Tom Cruise vs. the world: Actor faces jokes about his age, his Oscar bid, and his return to the media spotlight

Although Tom Cruise has maintained his star status on the big screen, the 64-year-old has avoided giving interviews to mainstream media for the past 20 years. Instead, he has focused on being an actor exclusively associated with his roles, someone who only generates conversation for his spectacular stunts in the sequels to Mission Impossible, done without doubles, or for his commitment to the seventh art, to theaters, and to Hollywood.

He brought his penchant for acrobatics to the closing ceremony of the last Olympic Games in Paris and exhibited charisma and star power during a speech at the World Cup final. Even the most recent controversy has played in his favor: when recordings of Cruise angrily urging the team of Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One (2023) to respect Covid measures were released in 2020, the emphasis he placed on protecting the industry, jobs, and workers’ homes won him praise.

Cruise’s strategy of letting his performances do the talking, thereby shifting the focus from the darkest aspects of his personal life, has worked for him. For a generation of viewers, Cruise is heir to Buster Keaton, a star who enacted his own stunts in every film and who, as he liked to remind us, loved cinema. However, Cruise’s latest work, Digger, has placed him on the shortlist of contenders for the Oscar for Best Actor in next year’s Academy Awards. And every candidate needs a campaign.

Perhaps that explains why the protagonist of Top Gun (1986) has paused his approach to the media and offered an extensive interview with GQ magazine, showing off his abs in one of the most talked-about covers of the year. Shirtless, with one hand over his head and the other grabbing the belt of his jeans, Cruise has once again provoked divisive and, in some cases, visceral reactions, not unlike Digger.

For some, Cruise is a man in his 60s who refuses to accept his age. “Someone on his team hates him. This has to be a practical joke,” said one social media user. “He needs to stop making a fool of himself like this,” wrote another. Then there were jokes like, “My father, handling the divorce well.” On the other hand, there are those who see Cruise as someone who wears his years well and who is happy to show off his body. It is interesting that Madonna is ridiculed for trying to be sexy at 68 almost across the board, but when it comes to Cruise, the public are divided.

Aside from the question of whether there is an age limit to showing off your torso or to jumping off cliffs on a motorbike, Cruise’s relationship with his age is inevitably one of the debates surrounding Digger. In this black comedy directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu, the actor plays an oil tycoon with wrinkles, bald spots and gray hair. According to X user Pubity: “64 year-old Tom Cruise required extensive makeup to look like a 65-year-old man for his role in Digger.” The actor was read the message in another recent interview and laughed, taking it as a compliment and sidestepping the inference that he uses Botox and other cosmetic treatments in a bid to preserve a youthful appearance.

Cruise’s return to the interview circuit has also brought us footage of him replicating his famous dance moves from Risky Business (1983) on The Jennifer Hudson Show and causing a stir by turning up unannounced in ordinary locations. This week a woman named Klementina posted on TikTok of how Tom Cruise greeted her at her workplace, which the actor happened to be passing. Taken from the company’s security cameras, the footage shows the woman with her head down, doomscrolling. This clip has circulated widely on social networks, accompanied by jokes about Cruise coming to the rescue of a cell phone addict — the man who will free us from the algorithm. Not surprisingly, the last two Mission Impossible films, which bestowed on Cruise an undisguised messianic aura, were essentially about that: the epic battle of agent Ethan Hunt against an all-powerful intelligence that threatens to enslave humanity.

Inhabiting reality

In the era of AI, Tom Cruise wants to remind us that he is human. And he has his work cut out for him. His last 20 years of stunts and media restraint may have significantly improved his image, but to win popularity among the pubic and critics, he must still, paradoxically, return to his personal life. Contemporary Oscar winners such as Brendan Fraser had an exciting personal story, which is why people wanted him to win. Cruise’s personal life is a different story. If his photos in GQ or his appearances in public including a video of Cruise approaching a member of the audience at a screening of the last Mission Impossible film exclaiming: “You’ve already eaten all your popcorn!” is often received as disturbing or even terrifying, it’s because, in his eagerness to become one with his films, Cruise does not seem to inhabit reality. The problem is that, when he has inhabited it, it has been even scarier.

Between 2004 and 2006, Cruise had to change public relations agents twice and Paramount broke up with him after 14 years. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, a source linked to Paramount attributed the breakup to the financial and reputational damage he had inflicted on himself because of his continued promotion of the Church of Scientology — the cult he belongs to — and his relationship with actress Katie Holmes.

It was the time when he jumped on Oprah Winfrey’s couch proclaiming that he was in love and announcing his intention to eat Holmes’ placenta when she gave birth. It was a joke, but it is telling that Cruise’s persona has generally led to him being taken seriously. He also proclaimed that psychiatry should be banned, because, according to the postulates of his religion, psychiatry is “the enemy of humanity.” In those turbulent early years of the millennium, Cruise took several media outlets to court for insinuating that he was gay and caused astonishment with his hypothetical charitable gesture of financing Scientology detox therapies for the 9/11 firefighters.

Cruise’s devotion to the cult founded by L. Ron Hubbard and his close friendship with David Miscavage, its current leader, have also conditioned his personal life. Cruise has no relationship with his only biological daughter, Suri Noelle, who, like his ex-wife Holmes, is not part of the cult. This year, it emerged that Suri had renounced her father’s surname. Cruise has two other adopted children from his previous marriage to Nicole Kidman, who are Scientologists like him. Allegedly, both were encouraged by the Scientology Church to break contact with Kidman, as is recommended in the case of wayward relatives. Actress Nazanin Boniadi, a former Scientologist, who also had a brief relationship with Cruise, went so far as to declare to the FBI that the religious organization selected potential wives for Cruise and groomed them to suit. Penélope Cruz, with whom Cruise had an affair between 2001 and 2004, was not drawn in by the cult, although the couple’s relationship enabled Cruise to inaugurate a Scientology headquarters in Madrid in impressive Spanish.

Cruise’s questionable relationships with the women in his life have led many to sympathize with Kidman, hence a photo of the actress supposedly celebrating her divorce becoming one of the memes of the century, although she later denied the context. Latterly, Cruise has tried to push his Scientology agenda in private, as revealed by the comedian Seth Rogen, who said Cruise tried to convert him and filmmaker Judd Apatow in his home in 2006. Curiously, Cruise was introduced to Scientology by his first wife, actress Mimi Rogers. It was shortly after the death of his father, who physically abused him, as he revealed in a rare and profound interview in 2006. Cruise also claimed that Scientology had helped him overcome dyslexia.

Cruise’s statements to GQ in his first long interview in years are not particularly substantial and have more to do with the image that the actor has tried to build over the years. He talks about his passion for cinema, how it feels doing great stunts for Mission Impossible, and he confirms the existence of the almost mythological six-hour video that he recorded as an instruction manual for making films while mentioning too that he does not think about aging. It’s the kind of interview needed for a high-profile campaign for the Oscars, but one that also acknowledges that Oscar campaigns are a minefield and when too much is said, one might shoot oneself in the foot.

Might Cruise really win the Best Actor Oscar for Digger? To date, the film has not been well received and its prospects at the box office look poor. However, Cruise’s performance, reminiscent of his other foray into comedy, Tropic Thunder (2008), has been praised by the critics who have slammed the movie. The director, Iñárritu, who landed Leonardo DiCaprio his Oscar for The Revenant (2015), has a group of acolytes at the Academy too large to give him up for dead — he has no fewer than five gongs. Digger also addresses the issue of the climate crisis, another leap for Cruise, who has been reluctant to get involved in any political issue beyond timid support for the Democratic Party. The actor now has the opportunity to crown an admirable cinematic legacy that very few dispute. The challenge will be addressing his personal legacy.

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