’You’re never there’: After a lifetime of making movies, Tom Cruise is always looking for the next big thing

Tom Cruise. Photo: Warner Bros. Pictures

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BURBANK, Calif. — When he steps in front of the camera, Tom Cruise wants two things: To challenge himself and to give audiences a movie-going experience they’ll be talking about long after they leave the theatre. Ever since booking his first major role in 1981s military school drama Taps, Cruise, now 64, has worked to channel a lifelong obsession with movies by working with influential directors like Steven Spielberg, Martin Scorsese, Oliver Stone, Brian De Palma, Stanley Kubrick, Paul Thomas Anderson, Michael Mann, J. J. Abrams, Doug Liman, Robert Redford, Sydney Pollack, Joseph Kosinski, Christopher McQuarrie and more.

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Cruise has always sought out risky roles. Later this year, he’ll push the envelope again with Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Digger, a dramedy that casts the actor as Digger Rockwell, a brash billionaire who frantically tries to save the world after one of his companies inadvertently sets off a catastrophic environmental event that threatens to destroy the planet.

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In a newly released trailer, Cruise looks unrecognizable, with thinning grey hair, wrinkles and a big belly as he marches around his mansion, yelling at his underlings and nursing his sickly cat.

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“When all else fails, you hit ‘em with the truth,” Cruise’s elderly tycoon says to himself as he paces back and forth. “Hit ‘em with the hard truth. Just bang, bang, bang!”

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“Digger got us all into this mess and Digger’s going to dig us out again,” says John Goodman, who plays the U.S. president.
The movie, which Cruise shot after completing work on last year’s most recent Mission: Impossible adventure, is Iñárritu’s first English-language film since 2015s Oscar-winning The Revenant.

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“It was just after The Revenant, when I had an idea, not script, not a film, just a relentless recurring obsession, that has endured through all these wild years. I knew who this character was,” Iñárritu said via video during a recent trailer unveiling on the Warner Bros. lot in Los Angeles. “I knew how he spoke, how he survived, how he seduced reality into agreeing with him. But it took me 10 years to do this film, because I wasn’t looking for a story. I was looking for the right way of saying it.”

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“People often ask me why I chose Tom to play Digger. To me, that’s like asking somebody why you drink water when you are thirsty? Because it’s what you need,” he said.

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The film also stars Riz Ahmed, Sandra Hüller, Michael Stuhlbarg, Jesse Plemons, Sophie Wilde and Emma D’Arcy.

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Cruise had been wanting to work with Iñárritu for 25 years

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“When I saw his film 25 years ago, Amores Perros, what a brilliant film. It was amazing,” Cruise told a group of journalists during an onstage conversation moderated by film podcast host Kevin McCarthy. ” … Every aspect of that film was very thought-out, very detailed, and you could feel the powerful human voice of someone who was incredibly skilled at what they were doing.”

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Iñárritu pitched Cruise his idea for Digger while the legendary actor was in the midst of shooting Top Gun: Maverick. After years of making action blockbusters, Cruise was ready to take a different type of gamble.

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The film’s October release date indicates that Warner Bros. plans to push the film heavily into awards season.

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Tom Cruise in Digger. Warner Bros. Pictures

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“There’s nothing better than to physically and metaphorically stand on the edge of a cliff and go, ‘Let’s do this,’” Cruise explained. “I think when you see Digger, just the level of detail, the skill, the layers of making this film … He’s never made something like this before, nor have I.”