Issue 36: Tom Cruise Becomes a Serious Actor

By the end of the 1980s, Tom Cruise had 12 full movie credits to his name. He’d worked with Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese and Ridley Scott. He'd headlined a Best Picture winner (Rain Man) and been a box office record-breaker (Top Gun.) He was already being heralded as a megastar, someone who would define Hollywood of the '90s. all he needed to top off this successful decade was his first Oscar nomination. And hoo boy, did he have the role of a lifetime – and the ultimate celebrity narrative – that would land him it.

Time. "Tom Terrific." December 25, 1989. Richard Corliss.

(Read the piece here.)

It’s always so fascinating to read pieces on Tom Cruise that predate his couch-jumping years. I largely think of him as being defined by his mid-2000s era of Scientology zealotry, TomKat showboating, and complete abandonment of relatable normalcy (well, that and him being Lestat.) His current image of a near-invincible action man, the Last Movie-Star who has shaken off the shadow of Xenu through eye-watering stunt work and gargantuan blockbuster spectacle, wasn’t guaranteed after he went off in the deep end. Remember when he was weird about Brooke Shield- using antidepressants after she had her child? Or his “glib” argument with Matt Lauer? And the bloody couch? But even before all of that, I have only ever known of Cruise as a massively famous person, a kind of famous that few people, living or dead, have ever achieved. So, I was fascinated to see how he was talked about when he was still climbing the ranks.

Cruise was everywhere in 1989. Rain Man was a massive Oscar success. Cocktail may have landed him a Razzie nom but it was a big commercial hit the year before (and “Kokomo” was inescapable.) He was married to Mimi Rogers, a rising star who had had a break-out performance in Someone to Watch Over Me. He capped off the year with Born on the Fourth of July, a searing biopic from director Oliver Stone about Ron Kovic, a Vietnam veteran who had returned from war disabled from the chest down and who became a rallying voice against America's involvement in the region.

It wasn’t a role people thought Cruise was well-suited for. Oliver Stone had initially wanted Sean Penn or Nicolas Cage and had dismissed Cruise because he was the pretty boy from Top Gun, a movie he described as “fascistic.” Could Tom Terrific the all-American golden boy pull it off? In the end, that's why Stone picked him. “He’s a kid off a Wheaties box. I wanted to yank the kid off that box and mess with his image — take him to the dark side.” Cruise, for his part, spent a year preparing for the role, talking to Vietnam veterans and practicing using a wheelchair similar to Kovic’s. It would be, far and away, the most challenging role he’d ever played, and one that his fans may not have been ready to embrace.

The Time article delves into the status of Cruise the Movie Star getting ready to become Cruise the Serious Actor. America wants to go around with Tom Terrific — that’s how he looks, that’s how he makes moviegoers feel," wrote Richard Corliss. Viewers saw in the young Cruise a kind of ideal, someone to live vicariously through, whether he was in the pool halls with Paul Newman or dancing in his underwear to Bob Seger. "With each adventure, audiences adjusted their estimation of the young man — from Most Likely to Succeed to All-American Dreamboat to Serious Actor worth taking seriously." Being a pretty face and a nice dude, not the tempestuous wannabe rebels that many of the decade's hot young actors sought to embody, also put him at a disadvantage. What made him stand out? Other than talent and a pilot's licence? Sheer workhorse dedication.

Born on the Fourth of July was a chance to reinforce that image while also proving that he could do more than look great in a pair of Ray-Bans. It's a thoroughly anti-war movie but also maybe an anti-Hollywood one too. As Time notes, "everything that was terrific in, say, Top Gun — the war, the sex, the male bonding — is found to be toxic here." All of those loveable Tom Cruise tics feel very different in the context of a man going to war, losing the ability to walk, then being so ravaged with trauma that he can barely stand the sound of a firecracker. It’s a pretty classic form of anti-war propaganda: to take a pretty face and f*ck it up. This is the guy who, only a couple of years prior, had, as Time put it, took "suicidal militarism and makes it affably sexy" in Top Gun. Now, he was left broken by that same system.

There's always been a seriousness to Cruise's image, even when, on-screen, he seems so effortlessly cool. He’s genuinely intense, seemingly 110% committed to every move, from that laugh to his much-memed run. Even before the Scientology of it all, he had an aura around him of forcefulness that can be as unnerving as it is enthralling. It made him stand out in the late '80s when he worked with people like Paul Newman. The legend himself said of Cruise, in relation to his contemporaries, “Tom may be the only survivor.” Cruise’s ruthless ambition paid off and then some.

Thomas Cruise Mapother IV was born on the third of July, 1962. He did sports as a way to get out of the house and to find a role in the school ecosystem, having grown used to starting over again and again thanks to multiple childhood moves. Having struggled with dyslexia, he took to carrying around a dictionary so that he could look up unfamiliar words. His father, with whom he had a difficult relationship, died before he could see his son in movies. Cruise is remarkably candid about these subjects, which would not always be the case as he got older and more famous. The typical current-era Cruise interview is marked by its total lack of personality. He sticks to talking about the work and movies being awesome and that’s it. He learned his mistakes after the couch jumping. But here? He basically admits that his dad never said “I love you” to him.

He's also open about missing his wife. That's wife number one, Mimi Rogers, the one who apparently introduced him to Scientology, which is never mentioned in this piece. “The most important thing for me,” he says, “is I want Mimi to be happy.” He says it's a good thing to have a wife in the business who understands its intricacies and annoyances, and it's reassuring to know "I'm not in it alone.” She's right there on the set of his then-current project: Days of Thunder. Starring Nicole Kidman. “I’m just happier now than I’ve ever been in my life,” says Cruise, to end the piece. Well, we know what's about to happen in the next year: An Oscar nomination, a divorce, and the most famous Hollywood pair of the '90s. Oh, and Tom Cruise's continued reign over the entire business.

“Isn’t this guy too good to be true? He loves animals, children, people. And he’s gorgeous, O.K.? I mean, please,” said one friend of Cruise. It certainly seemed that way, and Cruise has done a lot of work to maintain the image of Tom Terrific. He even managed to reclaim it after years of Xenu and TomKat weirdness, but it did require him to sacrifice the pretence of being a reasonably normal guy. Then again, for all the cries of relatability, people like it when their movie-stars are not like us. With Cruise, all of his associations with a dangerous organisation that calls itself a church are easier to compartmentalise when you’re awestruck by him jumping from buildings and flying his own planes.

No star is born fully formed. You have to find your type and evolve into it, and to gain the power that’ll allow you to be above it all. Beyoncé used to do MTV skits and Mike Myers movies before she became an untouchable mega-icon of Flawless force. David Bowie sang “The Laughing Gnome” in his early days. Even Barbra Streisand, who comes the closest to having been born as BARBRA had to play the game in the beginning. Tom Cruise was always intense, always eager to be the best and biggest, but before he could get to that, he had to answer the same kinds of questions as any other celebrity. And it’s just kind of weird to read in 2026, where Cruise is still a major deal and has shaken off the image of being a culty joke. You mean to tell me that Tom f*cking Cruise had daddy issues, and he was honest about it to a magazine!?

Most people aren’t famous for that long. It’s a perfectly normal cycle to be in the public eye for a few years, to lose some relevance, then move on and do other things. Very few stars are at the top of the pile for longer than a couple of decades, let alone 40 years. Tom Cruise didn’t pull that off accidentally. The Time article ends by saying he’s “cruising along” but really, he was driving at 100mph from day one. It’s what will keep him famous until his final days. Nothing will stop that. Except, perhaps, a massive expose into Ron Miscavige…

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