Tom Cruise: 5 Awesome Performances and 5 That Sucked
Tom Cruise, for many reasons, has been the punchline to a lot of jokes of recent years. His highly public courting and marriage and divorce to Katie Holmes, his controversial affiliation with Scientology, a string of under-performing or disappointing films and just some general weirdness has meant some of the great work Cruise has done has been knocked and criticised unfairly. Cruise has made a bunch of bad movies, and when he's bad he's really bad, but he didn't become the biggest movie star in the world and a three time Oscar nominee for no reason. Cruise has shown considerable range in his thirty year career, from his defining role in Risky Business to a sociopathic hitman in Collateral, and despite his miniature height, he's one of the mightiest screen-presence's of his generation. Tom Cruise's successes have always come when partnered with a great director. Tony Scott, Oliver Stone, Steven Spielberg, Paul Thomas Anderson, Martin Scorsese, Michael Mann and Stanley Kubrick have all directed Cruise towards fantastic performances that helped define him as one of Hollywood's greatest stars, and it's no coincidence that in some of his failures, he's been directed by lesser talents. With Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol becoming his biggest financial hit ever, it shows even at 50, Tom Cruise still has something. With the highly anticipated Jack Reacher released in the US today (it comes out in the UK in a week's time), it seems as good a time as any to reflect on the ups and downs of Tom Cruise's career.