11 Safe Good Guy Actors Who Should Have Played More Villains
11. Tom Cruise
Went Bad In... Collateral and Interview With The Vampire Tom Cruise has made a good go of building a career entirely on playing himself: grotesque, over-powered, and over-pampered versions of himself, but still fundamentally Tom Cruise down to the core. This is not necessarily something to be criticised, considering the success he has had, and the limited returns of the films in which he "stretches" himself, like Valkyrie - but when you watch something like Magnolia, or Born On The Fourth Of July, it becomes patently obvious that the wonderfully haired diminutive star could and should have stretched himself more. His villain work in particular looks like an all-too-briefly trodden path - in both Collateral and Interview With The Vampire, Cruise's charisma translated perfectly into malignance, and it is a huge shame he hasn't been brave enough to go with darker material since. Perhaps it would alienate his audience too much, or perhaps he doesn't want to annoy his overlords, but either way, that sort of material could be the perfect solution to what happens when the Tom Cruise bit stops being effective when he starts to look less than perfect.
Went Bad In... Collateral and Interview With The Vampire Tom Cruise has made a good go of building a career entirely on playing himself: grotesque, over-powered, and over-pampered versions of himself, but still fundamentally Tom Cruise down to the core. This is not necessarily something to be criticised, considering the success he has had, and the limited returns of the films in which he "stretches" himself, like Valkyrie - but when you watch something like Magnolia, or Born On The Fourth Of July, it becomes patently obvious that the wonderfully haired diminutive star could and should have stretched himself more. His villain work in particular looks like an all-too-briefly trodden path - in both Collateral and Interview With The Vampire, Cruise's charisma translated perfectly into malignance, and it is a huge shame he hasn't been brave enough to go with darker material since. Perhaps it would alienate his audience too much, or perhaps he doesn't want to annoy his overlords, but either way, that sort of material could be the perfect solution to what happens when the Tom Cruise bit stops being effective when he starts to look less than perfect.