The fact of the matter is, I hadn't expected to like this 30-year-old millionaire movie star; being cynical is an occupational hazard. I'd seen him do interviews on television, and he seemed annoyingly gung ho about everything. I knew he was a Scientologist, and I'd heard that it was Scientology's Dianetics — what some people see as a dubious prescription for ridding oneself of physical and mental ''aberrations'' — that was behind his excessively positive posture. But I knew there was something about him that made some of the most respected directors in the country-Francis Ford Coppola (in The Outsiders), Martin Scorsese (The Color of Money), Barry Levinson (Rain Man), Oliver Stone (Born on the Fourth of July), Ron Howard (Far and Away), Rob Reiner, Sydney Pollack — want to work with him.
Almost anyone you ask has a favorable opinion of Cruise. ''Tom is a perfectionist,'' says Kevin Bacon. ''For me, to work with someone who's looking out for the best interest of the film is a joy. I like to be with someone who wants to act, not someone who stays in a f---ing makeup trailer.''
Don Simpson, who with Jerry Bruckheimer produced Top Gun (1986) and Days of Thunder (1990), says that he and Bruckheimer did everything they could to ensure that Cruise would be on their side. ''He was invited by Jerry and me on both movies into any element, any aspect he wanted,'' Simpson says. ''We'd never given that to an actor. We did it because we think Tom has big plans.'' And because having Cruise on your side, Simpson knows, means having power with the studios.
To find Cruise's power, I see, I'll have to avoid questions that he can answer with a few positive adjectives.
EW: Did you use your relationship with your own father to get into the role of Daniel Kaffee?
TC: Kaffee's relationship with his father was probably a lot saner than the relationship that I had with my father. Because with my father (an electrical engineer who divorced Cruise's mother when Cruise was 11), there wasn't a lot of communication. My father, actually, unlike Kaffee's, was not very successful at living life. I loved him, you know? But there's people that lack an ability to live life. I mean, life just pummels them, and they die. A lot of people, they just get hit — (Cruise slams his fist into his hand, hard, every time he says the word hit) hit! hit! hit! — hit so much their perspective on life is so altered that they can't even come up for air. I believe this: When people do things that are mean, or, even unintentionally, that aren't good towards life and people — they're the ones that suffer more than anybody else. If they're a good person, they will really eat themselves alive. And I think that's what happened to him. He had a very unhappy life, got cancer, and I feel — my heart went out to him.
EW: When did he get sick?
TC: Late '70s. But he didn't realize it until the '80s, right before he died.
EW: Did you see him at the time?
TC: No, I didn't see him for about 10 years...I didn't know anything about him.
EW: Was that your mother's choice?
TC: No. Now we're getting to a complicated area. Just because there are certain confidences in terms of my own family that I...
