Strange Things Everyone Ignores About Tom Cruise
Ever since 1983's "Risky Business," Tom Cruise has been box office gold, and his record is so massive that the odds of another actor ever surpassing him are the same odds as being attacked by a tangerine. Although his 2022 movie "Top Gun: Maverick" — the sequel to his 1986 hit, "Top Gun" — is his only film to gross over $1 billion, 30 of his 40 movies have all made over $100 million each, and no other actor has ever come close to that.
Being in the public eye, Cruise has had some big controversies over the years. His incidents are relatively mild: there was some very public drama when he criticized Brooke Shields for using medication to combat her depression instead of diet and exercise. But according to People, she revealed on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" in 2006 that he gave her a heartfelt apology which she accepted. He also reportedly skipped the 2023 Oscars to avoid seeing his ex-wife Nicole Kidman, although Cosmopolitan cited sources in March 2023 that stated his reason for doing so was "not personal."
A surprising fact about Cruise was that, as a teen, he considered becoming a Catholic priest. However, he and his friend Shane Dempler were asked to leave the St. Francis Seminary at Cincinnati University when it was learned that the two were hiding alcohol in the nearby woods. Beyond those, there are still a few interesting things about Cruise that many people ignore.
He won't allow his likeness to be used for merchandise
Disney animators have always used real-life people, animals, and objects to inspire their designs and inform the motion of the characters. Famous people were often used as models for characters such as Alyssa Milano, whom the artists used photos of as a teen to create Ariel in "The Little Mermaid." Many other celebrities, both past and present, have inspired characters, including, you guessed it, Tom Cruise.
Surprisingly, Cruise has never voiced any animated characters. However, he was the inspiration for the title character in Disney's "Aladdin." In 1991, Jeffrey Katzenberg was producing the film, and Michael J. Fox was supposed to be the model for Aladdin. However, the creators realized that if Fox was used, Princess Jasmine was way above Aladdin's league. In a documentary about the film's creation called "A Diamond in the Rough: The Making of Aladdin," Katzenberg revealed that he told the animators, "You've got Julia Roberts and Michael J. Fox. You need Tom Cruise and Julia Roberts!" And history was born as Aladdin became as bold as Cruise's "Top Gun" character, Maverick.
Often, film and television characters beget action figures, but while "Mission: Impossible" and "Top Gun" toys would send collectors over the moon, Cruise wants no part of it. The megastar has never allowed his likeness to be used for anything other than the films. But no one knows why he's had that stance since 1987.
A stunt nearly killed him
In 2003, Tom Cruise starred in "The Last Samurai," where he played embittered war veteran Nathan Algren, who is tasked with going to Japan to help bring their army into the modern era and eliminate the samurai warriors. However, the plan fails miserably, and Nathan is captured by the elite fighters. The samurai leader Katsumodo — Ken Watanabe in his first American film and English-speaking role — keeps him alive to study the foreigner. Eventually, they become friends as Katsumodo teaches him the ways of the samurai, and Nathan finally finds his place in the world.
Throughout his career, Cruise has been well-known for doing his own stunts, and "Samurai" was no exception, although he was nearly killed while making the film. Hiroyuki Sanada, who played Ujio in the film, explained the situation to reporters (via Today). During a scene where he and Cruise engaged in a swordfight, "Tom's neck was right in front of me, and I tried to stop swinging my sword, but it was hard to control with one hand." The mishap was so intense and worrisome, Sanada continued, "The film crew watching from the side all screamed because they thought Tom's head would fly off."
Thankfully, Sanada had miss-stepped and wasn't standing quite where he was supposed to be. By being off his mark by half an inch, Sanada spared Cruise from literally losing his head.
He scaled the world's tallest building
Although Tom Cruise does most of his own stunts, he started out on shaky ground. He was small in stature as a youth, but as he got older and bigger, he had dreams of becoming an athlete, but those dreams were dashed when he suffered a knee injury during high school. That's where he turned to acting, something he always wanted to try. After his career skyrocketed, he pushed himself to do harder and more dangerous stunts in his movies. Still, he was always safety conscious — such as when he ranted to co-workers about following COVID-19 safety guidelines while filming "Mission Impossible — Dead Reckoning."
He's done everything from sword fights to incredibly fast car chases, to driving a motorcycle off a cliff and parachuting to safety, to hanging from the outside of a plane, which he did in "Mission: Impossible — Rogue Nation." But one of the most death-defying stunts the actor performed was in "Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol" in which he scaled the Burj Khalifa building in Dubai, the world's tallest building.
Various professionals helped coordinate the stunt in which his harness was drilled into key places on the building. However, because it was cutting off his circulation, the IMAX cameras had limited film, and the helicopters were only allowed to fly for 30 minutes, so the sequence had to be pulled off quickly. Thankfully, the skill of everyone involved helped prove Cruise's prowess as an amazing stunt actor.
He got dancing lessons from Shirley Ballas
While Tom Cruise is known for his amazing stunt work, as well as his acting — which has garnered him four Academy Award nominations throughout the years — he's not known for his dancing. According to a post on Reddit, Cruise's first manager supposedly stated that "he couldn't sing, he couldn't dance, and I decided to sign him immediately." If that post is true, Cruise has certainly come a long way. However, he may owe a debt to Shirley Ballas, the head judge on Kate Middleton's favorite show, "Strictly Come Dancing" from 2017 to 2023.
According to a Daily Mail report from October 2023, Ballas was on a BBC panel show called "Would I Lie to You," where she stated that Cruise owed her money for dancing lessons from several years prior. Apparently, he wanted to learn to do the salsa for a wedding anniversary with his then-wife, Nicole Kidman. While appearing on another show, host Josie Gibson later recalled what Ballas had stated and hilariously said, "I hope Tom Cruise has paid you now." Ballas remarked, "He still hasn't paid me for the private lessons that I gave him! Yes, three hours," which was worth £600 (or $744.36 in 2024 American currency).
Cruise was almost Marvel's Iron Man
You would think that megastar Tom Cruise working with the phenomenal Marvel Studios would be a no-brainer, but that has yet to happen. In the October 2023 book "MCU: The Reign of Marvel Studios," authors Joanna Robinson, Dave Gonzales, and Gavin Edwards detail the rise of a simple comic book publishing company that became a worldwide powerhouse film studio. In the 1990s, Cruise considered starring in "Iron Man" (2008), the story of a billionaire playboy who develops a hi-tech suit of armor designed to keep him alive and dispatch his enemies. In a passage from the book, Marvel head honcho Kevin Feige explained what happened.
"Ten years earlier, when the 'Iron Man' rights were at 20th Century Fox, Tom Cruise, then-thirty-four, had flirted with the idea of playing Stark," he stated, adding that Fox couldn't justify paying him the fee commensurate to his box office stature considering Iron Man was not known by a wide audience at the time. Although Robert Downey Jr. had some public issues in the past, he was more affordable, and they took a chance on him. Fortunately, he killed it, and the Marvel Cinematic Universe began booming.
Cruise praised Downey Jr. on the podcast "Phase Zero" when asked if he ever got close to playing Iron Man. He answered, "Not close. I love Robert Downey Jr., and I can't imagine anyone else doing that role, and I think it's perfect for him."