Over more than 40 years, the Hollywood icon has been in a shocking number of decent films – and a few truly great ones
It’s often said that Tom Cruise is the last true movie star, and to this point, no one’s really challenging him for the title. Now in his sixties, he’s four decades into one of Hollywood’s most bankable names. Sure, there have been ups and downs, in his career and personal life. But every time it seems like his profile is dimming, he goes and scales a skyscraper, jumps out of a plane and saves the movie industry, and he leaps right back into the good graces of both the public and casting directors.
At this point, the guy’s done it all, from big-budget popcorn flicks to intense character studies to prestige dramas and a handful of comedies, though over the last decade plus, he’s mostly become known as a death-defying action star. With the massively popular Mission: Impossible franchise seemingly wrapping up, though, Cruise seems to be entering a new phase of his career. Will he get serious about possibly taking home an elusive Oscar or look for another bridge to leap off? That remains to be seen. For now, we’ve decided to celebrate what we have seen, by ranking his 24 best roles to date.
It's the tiniest of cameos, so consider this a bonus pick. But in less than a minute of screen time, Cruise makes the film’s opening gag work, combining a glossy Hollywood version of Austin’s British befuddlement with his own maniacal grin. Cruise murmurs, “Shall we shag now…or shag later?” and turns it in a passable piece of Bond dialogue.
As Chris Isaak sang, Cruise did a “bad, bad thing” in Eyes Wide Shut. Here’s another bad, bad thing he did: a dumb yet enjoyably dorky fantasy adventure in which Cruise plays an elfin sprite out to save a princess from Tim Curry’s Lord of Darkness. It’s not exactly director Ridley Scott’s finest moment (especially right after Blade Runner), but you can’t blame his leading man.
Francis Ford Coppola may not have done his best work in the ’80s, but he hadn’t lost his eye for new talent. This moody adaptation of S.E. Hinton’s novel featured the little-known Cruise (in a tiny supporting role) alongside the likes of Matt Dillon, Patrick Swayze, Rob Lowe and Ralph Macchio, the latter who gets to utter the immortal “Stay gold, Ponyboy.”
Even from the start (this was Cruise’s second film role), he had dramatic ambitions in mind. In this thriller about a military academy gone rogue, Cruise is basically a bad guy—an uptight, deranged cadet captain—but his craziness registers deeply: “It’s beautiful, man—beautiful!” he screams, firing his rifle at innocent people. A supporting part, but a promising one.
Cruise’s work with Steven Spielberg is curious: The films have an undeniable sci-fi panache but the actor himself is guarded. Spielberg, a genius director, can’t coax warmth or realness from Cruise, who here plays a divorced dock worker who awakens to a greater sense of responsibility during an alien attack. Dakota Fanning runs away with this movie.
This one’s the turning point: the moment when Tom Cruise became the biggest star on the planet, with a year-end No. 1 movie to prove it. Seen in the cold light of day, Tony Scott’s movie is ridiculous: endless aerial dogfights, tons of shirtless bro brooding, a soundtrack on steroids, Cruise playing volleyball on the beach—in jeans. He’s better in other movies.
The role of the vampire Lestat in Ann Rice's treasured horror novel was pursued by several A-list actors. When it finally went to Cruise, the author was said to be crushed. Still, while the movie has its problems, Cruise isn't one of them. He's lacquered, mysterious, and mroe alive than Brad Pitt, a little out of his depths. Both were outperformed by 10-year-old Kristen Bunst.
This dark psychodrama is mainly remembered as being the film that emptied out Times Square for a so-so fantasy scene—it was also the beginning of the end for writer-director Cameron Crowe, once a critic’s darling with movies like Almost Famous and Jerry Maguire. But Cruise, scarred behind a white plastic mask, fully commits to his character’s unraveling.
Should you choose to accept it? Sure. Auteur-for-hire Brian De Palma makes the first entry in Cruise’s espionage series thrilling (if occasionally a little workmanlike) and the movie has a classic scene with Cruise suspended from the ceiling by wires that’s part of the actor’s legend. But there’s not a lot of room here for subtlety. Shouting and running? Plenty of room for that.
Radically adapted from a Philip K. Dick short story published in 1956, this sci-fi thriller is an elaborate whodunit, with detective Cruise tagged as a potential murderer by the Pre-Cogs (mutant psychics who foresee potential homicides before they occur). Like Harrison Ford in Blade Runner, Cruise goes a little mopey; much of the film’s kick comes from Spielberg.
Can you handle the truth? Remember: It’s Cruise who gets Jack Nicholson to that place, yelling “I want the truth!” As a crusading military lawyer, Cruise doesn’t quiet drop his smooth playboy side, but at least he’s attempting something a little more ambitious. He’s not the best mouthpiece for Aaron Sorkin’s word spew, but this shouty role was a step in the right direction.
Stanley Kubrick’s final film was unfairly castigated for not living up to its ad campaign’s promise of unbridled eroticism. But its virtues have come to be appreciated. And even though Nicole Kidman and Sydney Pollack pretty much run away with the movie, Cruise is finely tortured, punching his fist into his hand as a frustrated doctor who wants to walk on the wild side.
Far and away the best of Cruise’s recent glut of generically titled action movies (Oblivion, Jack Reacher, a pair of blah Mission: Impossible sequels), this one pulls a Groundhog Day on the actor, having him fight and die on a futuristic battlefield over and over. Cruise supplies a weary sense of humor to it all, and he plays nicely against Emily Blunt’s tough-as-nails Rambette.
A contemplative L.A. cabbie (Jamie Foxx) finds his vehicle and services hijacked at gunpoint by a vicious hit man (Cruise, assisted in no small part by a menacing mini-pompadour), who takes him on an evening’s tour of atmospherically filmed bloodshed. Mastering the efficient movements of a contract killer, you could say Cruise was having fun during this phase of his career.
At a point where he was more famous for jumping on a couch than movie stardom, Cruise donned a bald cap, fat suit and pair of meaty bear paws to show audiences he wasn’t just the self-serious Scientology poster-boy he’d been portrayed as in the media. In Ben Stiller’s satirical action-comedy, he pops up, briefly but memorably, as Les Grossman, a foul-mouthed, ill-tempered, Flo Rida-loving studio exec. (Insiders insist the character is a mix of Scott Rudin and Harvey Weinstein.) Was it calculated? Maybe. Surprisingly hilarious? Oh yeah.
Swinging for the Oscar fences as real-life Vietnam vet (and co-screenwriter) Ron Kovic, Cruise gives one of his best performances, yet he can’t transcend the film’s overall preachiness. Still, of all of Oliver Stone’s enraged heroes—a list that includes Kevin Costner in JFK and Joseph Gordon-Levitt in Snowden—Cruise’s Kovic is the most recognizably human.
This is not a bad film, folks. It became an Oscar-winning punchline for Dustin Hoffman in the showier role, but Cruise redeems it as the glib asshole of a brother who learns to slow down and appreciate his autistic sibling. Careerwise, Cruise is turning his smoothness into self-mockery—a sophisticated pivot that makes him seem immensely more likable.
Wrongly dismissed by many as a slick, soulless enterprise, this belated sequel to the seedy billiards classic The Hustler benefits from an earthy screenplay by the great Richard Price (The Night Of) and a trio of fine performances – Cruise was criticized for showboating, but that’s the character, people. He’s an arrogant prick with a million-dollar break.
It’s easy to forget how utterly charming and vulnerable Cruise was at the dawn of his reign, and this tale of an uptight Chicago suburbanite learning the ways of black-market economics (courtesy of prostitute Rebecca De Mornay) holds up superbly. This humble Cruise wasn’t bound to stick around for long, but while he was here, he was terrific.
A sequel to a piece of ridiculous (yet exhilarating) American military propaganda that was cheesy even in 1986 absolutely should not succeed to the degree it does in director Joseph Kosinski’s reboot. It’s the best blockbuster Hollywood has produced in ages, thanks to a smart screenplay, head-spinning flight sequences and, of course, Cruise himself, slipping back into the cockpit as an older, but no less cocksure Captain Maverick training a new crop of flyboys and battling back against his own obsolescence.
This box-office blockbuster gave us Cruise as a redemption-seeking sports agent and spawned the catchphrase “Show me the money!” To one way of seeing, it’s the most effortlessly relaxed turn the actor has ever produced, confirming romantic comedy as Cruise’s natural place. (Scripts this good are rare.) He’s generous with the other cast members, especially Renée Zellweger.
Clearly, a director’s film: Paul Thomas Anderson, fresh off the success of Boogie Nights, throws all of his L.A. neuroses into a blender and pulses for three solid hours. But he gives Cruise his finest opportunity—perhaps a secret piece of self-criticism—as swaggering self-help guru Frank T.J. Mackey, whose exclamations (“Respect the cock!”) hide a deep well of abandonment. Cruise’s breakdown at the movie’s conclusion is as raw as he’s ever been onscreen.
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