Not for anything he did, but for something that in my opinion, he always failed to do. He never became the person whose role he acted. It was always Tom Cruise there not the character in the story, and I could never forget that, until the other night. Sunday night TV2 showed us the 2012 rock musical ROCK OF AGES with Tom playing Stacee Jaxx, and he was brilliant. Not only has he a fine singing voice – something I’d never suspected – but he really can act. As Jaxx, debauched, disolute, a man who’s losing both his way and his music, he rocked. He showed just how he’d been corrupted by the money, the power, and having his every whim catered to by his manager for whom he was a cash cow and nothing more. Cruise showed how Jaxx was conscious of this but couldn’t fight free of the constant temptations and the easier path. And for me, for the first time ever that I’d seen Cruise in a movie, he stepped out of being himself and became Stacee Jaxx. I grew up in the 60s, rocking out in coffee bars in Auckland and Wellington, and this movie took me back so very very well. It’s a reasonable movie, but Tom Cruise is great, his portrayal of the character and his singing shone. And it makes me wonder now, how he’d do as Count FranknFurter in Rocky Horror? Could be fun to watch THAT!
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Now I’m not particularly a fan of Ben Stiller and I’m certainly not a fan of incessant swearing, but I did watch Thunder Tropic. Tom Cruise was in that film and he was so involved in his character, that people literally saw his name in the credits, but didn’t recognise him in the film and thought there was an error in the cast listing.
He gets into the character of Lestat in ‘An Interview with a Vampire’ as well.