Tom Cruise Once Explained How He Came up With the Concept of International Movie Premieres
Tom Cruise, like most actors, has been regularly promoting his blockbuster movies overseas for years. But although it’s a common tradition among stars now, Cruise believed that he was the actor who normalized it.
Tom Cruise on how he came up with international red carpets
Cruise felt that the idea of promoting movies around the world came from him. According to Contact Music, Cruise was promoting his 1986 feature Top Gun at the time in Paris. While stuck there, he kept thinking about how others were taking care of his films back on set.
“It took four months [to do] this tour… You’d spend weeks in one place… [Martin] Scorsese was editing The Color of Money, we were at an early draft of Rain Man and I was there in Paris and I was like, ‘I wanna make movies,’” Cruise said.
This was when the actor had a revelation that would change the concept of film promotion.
“That’s when I kinda came up with the idea of doing a country… in a couple of days. I like premieres… so I came up with the idea of, ‘Let’s have premieres in different countries and then kind of do it that way…’ It took me a few years to get it going,” Cruise remembered.
Tom Cruise famously said he takes no days off
Cruise is so grateful for his opportunities in the film industry that he rarely takes a break. The only semblance of a hiatus in his work comes when the actor’s out promoting his films.
“This is a day off for me because I am not shooting,” Cruise told Bella (via Variety) not too long ago. “I’m just chillin’ now. I don’t have days off. Look, I’m fortunate, I’m lucky. I’ve spent my life on movie sets and traveling the world, which is what I always wanted to do. So this is not work — I’m living the dream.”
Edge of Tomorrow director Doug Liman once experienced Cruise’s work ethic firsthand. The filmmaker had a difficult time keeping up with the acting veteran.
“I lived with Tom when we made American Made,” Liman told Deadline. “When you work with Tom, it’s a seven-days-a-week job. No matter how hard a worker you are, and I consider myself that, it’s nothing compared to Tom.”
Liman revealed that Cruise even refused to take the day off on his birthday. Instead, he saw the occasion as an opportunity to get more business done.
“I mention to Tom, ‘Are you thinking of going away for your birthday?’ Tom says, ‘No. I was thinking since we have the day off on July 3, we can use that time to have the eight-hour aviation meeting that we’ve been having trouble scheduling.’ I am beyond tired and I’m like, ‘You want to have an eight-hour meeting on your birthday?’ He said, ‘Yes, that’s what I want for my birthday. I want to be making a movie,’” Liman recalled.
Will Smith tried to keep up with Tom Cruise and failed
Smith also isn’t a slouch when it comes to promoting his movies. Competitive at the time, Smith studied many Hollywood megastars like Cruise to see how to grow his star-power. Smith noticed that one of Cruise’s strengths was how he’d promote his movies, and was determined to outdo him.
“I started quietly monitoring all of Tom’s global promotional activities,” Smith wrote in his memoir Will. “When I arrived in a country to promote my movie, I would ask the local movie executives to give me Tom’s promotional schedule. And I vowed to do two hours more than whatever he did in every country.”
Smith soon found out, however, that Cruise was on another level.
“Unfortunately, Tom Cruise is either a cyborg, or there are six of him,” Smith said. “I was receiving reports of four-and-a-half-hour stretches on red carpets in Paris, London, Tokyo… In Berlin, Tom literally signed every single autograph until there was no one else who wanted one. Tom Cruise’s global promotions were the individual best in Hollywood.”
