10 Remarkable Movie Performances By The Last Actor You'd Expect

It's a classic story. A man is born, he develops incredible charisma and good looks and becomes one of the top leading men in Hollywood. Then he joins a cult and starts praying to an ancient space god who preaches that the true path to enlightenment is through large donations and his career tanks. Really, it's the King Lear of our times.

Tom Cruise's outspoken belief in Scientology has made him a joke. However, in 2008 he earned back some of his earlier acclaim by realising that when everyone's laughing at you, sometimes it's best to just join in.

Cruise made possibly the greatest cameo of all time in Tropic Thunder as the foul-mouthed studio executive Les Grossman. Cruise is practically unrecognisable in a bald cap and fat suit and his performance is completely removed from his usual action movie leads, stomping around his office and hurling obscenities at the terrorists who have captured the cast of the fictional movie.

It's an amazing performance, not just because the notoriously self-serious Cruise completely commits to and nails the comedy, but also because so much of what makes the role great (including the incredibly gifable clip of Les showing his sweet dance moves) was actually suggested by Cruise himself.