedly, a lot of the crew got nauseous during the scene and vomited, except for the main stars, Tom Cruise and Annabelle Wallis, who were really proud of the stunt. |
| The Mummy had a relatively disappointing box office run, grossing just over $400m worldwide. Studio sources have said that Tom Cruise exerted too much control on the set, and that his input into editing and marketing greatly changed the pace and style of the movie. |
| Writer Christopher McQuarrie directed Tom Cruise in Jack Reacher and Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation. |
| This was not Tom Cruise's first foray into the horror genre. He had played a vampire in the film Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles. |
