Who did Tom Cruise play in The Outsiders

Stargazers remember the approximate moment that shapeless mass of energy born Thomas Mapother IV morphed into the star now known as Tom Cruise. That would be 10 minutes, more or less, into Risky Business (released August 5, 1983) when his character, Joel Goodsen, clad in shirt, socks and skivvies, slides across the hardwood floor lip-synching and dancing to Bob Seger’s “Old-Time Rock & Roll.”

Few Hollywood astronomers predicted Cruise’s ascension. This is because in his first two major films, he gave the most strident and least effective performances. In Harold Becker’s Taps (1981), an allegory set at a military academy, Tim Hutton was the idealistic cadet, Sean Penn the cynical one, and Cruise the murderous, gung-ho nutjob. Hutton and Penn give the impression of thought; Cruise, charged with his boundless energy, acted without thinking. His unmodulated performance, high-decibel and chest-thumping, belongs to a different film.

Better evidence of the young Cruise’s tone-deafness is Francis Coppola’s The Outsiders (released March 25, 1983). Fred Roos, producer and star maker of Five Easy Pieces, American Graffiti, and The Godfather films, hired relative newcomers Cruise, Emilio Estevez, C. Thomas Howell, Rob Lowe, Ralph Macchio, and Patrick Swayze, along with Matt Dillon. Collectively they played the title characters, also known as “The Greasers.”

At the time anyone who saw this teenage-boy equivalent of a beauty pageant and/or star search would have bet against Cruise. Dillon, an inarticulate bundle of rage and lack of impulse control, looked to be the next Brando. Howell had the bruised sensitivity and intelligence to be his generation’s James Dean. And with his calf eyes, swollen lips and defensiveness, Macchio looked like the second coming of Sal Mineo.

Yet once again, when Cruise makes his unimpressive screen entrance it’s as though he’s come from another film. (Be advised: The Outsiders is Tom Cruise, B.C. — before capped teeth). The sequence takes place after Howell and Macchio have been suspected of murder and have rescued children from inside a burning schoolroom. Howell’s big brother (Swayze) throws an impromptu get-together for the suspects/heroes, and the general mood is more dark than light. Are they mourning death or celebrating life?

The snaggletoothed Cruise swills beer and crams chocolate cake into his maw. Projecting a cheerleader’s enthusiasm, he asks Howell, “Tell me, Pony Boy, what’s it like being a hero?” His voice is reedy and irony-free. He looks like a two-dimensional sketch in the middle of a sculptural tableau.

He would be entirely lost in this crowd but for the rumble between the Greasers and their antagonists, the Socials. Cruise sounds war whoops, lands punches, and, after he has felled his rivals, kicks them with surprising viciousness. While his confreres are resigned and melancholy about the conflict, Cruise’s character appears to take sadistic pleasure from it. He is not in the same movie as Dillon, Howell, and Macchio. He could be gung-ho. He could be sadistic. But Cruise could play only one emotional note at a time.

The Outsiders is set in 1965. Only in retrospect is it obvious that its borrowed 1950s archetypes — Nicholas Ray’s Rebel Without a Cause, teenagers killed in “chickie” races and gang fights — were out of tune with the 1980s where Rebels and Preppies dine together in The Breakfast Club.

Cruise, too, seemed dissonant — both with the 1960s time frame of The Outsiders as well as himself. He had a boy’s face, a teenager’s anger, and a man’s body. He didn’t yet know how to coordinate the three to imply internal conflict.

Between the completion of shooting The Outsiders late in 1982 and making Risky Business early in 1983 something clicked. Paul Brickman, the film’s writer/director, initially cast Cruise’s Taps co-star, Hutton, to play the ironically named Joel Goodsen. When Hutton pulled out, Brickman looked at Nic Cage, Tom Hanks, Brian Backer, and Kevin Anderson. The story goes that when first Cruise came to audition, Brickman recoiled in horror and said, “This guy’s a killer. Let him go do Amityville 3.”

Now, a lot of smart people will tell you that Cruise became a superstar because his “future enterpriser” in Risky Business made him the embodiment of the Reagan era. They’ll tell you that Cruise’s disingenuous smile distracted audiences from the fact he was playing genuinely amoral characters, not unlike the smiling and genial president of the free world. In fact, in 1986, I wrote, “[Cruise] embodies a boyish buoyancy, a nervy conviction that you can always get what you want. Where achieving a goal is concerned, a Cruise character knows no bounds. More than any other trait he embodies, this makes Cruise the Reagan era’s male ingenue of choice.”

Today I no longer believe that the crystallization of the Cruise persona happened on the set of Risky Business.

It’s likely it happened on the sets of Taps and The Outsiders. I think he got an intimate look at the best actors in his peer group and sized them up. I think he studied how Hutton and Penn played the subtext and not the text of the screenplay. I think he saw how Dillon’s inarticulate rage resonated with the audience, how much Howell and Macchio used silence and stillness to communicate volumes. I think he appreciated how these actors could play contradictory emotions — in other words, more than two notes or more at the same time.

In 1986, Cruise’s annus mirabilis (with Top Gun and The Color of Money simultaneous hits), I interviewed Roos for an essay on Cruise. The producer and casting director admitted he thought that of all The Outsiders cast, Howell would be the one with the staying power, but that “Cruise has handled his career more shrewdly than any of his peers.” Roos reflected, “In his choice of parts, he manages to make unsympathetic characters likable.” Roos later emphasized, “he’s resisted being associated with the Brat Pack. Cruise flies solo.”

Mostly true. But sometimes he was wingman to older actors whom he could also learn from, like Paul Newman in The Color of Money and Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man. Back in 1986, Newman, veteran bad boy, predicted of Cruise that, “he might be the only actor of his generation to survive his youth.”

Takes one to spot one, no?

Carrie Rickey (@CarrieRickey), longtime movie critic for The Philadelphia Inquirer, reviews movies for Truthdig and contributes to Yahoo Movies. Read her at carrierickey.com.

In 2012, Cruise was Hollywood's highest-paid actor. Sixteen of his films grossed over $100 million in the United States, and 23 have grossed in excess of $200 million worldwide. As of September 2017, Cruise's films have grossed more than $3.7 billion at U.S. and Canadian box offices and more than $9.0 billion worldwide, making him the eighth highest-grossing actor in North America and one of the top-grossing actors worldwide.

He has won Golden Globe Awards for Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture in Drama in 1990 for Born on the Fourth of July; Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture in Comedy/Musical in 1997 for Jerry Maguire; and Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture in 2000 for Magnolia. In 2002, Cruise won the Saturn Award for Best Actor for Vanilla Sky. In 2003, he won an AFI Movie of the Year Award for The Last Samurai and an Empire Award for Best Actor for Minority Report.

Cruise is an outspoken advocate for the Church of Scientology and its associated social programs, and credits it with helping him overcome dyslexia. In the 2000s, his Church affiliated criticisms of psychiatry and anti-depressant drugs, particularly for 9/11 rescue workers, and his efforts to promote Scientology as a religion in Europe sparked controversies, as did a leaked video interview of him promoting Scientology.

Early life

Cruise was born in Syracuse, New York, the son of Mary Lee (née Pfeiffer), a special education teacher, and Thomas Cruise Mapother III, an electrical engineer, both originally from Louisville, Kentucky. He has three sisters: Lee Anne, Marian, and Cass. They are of English, German, and Irish ancestry. One of Cruise's paternal great-great-great-grandfathers, Patrick Russell Cruise, was born in north County Dublin in 1799; he married Teresa Johnson in County Meath, in 1825. They left Ireland for the United States that same year and settled in New York. They had a daughter, Mary Paulina Russell Cruise, whose son Thomas Cruise Mapother was Cruise's great-grandfather. A cousin, William Mapother, is also an actor; he and Cruise have appeared in five films together.

Cruise grew up in near poverty, and had a Catholic upbringing. The family was dominated by his abusive father, whom Cruise has described as "a merchant of chaos." Cruise has said that he was beaten by his father, whom he has called a "bully and coward." He stated, "He was the kind of person where, if something goes wrong, they kick you. It was a great lesson in my life—how he'd lull you in, make you feel safe and then, bang! For me, it was like, 'There's something wrong with this guy. Don't trust him. Be careful around him.'"

Cruise spent part of his childhood in Canada. His family moved to Beacon Hill, Ottawa, in late 1971 so that Cruise's father could take a position as a defense consultant with the Canadian Armed Forces. There, Cruise attended the newly opened Robert Hopkins Public School for much of grade four and grade five. In grade four, Cruise first became involved in drama, under the tutelage of George Steinburg. Cruise and six other boys put on an improvised play to music called IT at the Carleton Elementary School drama festival. Drama organizer Val Wright, who was in the audience that night, reflected, "The movement and improvisation were excellent. It was a classic ensemble piece." Cruise also enjoyed sports at the school and played floor hockey, though he was known more for his aggression than his talent.

In sixth grade, Cruise went to Henry Munro Middle School in Ottawa, Canada. However, in the spring of that year, Cruise's mother left his father, taking Cruise and his sisters back to the United States. His father died of cancer in 1984. Cruise briefly attended a Franciscan seminary in Cincinnati, Ohio, on a church scholarship and aspired to become a Catholic priest, before his interest in acting. In his senior year, he played football for the varsity team as a linebacker, but he was cut from the squad after getting caught drinking beer before a game. In total, Cruise attended 15 schools in 14 years, including stints in at least two suburban New Jersey towns, including Glen Ridge.

Career

Acting

Cruise first appeared in a bit part in the 1981 film Endless Love, followed by a major supporting role as a crazed military academy student in Taps later that year. In 1983, Cruise was part of the ensemble cast of The Outsiders. That same year he appeared in All the Right Moves and Risky Business, which has been described as "A Generation X classic, and a career-maker for Tom Cruise", and which, along with 1986's Top Gun, cemented his status as a superstar. Cruise also played the male lead in the Ridley Scott film Legend, released in 1985.

Cruise followed up Top Gun with The Color of Money, which came out the same year, and which paired him with Paul Newman. 1988 saw him star in Cocktail, which earned him a nomination for the Razzie Award for Worst Actor. Later that year he starred with Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, which won the Academy Award for Best Film and Cruise the Kansas City Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actor. Cruise portrayed real-life paralyzed Vietnam Warveteran Ron Kovic in 1989's Born on the Fourth of July, which earned him a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Drama, the Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Actor, the People's Choice Award for Favorite Motion Picture Actor, a nomination for BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, and Cruise's first Best Actor Academy Award nomination.

Cruise's next films were Days of Thunder (1990) and Far and Away (1992), both of which co-starred then-wife Nicole Kidman as his love interest. In 1994, Cruise starred along with Brad Pitt, Antonio Banderas and Christian Slater in Neil Jordan's Interview with the Vampire, a gothic drama/horror film that was based on Anne Rice's best-selling novel. The film was well received, although Rice was initially quite outspoken in her criticism of Cruise having been cast in the film, as Julian Sands was her first choice. Upon seeing the film however, she paid $7,740 for a two-page ad in Daily Variety praising his performance and apologizing for her previous doubts about him.

In 1996, Cruise appeared as superspy Ethan Hunt in the reboot of Mission: Impossible, which he produced. It was a box office success, although it received criticism regarding the Jim Phelps character being a villain despite being a protagonist of the original television series.

In 1996, he took on the title role in Jerry Maguire, for which he earned a Golden Globe and his second nomination for an Academy Award. In 1999, Cruise costarred with Kidman in the erotic Stanley Kubrick film Eyes Wide Shut, and took a rare supporting role, as a motivational speaker, Frank T.J. Mackey, in Magnolia, for which he received another Golden Globe and nomination for an Academy Award.

In 2000, Cruise returned as Ethan Hunt in the second installment of the Mission Impossible films, releasing Mission: Impossible 2. The film was directed by Hong Kong director John Woo and branded with his gun fu style, and it continued the series' blockbuster success at the box office, taking in almost $547M in worldwide figures, like its predecessor, being the third highest-grossing film of the year; despite being a success it along with its predecessor received a mixed reception. Cruise received an MTV Movie Award for Best Male Performance for this film.

His next five films were major critical and commercial successes. The following year Cruise starred in the romantic thriller Vanilla Sky (2001) with Cameron Diaz and Penélope Cruz. In 2002, Cruise starred in the dystopianscience fiction thriller Minority Report which was directed by Steven Spielberg and based on the science fiction short story by Philip K. Dick.

In 2003, he starred in Edward Zwick's historical drama The Last Samurai, for which he received a Golden Globe nomination for best actor. In 2005, Cruise worked again with Steven Spielberg in War of the Worlds, a loose adaptation of the H. G. Wells novel of the same name, which became the fourth highest-grossing film of the year with US$591.4 million worldwide. Also in 2005, he won the People's Choice Award for Favorite Male Movie Star, and the MTV Generation Award. Cruise was nominated for seven Saturn Awards between 2002 and 2009, winning once. Nine of the ten films he starred in during the decade made over $100 million at the box office.

In 2006, he returned to his role as Ethan Hunt in the third installment of the Mission Impossible film series, Mission: Impossible III. The film was more positively received by critics than the previous films in the series, it grossed nearly $400 million at the box office. In 2007, Cruise took a rare supporting role for the second time in Lions for Lambs, which was a commercial disappointment. This was followed by an unrecognizable appearance as "Les Grossman" in the 2008 comedy Tropic Thunder with Ben Stiller, Jack Black, and Robert Downey Jr. This performance earned Cruise a Golden Globenomination. Cruise played the central role in the historical thriller Valkyrie released on December 25, 2008 to box office success.

In March 2010, Cruise completed filming the action-comedy Knight and Day, in which he re-teamed with former costar Cameron Diaz; the film was released on June 23, 2010. On February 9, 2010, Cruise confirmed that he would star in Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, the fourth installment in the Mission: Impossible series. The film was released in December 2011 to high critical acclaim and box office success. Unadjusted for ticket price inflation, it is Cruise's biggest commercial success to date.

On May 6, 2011, Cruise was awarded a humanitarian award from the Simon Wiesenthal Centre and Museum of Tolerance for his work as a dedicated philanthropist. In mid-2011, Cruise started shooting the movie Rock of Ages, in which he played the character Stacee Jaxx. The film was released in June 2012.

Cruise starred as Jack Reacher in the film adaptation of British author Lee Child's 2005 novel One Shot. The film was released on December 21, 2012. It met with positive reviews from critics and was a box office success grossing $216,568,266 worldwide. In 2013, he starred in the science fiction film Oblivion based on director Joseph Kosinski's graphic novel of the same name. The film met with mixed reviews and grossed $285,600,588 worldwide. It also starred Morgan Freeman and Olga Kurylenko.

As of mid-2015 Cruise's films have grossed about $8.2 billion worldwide.

Cruise returned as Ethan Hunt in the fifth installment of the Mission: Impossible series, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, which he also produced. Returning cast members included Simon Pegg as Benji and Jeremy Renner as William Brandt, with Christopher McQuarrie as director.

Cruise starred in the 2017 reboot of Boris Karloff's 1932 horror movie The Mummy. The new film, also titled The Mummy, is the second installment in the Universal Studios' Monsters Cinematic Universe, intended to be a shared universe with reboots of all the studios' classic monster characters. The film was produced by Alex Kurtzman, Chris Morgan, and Sean Daniel. It was written by Jon Spaihts and directed by Kurtzman.

Producing

Cruise partnered with his former talent agent Paula Wagner to form Cruise/Wagner Productions in 1993, and the company has since co-produced several of Cruise's films, the first being Mission: Impossible in 1996 which was also Cruise's first project as a producer.

Cruise is noted as having negotiated some of the most lucrative film deals in Hollywood, and was described in 2005 by Hollywood economist Edward Jay Epstein as "one of the most powerful – and richest – forces in Hollywood." Epstein argues that Cruise is one of the few producers (the others being George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Jerry Bruckheimer) who are regarded as able to guarantee the success of a billion-dollar film franchise. Epstein also contends that the public obsession with Cruise's tabloid controversies obscures full appreciation of Cruise's exceptional commercial prowess.

Cruise/Wagner Productions, Cruise's film production company, is said to be developing a screenplay based on Erik Larson's New York Times bestseller, The Devil in the White City about a real life serial killer, H. H. Holmes, at Chicago's World's Columbian Exposition. Kathryn Bigelow is attached to the project to produce and helm. Meanwhile, Leonardo DiCaprio's production company, Appian Way, is also developing a film about Holmes and the World's Fair, in which DiCaprio will star.

Cruise has produced for multiple films in which he has been. He produced Mission: Impossible, Without Limits, Mission: Impossible 2, The Others, Vanilla Sky and many others.

Break with Paramount

On August 22, 2006, Paramount Pictures announced it was ending its 14-year relationship with Cruise. In the Wall Street Journal, chairman of Viacom (Paramount's parent company) Sumner Redstone cited the economic damage to Cruise's value as an actor and producer from his controversial public behavior and views. Cruise/Wagner Productions responded that Paramount's announcement was a face-saving move after the production company had successfully sought alternative financing from private equity firms.

Industry analysts such as Edward Jay Epstein commented that the real reason for the split was most likely Paramount's discontent over Cruise/Wagner's exceptionally large share of DVD sales from the Mission: Impossible franchise.

Management of United Artists

In November 2006, Cruise and Paula Wagner announced that they had taken over the film studio United Artists. Cruise acts as a producer and star in films for United Artists, while Wagner serves as UA's chief executive.

Production began in 2007 of Valkyrie, a thriller based on the July 20, 1944 assassination attempt against Adolf Hitler. The film was acquired in March 2007 by United Artists. On March 21, 2007 Cruise signed on to play Claus von Stauffenberg, the protagonist. This project marked the second production to be greenlighted since Cruise and Wagner took control of United Artists. The first was its inaugural film, Lions for Lambs, directed by Robert Redford and starring Redford, Meryl Streep and Cruise. Lambs was released on November 9, 2007, opening to unimpressive box office revenue and critical reception.

In August 2008, Wagner stepped down from her position at United Artists; she retains her stake in UA, which combined with Cruise's share amounts to 30 percent of the studio.