Tom Cruise’s latest film, Digger, has struggled at the box office because he is not playing the action hero audiences have come to love. At 64, Cruise plays an ageing oil baron instead of Ethan Hunt or Pete “Maverick” Mitchell. Audiences have embraced his death-defying stunts in Mission: Impossible and Top Gun: Maverick, turning both into massive hits. But in celebrating Cruise the action hero, we have forgotten that he has always been a fine actor, capable of much more than jumping off buildings and saving the world.
When Top Gun: Maverick became a global blockbuster in 2022, Tom Cruise reminded Hollywood of the power of a movie star. His Mission: Impossible films have similarly turned death-defying stunts into a spectacle audiences love. But somewhere along the way, Cruise the hero has overshadowed Cruise the actor.
At 64, there is no sign of him taking a break from stunts, but why can’t he occasionally put the action aside and simply act? Why must every Tom Cruise film prove he can still outrun an explosion?
Cruise was never just an action star. In Born on the Fourth of July (1989), Eyes Wide Shut (1999) and Magnolia (1999), he proved he could play complicated, vulnerable and deeply flawed men. These performances showed that Cruise could be much more than the action hero saving the world.
He could be unlikeable, ridiculous, insecure and even frightening. Yet, even after decades of experimenting with different roles, Tom Cruise the hero has always overshadowed Tom Cruise the actor.
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The inescapable cage
Once audiences fall in love with a particular version of an actor, stepping outside that image can become a risk. Shah Rukh Khan, for instance, has experimented with darker, more complicated characters in Fan, Zero and Dunki, and these films failed at the box office. The hero factor is powerful. It can turn an actor into a phenomenon, but it can also become a cage.
Cruise has occasionally managed to escape that cage. His performance as Les Grossman in Tropic Thunder (2008) remains one of the surprises of his career. Bald, pot-bellied, foul-mouthed and unrecognisable, it was a supporting role, almost an extended special appearance. Audiences only embrace Cruise as the man who takes risks and saves the day, making it harder for him to break away from his action-hero image.
Which brings us to Digger. Cruise has teamed up with Iñárritu, the filmmaker behind Amores Perros (2000), Babel (2006), Birdman (2014) and The Revenant (2015), to do something different. He plays Digger Rockwell, a 64-year-old oil baron whose greed and political influence threaten to push the world toward a nuclear disaster. Instead of playing the action hero, the actor avatar of Cruise takes over him in this film, and it failed, collecting less than Drishyam 3 globally.
It is almost as if Cruise has become a victim of his own image. He is ready to move beyond the stuntman persona that has defined much of his career, but that image leaves little room for experimentation.
We have spent years watching him save the world, but now he needs saving from audience expectation. While reading people’s reviews, one time I thought Digger was not good. But what will we expect from Cruise when he turns 70? Will we ask him to jump off a building with a walker?
Tom Cruise is an actor. He won’t always play the hero. It’s time the audience accepts this.
(Edited by Saptak Datta)