Tom Cruise wouldn’t have landed this iconic role if it weren’t for his sister: “She was so pushy”

Tom Cruise says a chance meeting with Dustin Hoffman led to a part in one of the most iconic films of his career - but the encounter wouldn’t have happened had it not been for the insistence of Cruise’s sister.

“You go over there and say hello”

During a Q&A with the British Film Institute (BFI) on Sunday, Cruise recalled that he was out having lunch with sister Cass in New York in the mid-1980s, when they noticed that Hoffman was at the same restaurant.

“I looked up and there he was, in a hat - he was doing Death of a Salesman - and he was ordering takeout,” Cruise told the BFI, per Variety. “She [Cass] goes, ‘You go over there and say hello to him.’

“I was like, ‘I’m not going to say hello.’ She goes, ‘You know him, you know his movies.’ And she doesn’t do stuff like that. And I don’t walk up to people, but she was so pushy.

“[Cass said:] ‘If you don’t do it, I’m just going to go over there and tell him who you are.’”

Cruise says he protested that this would be “really humiliating”, as he believed Hoffman wouldn’t have a clue who he was - but Cass finally persuaded him to approach the Graduate star. “I said, ‘Excuse me, Mr. Hoffman, I’m sorry…’ And he went, ‘Cruise!‘”

“A year later he sent Rain Man”

Cruise and his sister then went to see Hoffman’s production of Death of a Salesman, before spending time with the Hollywood legend back-stage. “As I was leaving he said, ‘I want to make a movie with you,’” Cruise recalled.

“And I said, ‘That would be nice, sir. And that’s what happened, and basically a year later he sent Rain Man.”

A classic that swept the Oscars

In the 1988 hit Rain Man, Cruise stars as Charlie Babbit, an arrogant car dealer who learns that his estranged father has bequeathed almost his entire estate to a brother Charlie didn’t know he had: autistic savant Ray, played by Hoffman.

Rain Man amassed four Oscars at the 61st Academy Awards - including Best Picture, Best Actor for Hoffman, and Best Director for Barry Levinson.

Cruise’s eighth M:I film about to drop

Cruise was speaking in London this weekend as part of the BFI’s ongoing ‘Tom Cruise season’, which includes screenings of nearly 30 films from the actor’s more than four-decade big-screen career.

The 62-year-old’s latest movie, Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning, is due to have its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday, May 14.

The eighth - and possibly last - instalment of the Mission: Impossible franchise, The Final Reckoning is out in cinemas on Friday, May 23.

Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning: watch the trailer

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