Playboy Interview: Tom Cruise

This is the time of his life for Tom Cruise, the still-only-27-year-old who is about to complete a mid-air turn from teenage heartthrob with the bankable smile to respected actor with social concerns. Yes, Tom Cruise, the guy who turned his parents' home into a whorehouse in Risky Business, treated war as a video game in Top Gun and played the consummate Yuppie in Cocktail, may now demand major reappraisal.

Rejecting the jaunty and predictable success of his roles in comedies and action movies, Cruise seems on his way to becoming one of that rare breed—an actor's actor who is also a matinee idol. Dustin Hoffman, who co-starred with him in Rain Man, calls him "the biggest star in the world" and cites his seriousness of purpose—which, coming from Hoffman, means serious. First with Rain Man and now in his new movie, Born on the Fourth of July, Cruise seems on the verge of fulfilling Paul Newman's prediction that "this kid has the head and the balls to be one of the great ones...the next Hollywood legend." And Newman, who co-starred with him in The Color of Money, should know about legends.

It has been hard for Cruise to make a movie that wasn't successful since breaking through in Taps, in which, as a psychotic cadet, he stole scenes from the likes of Sean Penn and Timothy Hutton. Nevertheless, the question always was how much acting substance there was beyond those good looks. Rain Man answered that question. Cruise was so good in his performance as Charlie Babbitt, the wheeler-dealer brother to Hoffman's barely communicative Raymond, that some thought he, as well as Hoffman, should have gotten an Academy Award.

With Born on the Fourth of July, Cruise takes on his most demanding role yet, a severely wounded Vietnam vet, and gives the performance of his young life. It was his participation that made possible the making of the film. Born had been a hot-potato script around Hollywood ever since Al Pacino got cold feet after accepting the part 11 years ago. As it is, Universal agreed to a relatively low-budget venture only when Cruise, like Academy Award-winning director Oliver (Salvador, Platoon) Stone, agreed to work for a year with no guarantee of pay.

Cruise could easily have gone an easier way. Even Cocktail, a frothy sitcom of a movie he made while Rain Man was delayed, grossed an astounding $70,000,000. Cruise, the smiling Yuppie, is in great demand; Cruise in a wheelchair is more problematical. The studio heads said they would much have preferred Top Gun II, III and IV—but Cruise wasn't playing. The script of Born on the Fourth of July did not show war as a game. Indeed, it is not so much about war as about manhood—and what it takes to be a man.

To play Ron Kovic, the Vietnam vet disabled after a bullet paralyzed the lower three quarters of his body, Cruise ended up rejecting his familiar props of casual sexuality and swagger. For the better part of a year, he studied Kovic, joining him for wheelchair excursions, visiting Veterans Administration hospitals and learning to see the war through Kovic's eyes. By all accounts, the experience had a critical impact on the actor—and won him new fans. "I predict a blazing, brilliant future for him," says Stone. "He could be another Paul Newman. He has those American good looks and a surprising agility and grace—a lot of what Redford and Newman have: I've met both of those guys and what amazes me about them is their physical dexterity, their litheness. Tom has that, too."

Cruise has also joined that band of Hollywood stars willing to speak out critically on the issues of their time; most recently, he journeyed to the threatened Brazilian rain forests. In real life, he is anything but the wiseacre Yuppie wannabe of Cocktail or Risky Business.

But Cruise argues that he was always serious about acting and about life. He traces his stubborn sense of purpose to his mother, who worked many miserable jobs to keep the family together after a divorce in which Thomas Cruise Mapother III left her with the care of Thomas Cruise Mapother IV and his three sisters.

Born in Syracuse, New York, in 1962, Cruise learned to survive (and to flash his disarming smile) as the new kid in the dozen or so schools he attended as a result of his family's travels. He fell for acting in a high school production of Guys and Dolls. After that, he couldn't get to New York City—and acting school—fast enough; he skipped his own graduation.

The breaks came fast. He was working as a building superintendent on the edges of Harlem, hauling trash, when he landed and expanded what was supposed to be a bit part in Taps. That was 1980, Cruise was all of 18, and it brought him to the attention of Francis Ford Coppola, who cast him as the greaser Steve Randall in The Outsiders. It was during that filming that Cruise was offered his breakthrough starring role in Risky Business, which was the surprise hit of 1983.

Then in rapid order came All the Right Moves and Legend and, at the ripe old age of 24, the lead role in Top Gun, 1986's top movie. He was hot, but as a popular rather than an artistic success, and lead roles in The Color of Money and Cocktail did not challenge that image. Rain Man began the change that Born on the Fourth of July may complete.

It seemed an interesting moment to send Playboy interviewer Robert Scheer to talk with Cruise. Scheer is known to our readers for journalistic bouts with politicians over the years (including the "lust in my heart" Playboy Interview with Jimmy Carter and the Los Angeles Times "winnable nuclear war" interview with George Bush). Scheer's report:

"It was clear to me from our first meeting that Cruise was a lot like the guy he played in All the Right Moves, a movie about a steel-mill-town kid who can get out only by starring on the football team. The movie challenges the basic Yuppie value that winning is everything. I would be shocked if this guy ever sells out what I perceive as a strong sense of purpose about the craft of acting, about being true to certain personal values.

"Oddly enough, for a guy who never went to college, who was dyslexic and who carries a dictionary around to help improve his reading, Cruise is also articulate. He is in a continuous cram course to catch up, studying everything that crosses his path: the interviewer, the book he is carrying, the food being served.

"Cruise is now legendary for his attention to detail, challenging everything from a line in a script to the exact shading of make-up. Stone admitted that while Cruise always tried to be decent to the people he worked with, his drive for a controlling sense of excellence could get in the way. Temper tantrums were not unknown.

"The upside is that Cruise means well and his desire for control is tempered by a need to get it right. Like Kovic, he takes himself very seriously, and when guys like that get hot in a culture that's often frivolous or superficial, they can miss a beat. In Cruise's case, it can bog him down in his own intensity. But if the kid comes across as a bit serious, hey, life can be serious, too. As Cruise said, at least he could get up out of that wheelchair after each scene; Ron Kovic never can."