You may hate Tom Cruise, but I really tell you he's a good actor
Tom Cruise awakens as many hatreds as passions. His detractors accuse him of always doing the same thing lately. His fans, on the other hand, love it. He has already proven that he is a good actor. Now he has to have fun and have fun. He premieres The Mummy, a movie where he wants to save the world.
If you type in the search engine ‘most hated actors’, his name will appear very well positioned. It is a proven fact that Tom Cruise is one of those Hollywood actors that a lot of people dislike. Envy? Can be. It doesn't really matter. He doesn't care. And to his followers, who number in the millions, too.
Because, as much as the protagonist of "Top Gun" is the worst for a lot of people, whether they are colleagues, spectators, Internet users or the fishmonger on the corner, Tom Cruise is a good actor and that cannot be argued. Not only because he has been nominated three times for the Oscars (Sandra Bullock has one), but because he has a career that many cannot even dream of. With its ups and downs and the reinventions of him.
Whoever started out as an idol of fifteen-year-olds from a high school folder has managed to reinvent himself over the years until he becomes an action hero about to turn 55 - he will do so on July 3 - who insists on shooting his scenes of risk for concern of the insurers.
This Syracuse boy, the son of a teacher and an engineer, with Roman numerals on his passport (his full name is Thomas Cruise Mapother IV), walked into Hollywood dressed in a salmon-colored (or pale pink, some will say) shirt, no pants , with white underpants and socks and a chandelier as a microphone to the rhythm of 'Old Time Rock and Roll'.
He was 21 years old and, ladies and gentlemen, a star had been born. It was 1982 and then many other emblematic roles came and that marked a whole generation that fell irretrievably in love with that young dark-haired man, with an angelic face and average height. He could have stayed at that, in a handsome man who took off his sunglasses, ripping his temple with papers like Maverick ('Top Gun') and Brian Flanagan ('Cocktail').
Cruise risked and won
But no, Cruise was always pure ambition. He didn't want to be just that and he played it. How? He unapologetically measuring himself against established actors of the stature of Paul Newman ("The Color of Money"), Dustin Hoffman ("Rain Man") and Jack Nicholson ("Some Good Men"). They all endured the guy with his toothpaste advertisement smile always on the side.
He did that and go ugly to the extreme to get into the skin of a Vietnam veteran under Oliver Stone in "Born on July 4th." That grimy, depressing, and devastating performance earned her her first Oscar nomination in 1990.
He was risky and the play was almost round. Almost because they didn't give him the award. If you are handsome, you have to look ugly to be taken seriously. It is a kind of law not written in Hollywood but known to all. Charlize Theron got rewarded for it when she did it in "Monster." And Leonardo DiCaprio did not get the statuette until he rolled in the snow, the mud and a bear left him in tatters in "The Revenant." The list could go on forever.
By profession, savior of the world
And so he reached the nineties, combining films with a high romantic component with others with more dramatic content until agent Ethan Hunt crossed his path by posing him a ‘Mission Impossible’ and got the itch to save the world. Since then he has faced criminal organizations, terrorists, aliens, the government and, now, a mummy. Because Tom Cruise has become the quintessential American hero.
What's always doing the same role lately? Can be. But what's wrong with that if you do it so well? When a spectator fan goes to the cinema to see a Tom Cruise movie he wants to see Tom Cruise running, jumping, shooting ... That he knows how to act he has already shown many times. He did it in the aforementioned ‘Born on July 4’, but also in ‘Magnolia’, ‘Jerry Maguire’ and ‘Lions for Lambs’, for example.
Getting the industry to take it seriously has long since been unlocked. He now he is in the stage of doing whatever he wants, because he is Tom Cruise, he wants and can. And what he wants is to star in blockbusters one after another, action films in which he is twice the age of his female partner and in which he must face evil to save humanity while his followers have a great time in the armchair watching him in action.
The world can continue to hate Tom Cruise if it wants to, but that doesn't stop him from being a good actor. Although in reality it is much more than that. He is a movie star like few others. He was able to laugh at himself as he did in "Edge of Tomorrow" playing a cowardly hero or with the looks with which that delirious dance was marked in "Tropic Thunder."
Back from everything
At this point in his career, Cruise is back from it all. He only owes it to his fans. That is why when promoting a film he reduces the time dedicated to journalists to a minimum but does not hesitate to spend an hour and a half on a red carpet signing autographs, taking pictures with the people who crowd the billboards and letting them squeeze him over and over. again.
He is due to his followers, who, after all, are the ones who fill (or not) the rooms. They forgive him everything, even his eccentricities as a member of Scientology, one of the reasons Tom Cruise is persona non grata in some circles. Having a busy, controversial and out-of-the-box personal life is also part of the resume of being a star.
He doesn't seem to care too much and avoids talking about his private life in interviews. After a few years of personal turmoil, making headlines on both sides of the pond, his biography seems to have calmed down in that sense. Or, at least, it is the image that he gives, that he lives for and to entertain and amuse the viewer. Dirty laundry or privacy is left at his house. Well, at his mansion.
