Actor: Tom Cruise

Tom Cruise has been a leading man since Risky Business in 1983, which is a longer run at that level than almost anyone has managed, and he has done it by treating stardom as an engineering problem.

The serious work is better than the persona suggests. Born on the Fourth of July, Magnolia and Collateral all cast him against the smile, and Magnolia’s motivational speaker is the most exposed he has ever been on screen.

The Mission: Impossible films became a vehicle for stunts he performs himself, hanging off an aircraft, riding a motorcycle off a cliff, largely as an argument that a theatrical audience can tell the difference.

He has been nominated three times without winning. His association with Scientology has been a persistent public issue for two decades.

Dustin Hoffman

Rain Man (1988) Review

Rain Man (1988) rates 8 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Everybody remembers Hoffman and the Oscar, and the film belongs to Tom Cruise, who plays a genuinely unpleasant man for ninety minutes and earns the change without ever…

Tim Curry as Darkness with red skin, cloven hooves, and massive curved horns in a misty forest lit by shafts of light.

Alice Playten

Legend (1985) Review

Legend (1985) rates 7 out of 10 on the rewatch scale. Ridley Scott built a forest inside a Bond stage at Pinewood, burned it to the ground, and produced the most beautiful fantasy film nobody watched. Tim Curry under three-foot…

C Thomas Howell

The Outsiders (1983)

Howell, Lowe, Macchio, Dillon, Cruise, Estevez, Swayze. After Johnny kills a Soc during a confrontation in defense of Ponyboy, the boys flee to an abandoned country church where they hide until Johnny suffers fatal injuries rescuing children from the burning…

Forest Whitaker

The Color of Money (1986)

Scorsese's 1986 Hustler sequel. Paul Newman returns as Fast Eddie alongside Tom Cruise.

Antonio Banderas

Interview with the Vampire (1994)

Neil Jordan's 1994 Anne Rice adaptation. Cruise as Lestat, Pitt as Louis.

Annabelle Wallis

The Mummy (2017)

2017 Alex Kurtzman action horror with Tom Cruise unleashing an ancient Egyptian princess. Universal's failed Dark Universe launch.

Domhnall Gleeson

American Made (2017)

The screenplay was written by Gary Spinelli. The work is one of the strongest Cruise performances of his late career and the rare American biopic that engages substantially with Cold War foreign policy material.

Robert Duvall

Jack Reacher (2012)

Rosamund Pike plays defense attorney Helen Rodin. The casting decision produced ongoing critical engagement that the work itself does not fully resolve.

Andrea Riseborough

Oblivion (2013)

Oblivion is Joseph Kosinski's 2013 American science fiction film and one of the stronger entries in Tom Cruise's late science fiction cycle. The work is more thoughtful than Cruise's late action filmography typically allows.

Cobie Smulders

Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (2016)

2016 sequel with Tom Cruise. Reacher returns to clear an army officer framed for espionage and uncovers deeper conspiracy.

Emilio Estevez

Mission: Impossible (1996)

1996 Brian De Palma spy thriller launching the Tom Cruise franchise. Mission: Impossible is Brian De Palma's 1996 American spy thriller and the franchise launcher that has produced multiple sequels across three decades.

Cuba Gooding Jr

A Few Good Men (1992)

1992 Rob Reiner courtroom drama with Tom Cruise as a Navy lawyer and Jack Nicholson as the Marine colonel who can't handle the truth. A Few Good Men is Rob Reiner's 1992 American courtroom drama and one of the strongest…