Tom Cruise, the eternal Hollywood boy, has turned 60.
At the age when his peers begin to confront their grandchildren, he shows himself in splendid shape and with the same sly look worn for the role that consecrated him as a sex symbol: Pete “Maverick” Mitchell, the handsome pilot by Top Gun.
The next 36 years were studded with hits, arthouse films and oddities.
Tom Cruise, perhaps because of his passion for Scientology, perhaps because of some of his slightly excessive utterances (like when he jumped on Oprah Winfrey’s television sofa to show his love for his wife Katie Holmes), is not liked by everyone in basically a bit conformist Hollywood environment.
He is a power; his presence in a film is a guarantee of success. In 1981 he was among the protagonists of Francis Ford Coppola’s The Boys of 56th Street, then the Legend by Ridley Scott had arrived. After Top Gun, it was directed by Martin Scorsese in The Color of Money and then came Rain Man The Rain Man by Barry Levinson and Oliver Stone’s Born on the Fourth of July, for which he bagged an Oscar nomination but failed to win.
A second nomination, also unsuccessful, will come in 1996 for Cameron Crowe’s Jerry Maguire. Meanwhile, he marries twice, with Mimi Rogers and Nicole Kidman and divorces as many. The relationship with Kidman began in 1989 on the set of Rebel Hearts and ended after ten years, always on the set of a film: Eyes Wide Shut by the master of cinema Stanley Kubrick.
The twenty-first century is no less successful for Cruise: Vanilla Sky, Minority Report, and Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds are among them. The 2000s are also those of the marriage with Katie Holmes and the birth of Suri Cruise, who is now a beautiful sixteen-year-old.
Now Cruise is in theatres with Top Gun: Maverick, which brings the American epic back to the screen in its purest form: strong-willed jaws, muscles, honour, courage and a sense of homeland. A sequel that does not disappoint, between rhythm, adrenaline, irony and feelings.