Tom Cruise surprised one of the world’s greatest directors by rewriting his own dialogue: “He’s like, What the f***?!”
When filming ‘Magnolia’, Tom Cruise stepped in and made up his own dialogue, surprising everyone on set.
Tom Cruise is not one of the world’s greatest actors and most beloved character performers for nothing. The star of Mission Impossible, Rain Man and Top Gun has managed to weave his way into the all-timers list of Hollywood stars thanks to stellar performances on the big screen - so when he says ‘let me have a go at this’, the best thing to do is to let him have at it.
And this time, I’m not talking about falling out of a helicopter. Full of killer spiders. Blindfolded. Tied up with ropes. On fire.
Paul Thomas Anderson, director of Magnolia, was one of the people floored by Tom’s talent, as he discovered during the recording of the 1999 work.
‘I could just see his face, he’s like, ‘What the f---?!’
“The whole monologue wasn’t there at the beginning. That wasn’t there — there was a couple sentences, and I remember I was worried,” Cruise recalled during a recent talk at the British Film Institute in London.
The 62-year-old performer was playing Frank T.J. Mackey, a “vulgar, lustful, arrogant dating guru” who, it turned out, Cruise played to perfection.
“I said, ‘Look, just come over to my place, let’s do the wardrobe fitting.’ And I remember he wanted me in IZOD shirts and khakis. I was like, ‘I don’t think that’s this guy. Let me show you my instincts on this’,” Cruise revealed.
So Anderson complied, quickly realising that Cruise had in fact gone on to “create that whole character” himself right there and then. “I said, ‘Just sit down right here in my screening room.’ I lit it, and I had the whole music, and I basically wrote the opening monologue, my version. I was like, ‘Let me just show you what I’m gonna do,’ and he was literally right here sitting, and I had a stage, and I had lit, and I had the big speakers, and as I was doing it, I could just see his face, he’s like, ‘What the f---?!’”
It worked like a dream. Cruise was the only member of the star-studded cast to receive plaudits at the 2000 Academy Awards. While it didn’t sweep the floor at the awards, it remains one of Cruise and Anderson’s most prominent and beloved works in their respective careers.
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