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What should Tom Cruise do next?

Tom Cruise
  • Posted at 3:02pm
  • 13 February 2009
  • by AndrewCollins-RT
  • 2 comments

Jonathan Ross's recent chat-show interview with the world's biggest movie star was no headline grabber. The highlight came when Ross asked if he ever broke wind in bed with his wife and then "fanned the duvet". Tom Cruise guffawed gamely, but declined to comment.

The weak link was not interviewer but interviewee. Tom Cruise is just not that interesting unless you get him onto Scientology, his chosen creed, and even then only in a slightly creepy way.

The one time he let down his guard and professed his love for Katie Holmes by jumping up and down on Oprah Winfrey's couch (back in 2005), he was pilloried for it.

This time, we were left with 20 minutes of an almost preternaturally handsome 46-year-old actor, absorbing wave after wave of worship and giving nothing away.

I really like Tom Cruise. He is an "old-fashioned" movie star. Without him, Hollywood would be deprived of one of its most reliable sources of light.

It's not just his ubiquitous, ultra-bright smile – although that is part of his enduring appeal; he simply possesses a secret ingredient that I don't believe can be learned, bought or even nurtured. Precious few screen actors have it; most have to get by on talent alone. But as Cruise nears his 50s, will this magic dust be enough to sustain his career?

Before shooting to stardom in the flashy Top Gun (1986), Cruise initially seemed to be one of a "pack" of young, pretty thesps like Ralph Macchio, Judd Nelson and Charlie Sheen. This seems preposterous in retrospect, but he quickly proved to be in a different league of star power.

Not content with being a pin-up, he started gunning for Oscars, most notably in Born on the Fourth of July playing a paraplegic Vietnam War veteran. He lost out to "proper actor" Daniel Day-Lewis in My Left Foot.

Cruise's attempts to balance more serious roles with blockbusters like Mission: Impossible and Mission: Impossible III met with mixed success.

Magnolia did earn him another Oscar nomination, but Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut and his Nazi colonel in Valkyrie were less well received.

So, what's next? As a parent, he won't want to be running and jumping off things forever, but he needs a few more lines on his face before he can enter his "second phase" of serious roles.

Perhaps he should take about a decade off and spend some time with young daughter Suri, then come back when he's old enough to play an alcoholic salesman or a judge. And win that Oscar. I don't mind waiting.

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Comments

  • Posted on 14 February 2009
  • at 7:08pm
  • by Nancy Pickford

As a 17-year old watching Risky Business, I (and my school mates) thought Tom Cruise was just perfect: all the star qualities you needed in a screen idol, and with a boy-next-door-if-you-were-really-really-lucky appeal. He can play great (Cocktail, Top Gun, Mission blah blah blah), good (|The Firm) and ugly (Dracula, much to Anne Rice's initial - and retracted - horror).And I have to say, 25 years later, he still does it for me . . . Good on you, Tom xx

  • Posted on 14 February 2009
  • at 2:17pm
  • by M.R.

I agree Andrew. Taking a decade off and then coming back when everyone is less tired of Cruise would probably work wonders for his career, but then we'd get less of him in the mean time. I wish people would just get off his back a little and give him a proper chance.

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