Tom Cruise control: How the actor rewrote his Hollywood story

Tom Cruise is doing what he does best: scaling buildings, climbing on planes and all of those cuckoo bananas movie stunts that leave us slack-jawed.

While the Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning star's fans and media outlets alike seem to be Cruise crazy over it all — as they should be because WOW! — you will never erase from my mind that the superstar had a press tour that went in a much less successful, more “Oh my goodness, what in the world is happening?!” direction back in 2005.

Let’s start with today. At 62, Cruise is the last of the true movie stars. “The best stuntman in the movie world,” according to Sean Penn. The man who “saved Hollywood’s ass” with Top Gun: Maverick, according to Steven Spielberg. The leading man with unbridled love for the filmmaking industry, who prefers movie-making to taking vacations.

While the reviews of M:I 8 may call out the “dull and disjointed” plot (who’s going for the storyline?!), the energy that Cruise brings to the supposed final film in the series — with his "crazy, death-defying," “off the hook” stunts — is recognized in each one.

Cruise has pulled back the curtain on what those stunts entailed, and it’s like: Is he trying to die? Of course not, but his intensity and envelope-pushing are next level. That included an “underwater sequence unlike any other.”

With his bank account and Hollywood cachet, Cruise could certainly leave 99.9% of his cinema tricks to stunt doubles or CGI, but he doesn’t, because he’s Mr. Movies. Cheers to whoever came up with Paramount’s “Nobody goes as hard as Tom Cruise” line that’s everywhere, because, well, bingo.

M:I 8 director Christopher McQuarrie, a frequent Cruise collaborator both for this series and a slew of other films (Jack Reacher, Fallout), talked about the stunts and workhorse Cruise’s next-level drive with GQ, saying, “If you want to know why I’m working for Tom for 18 years and other people aren’t, lots of directors will do that once. They don’t ever want to f***ing do that again.”

While it sounds like Cruise (having) control is a thing, on the red carpet with McQuarrie and the cast, he comes off as very much part of the team. With the shaggy hairstyle he’s adopted — one that would get Maverick in trouble with his superiors — the No. 1 on the call sheet comes off as an ensemble guy, jumping into group photographs, not even in the center.

Another of his secrets is that he’s a fan man. Yahoo Entertainment’s Kelsey Weekman, who’s been reporting from Cannes, watched him sign dozens of autographs at the premiere, some for enthusiasts who lined up 12 hours early in hopes of a Cruise encounter. He posed for photos, gave fist bumps and otherwise delivered that BCE (Big Cruise Energy), thanking fans online for supporting the franchise, 30 years strong.

While he hasn’t made an entrance into a M:I 8 premiere by helicopter, motorcycle or parachute — yet! — the showman stood atop two different planes at the London premiere. In dress shoes.

The truth is, he loves a photo op. We know he has the need for speed, but also has his sights on heights. Cruise, coming off his epic Olympic stunt last summer, he picked an extreme locale to shoot an M:I 8 commercial: the roof of the BFI IMAX in London.

Cruise has become the perfect Hollywood ambassador. He called for that touching moment of silence for Val Kilmer. He urged theatergoers to see Sinners — and then invited Michael B. Jordan to an M:I 8 premiere. He even gave his ex-wife Nicole Kidman a rare acknowledgement. He recounted being nervous to approach Dustin Hoffman, his future Rain Man costar, as a young actor.

All the while, he tells us pretty much nothing about his personal life. What’s going on with Ana de Armas? Who knows? He’s certainly not bringing up Scientology. In fact, he barely gives interviews, and when he does, they’re about filmmaking.

What a difference 20 years makes

Anyone who has survived and thrived in Hollywood for as long as Cruise has — with his nearly 50 film credits over four decades — has had various incarnations. Frankly, so have I when it comes to covering celebrities, so I can’t help but juxtapose the Cruise today to the Cruise of exactly 20 years ago.

In June 2005, Cruise’s War of the Worlds came out, and the press tour was like an explosion of bad. Things were great for him personally — he had fallen in love with future (and now past) third wife, Katie Holmes — but things got desperately off track.

It was, publicitywise, a toxic combination of things that occurred over a four-week period. It started after Cruise fired his long-time publicist, who claimed she kept him in check when it came to publicly discussing his Scientology beliefs, and hired his sister Lee Anne DeVette.

During an interview on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Cruise couldn’t answer any questions because he was basically too in love with Holmes to speak. In the most over-the-top display, he started pumping his fists, doing the Rocky pose and ultimately jumping on the couch in a moment forever engrained in many brains.

While it was hotly debated whether the thing with “Kate” was a publicity stunt, he started giving interviews about Scientology. Cruise took it upon himself to criticize Brooke Shields for revealing in her book that she took an antidepressant to combat postpartum depression. He called Shields “irresponsible” on Access Hollywood.

At the London premiere of War of the Worlds, a prankster squirted water in Cruise’s face with a trick microphone. It definitely wasn’t nice, but Cruise got into it with the guy, giving the “jerk” an on-camera scolding. The man and three others ended up getting arrested.

Then came the Today show. Pressed about his comments about Shields, things got heated between Cruise and then-host Matt Lauer, as Holmes looked on from the wings. The movie star called Lauer “glib” and said that he didn’t “know the history of psychiatry” like Cruise did, calling it a “pseudo-science.” Cruise said Shields should have exercised and taken vitamins, not medication. He denied the existence of chemical imbalances and said, from his research, ADHD drugs like Ritalin were “dangerous” and he helped friends get their children off of them. Cruise’s claims were widely criticized by experts.

There was also a hot mess of an interview on 60 Minutes Australia. Cruise wasn’t having any Kidman questions from the journalist who claimed he had to take a four-hour course on Scientology to book the interview.

Despite the horrible press tour — which the Washington Post called “a series of manic moments in public, in which the screen idol appears to be losing his chiseled, steely reserve” — War of the Worlds was a commercial success. However, Cruise’s popularity took a nosedive. His sister was fired. So was a Paramount publicist who booked Cruise on Oprah.

The next year, M:I 3 came out, and it was elevated to an “entirely new level” with stunts that were “bigger, riskier and bolder” than ever before. His action roles kept coming with more M:I, Reacher, Edge of Tomorrow and Oblivion.

When he did press, it wasn’t about Scientology, but his on-screen moves, for which he started work with a helicopter coach and motorcycle coach. It also became about his work ethic — being first on set and last to leave. The 20-year-strong birthday gifts he sends costars. The holiday cakes he ships around the world. The mentoring of young actors.

On his current press tour, he danced on a tipping chair, perhaps a playful nod to Oprah’s couch and his past — but with a new spin.

The Tom of today

As for spin, a crisis and PR expert who has followed Cruise’s highs and lows, calls the star a master of his craft — and image.

“He’s the last action hero who actually has the balls to risk his neck — literally — for your ticket price,” Eric Schiffer of Reputation Management Consultants told Yahoo Entertainment. “Cruise’s commitment to practical stunts is a category killer to every CGI superhero in the business. He’s also the last of the true movie stars — no Marvel mask required.”

Schiffer, who doesn’t work with Cruise, said each of the actor’s stunts — from hanging off the Burj Khalifa to his wing-walking at 10,000 feet in M:I 8 — is a “press release shot… The movie is the marketing.”

Boosting that is Cruise’s “work-ethic lore,” said Schiffer. Whether it’s the “5 a.m. helicopter arrivals [or] birthday cakes flown to crew,” the star “projects blue-collar glamour: the billionaire who clocks in first.”

Plus, personally, Cruise “guards mystique like IP.” Unlike every influencer, he’s not oversharing on social media, has done just a handful of talk shows in the last 15 years and has had “zero TMZ sound bites. In an age of excess content, scarcity is king.”

Yes, 2005 was a P.R. disaster, but his box office wins — especially Top Gun: Maverick, which Cruise confirmed is getting a sequel — have rewritten his story.

Cruise’s Q-Rating, which measures a celebrity’s popularity, “cratered 40% after 2005,” Schiffer said. He struggled to get it back up, hindered by bad press around his 2012 divorce from Holmes and his legal battle against the tabloid Bauer Media in 2013.

He slowly made his way back with “the final exorcism of Oprah’s sofa happening on Memorial Day 2022,” said Schiffer. “Top Gun: Maverick hauled a pandemic-scarred public into IMAX and rewired Cruise’s brand from 'eccentric zealot’ to the Saint of Popcorn. Nostalgia is a powerful eraser — [and] Maverick wiped the slate clean.”

In February 2023, National Research Group, an entertainment data firm, placed Cruise at No. 1 on the list of Top 25 Theatrical stars using survey data from 3,000 Americans, age 12-74, about which stars they go to the movies to see. In August 2024, he fell to No. 2, behind Denzel Washington.

Cruise’s media playbook today “is brutal in its simplicity: talk craft, show stunts, skip faith,” Schiffer observed. “Interviews storyboarded to redirect any Scientology or private-life detour back to cameras, lenses, and G-forces. Cruise’s team knows when to vanish and when to go supernova.”

As far as who’s pulling the strings? Schiffer thinks it’s all Cruise’s doing “with an iron-fisted message discipline wrapped in IMAX spectacle.”

And what a spectacle it’s been.