Liquid 'Sky'

Image credit: Tom Cruise and Cameron Diaz: Neal Preston

All About

Vanilla Sky

Get the latest photos, news, and more

Cruise served as both producer and lead actor for ''Vanilla Sky,'' which began shooting last fall. As the former, Cruise had to persuade New York City officials to close off 40 blocks around Times Square so he could run through it alone early on a Sunday morning last fall. He also had to convince Martin Scorsese to release Diaz from the director's ''Gangs of New York'' shoot in Rome for a few weeks. ''One day, I would be in period New York, with wig, full costume, and accent, and then the next morning, after an overnight flight, I was super-contemporary New York girl,'' says Diaz. ''The jet lag was insane. The whole experience was a total f---ing blur.''

Cruise could say the same thing about his experience on the film, though more literally, due to the caved-in eye, crooked mouth, and lumpy face created by ''Vanilla Sky'''s makeup artists. ''It limited what I could see. It was claustrophobic. And it changed my speech,'' the actor says, demonstrating by sliding his jaw in a manner that makes half his face seem to melt away. ''But I loved it. This role had everything: physicality, humanity, humor.''

And to think he was capable of that while grappling with a collapsing marriage late in production. Jason Lee remembers that during the shoot, Cruise ''had the energy of a happy child, keeping everyone up, jumping up and down, clapping a lot, giving a lot of energy to a lot of tired people. Had I not been told what he was going through, I never would have had any idea. That's how on the ball he was.''

''It was brutal,'' Cruise admits. ''But everybody was cool, very supportive. We just kept it on the work. I'm not someone who believes in making your personal problems part of other people's problems. So my first thing is to just say to myself, 'As hard as this is, you just have to push through.''' He says he never considered taking some time off. ''I couldn't. There was no time,'' says Cruise, referring to the threat at the time of possible writers' and actors' strikes. ''Plus, I was working evenings on 'The Others.' There were times when I was only sleeping two, three hours a night. I didn't tell anyone that. But I've got responsibilities, and life goes on. When I say I'm going to do something, I do it. This film, it was an outlet for me. It helped.''

Real life would impose itself twice more after ''Vanilla Sky'' wrapped early this year. First came the Cruise-Cruz romance, which the actor insists did not begin until after shooting. For those going into ''Vanilla Sky'' looking for a motion-capture of their developing amour, Cruise says not to bother. ''I have a whole theory about chemistry: It's the director's responsibility,'' he says. ''There's so much that goes into creating something like that -- editing, writing, and shooting things properly. When it comes down to it, it's like a mathematical equation.''

The second and far more serious intrusion came on Sept. 11. The film's climax takes place atop a skyscraper with a panoramic vista of Manhattan -- including the World Trade Center's twin towers. ''I could not wrap myself around the idea of taking them out,'' says Crowe. ''To take them out would be a greater comment than leaving them in -- and not the greatest comment at that.''

This story is adapted from Entertainment Weekly's Dec. 14, 2001, issue. For more behind-the-scenes details of ''Vanilla Sky,'' see EW's issue No. 630.