- Director Chris McQuarrie recalls his first encounter with Tom Cruise in 2006.
- Cruise described his work as “mass entertainment.”
- McQuarrie emphasized the importance of Oscars and the blurred lines between artist and entertainer.
Ahead of the highly anticipated premiere of Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One, director Chris McQuarrie reminisces about his initial encounter with Tom Cruise back in 2006.
Having collaborated closely with Cruise as director for the last three Mission: Impossible movies and producer for Top Gun: Maverick, McQuarrie, who previously worked with Cruise on Valkyrie, revealed to The Times that Cruise described his work as “mass entertainment.”
McQuarrie said, “There is an outsized importance placed on Oscars,” McQuarrie says. “Films that not many people are going to see. A wedge has been driven into the industry. Are you an artist or an entertainer? Tom doesn’t see them as mutually exclusive.”
The director recounted that Cruise disclosed the most peculiar myth he had encountered about himself, which involved a belief that people on set were forbidden from making direct eye contact with him.
In an interview with The Times, Simon Pegg, a dear friend and frequent collaborator of Cruise, explained that the actor’s passionate dedication to supporting the film industry during the pandemic led to his reaction towards a crew member who violated social distancing rules on the set of the seventh Mission: Impossible installment.
Pegg told The Times: “Everything that Tom cares about, in terms of his job, was at stake due to the pandemic. For him there was a danger this virus could wipe cinema off the face of this earth.”
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