“You can hear Tom Cruise laughing as Kanye goes, ‘Yeah, man, I’ve been working on the improv stuff, you know, all your suggestions were great.’"
7. HE ALLOWED CUBA GOODING JR.’S DAD TO ASK HIM WEIRD QUESTIONS
It can be hard for stars to bring family members to the set because they can never be sure if they will embarrass them in front of major actors. That was the case when Cuba Gooding Jr. brought his dad to the set of Jerry Maguire. His dad started asking Cruise awkward questions about his sexuality. Yikes! Cuba Gooding Jr. told the embarrassing story. “He gave Tom Cruise a hug and said, ‘I love you, man. Now seriously, are you gay or not?’” Gooding Jr. recalled, years later.
“I almost fainted. And thought, 'Please, Lord, let me disappear.'”
Cruise didn’t even blink an eye, though, and just took it all in stride. “Tom just laughed and said, "No,” his co-star reported. It’s a good thing because it could have gone a very different way. Gooding Jr. also mentioned that he is annoyed when people go up to his and shout, “Show me the money!” “It doesn’t go away. I get it all the time. I wish I had a wand that would make people disappear whenever they say it,” he said. “It’s hard, especially when some drunk in a bar asks and finally you say it and he says, ‘No, say it like you said it in the movie!’”
6. HE WAS GIVING AWAY $500 PENS
If anyone is going to own a $500 pen, it’s surely going to be Tom Cruise. When he was on the set of A Few Good Men, Kevin Pollock noticed that Tom Cruise was writing with a huge pen as he made notes in his script. They joked around about the ridiculously large pen and Cruise told Pollock that he should try writing with the pen. “It’s like an angel wing floating on a cloud. It was a magical pen,” Pollock recalled to the Chive. It wasn’t just Pollock that got to use the pen either, Demi Moore also took a turn using it. She also thought the pen was awesome to write with. Pollock wanted a pen of his own but when he found out that it cost $500 he was really bummed out. It wasn’t long before Cruise’s assistant showed up with a pen just for Pollock. Cruise eventually asked Pollock how he was enjoying the pen and Pollock admitted that it was showcased on his mantle because he thought it was too special to use. So, Cruise bought him a second $500 pen so that he could use it and still keep one on the mantle.
5. HE BUYS DAKOTA FANNING A BIRTHDAY GIFT EVERY YEAR
If you remember Dakota Fanning played Tom Cruise’s daughter in War of the Worlds. She was such a cutie in that movie. Judging by the picture, these two were super close and that’s just about the cutest thing we have seen in a while. The movie was great and it was really because of both of them. The two bonded in the movie and he never forgot Dakota Fanning’s birthday, even years later. He was kind enough to let her know that he was still thinking about her. “He sent me a birthday gift every year since I was 11 years old,” Fanning told Andy Cohen on Watch What Happens Live.
“I always think, 'Oh, when I’m 18, he’ll probably stop. Oh, 21, he’ll stop. But every year. It’s really kind.”
That’s 13 years of gifts from the actor and that’s pretty cool that he keeps sending them to her. So, what does he buy her? Usually he sends her shoes and what more could a girl want? We can imagine that they were probably very expensive shoes. She was also asked if Cruise did any weird things while he was on set. Nothing," she admitted, "Honestly, I have nothing odd that he did."
4. HE SPOILED HIS PUBLICIST'S DAUGHTER AT HER WEDDING
It must be a great day when you work for a huge star. Pat Kingsley is Tom Cruise’s publicist and they have a pretty tight relationship. They have been working together since A Few Good Men and they often talk every day. The two had a disagreement once over whether he should discuss Scientology in an interview during the press tour for The Last Samurai. She just didn’t think he should discuss it at that time even though he wanted to open up a discussion about it. While she was being interviewed she also talked about how he went to her daughter’s wedding. “We talked constantly,” she told The Hollywood Reporter that they shared 11 p.m. calls almost nightly. “He was an insomniac. I liked the fact that he was so much fun.
And he was so thoughtful. He remembered birthdays, my daughter’s birthday.
He came to her wedding; she was registered somewhere for the China and he bought out everything. They’ve got things they haven’t even opened yet, and they’ve been together 15 years!” It makes you start to think how you can get him to come to your wedding, doesn’t it?
3. HE SENDS KIRSTEN DUNST A CAKE EVERY YEAR
He definitely has a soft spot when it comes to the kids that he has worked with over the years. Kirsten Dunst was only a little girl when she co-starred with Tom Cruise in 1994’s Interview With The Vampire. When Dunst was on Jimmy Kimmel Live she told a sweet story about Cruise.
“I ran into Tom like five years ago, and now I get this cake every year that’s one of the best cakes I’ve ever had. It’s from Dylan’s Bakery in Thousand Oaks,” she explained. “We call it the ‘Cruise cake’ at my family’s house. We’re like, ‘Cruise cake’s here!’ And it’s gone within a day.”
Jimmy Kimmel agreed with her that the cake was delicious because apparently, he also gets one from Cruise every year. One fun fact about the movie was that Brad Pitt hated every moment of it. He had to wear yellow contact lenses that basically left him blind. "I am miserable," Pitt said. "Six months in the dark." "The great thing that came out of that movie is that it birthed my love affair with New Orleans," he said. "We were shooting nights. So I just rode my bike around all night. I made some great friends there.”
2. HE WAS FRIENDS WITH BILL WILDER
Billy Wilder played the role of Jerry Maguire’s mentor, Dicky Fox in the movie Jerry Maguire. Cameron Crowe offered Wilder the role which he originally turned down. But Crowe went to Cruise to get him to help him get Wilder in the movie. “Cruise says, let’s go talk him into it. We drive to Billy Wilder’s office. Billy is there, and he lights up when he sees that it’s Tom Cruise. He invites us in,” Crowe recalled to Deadline. “He tells Tom these stories about Cary Grant, and Sunset Boulevard.
He’s just magnificent. And I realize he is in full Hollywood director, getting-ready-to-make-another-picture-as-soon-as-possible mode, and he’s got Tom Cruise in his office. And I’m virtually invisible at this point, as that romance is happening.”
Wilder still ended up declining the role but Cruise remained close friends with him. They were friends right until the old director’s death. “He loved Billy Wilder and we talked about him, constantly. Tom wrote notes to Billy, and they developed a little bit of a friendship. When Billy passed away, Tom came to the memorial and really let everybody know how much he loved Billy. I think Tom got a big kick out of Wilder. How could you not?”
1. HE CONVINCED CAMERON CROWE TO GET BACK INTO DIRECTING
Elizabethtown wasn’t the success that Cameron Crowe thought it would be and he was actually thinking for a while that he might not direct another movie. When Tom Cruise heard that he wasn’t having any part of it. he decided to take Crowe for a drive to talked to him. The two ended up on the set of Knocked Up, oddly enough. “Mr. Cruise introduced Mr. Crowe to Mr. Apatow, who joked that he’d been stealing for years from Say Anything, the sharp-witted teen comedy that first established Mr. Crowe as a director in 1989,” the New York Times reported. “Cruise sidles up to me and goes: ‘See? Get out of your house, man, it’s fun,’” Crowe recalled to the Times. “And that’s when it felt like, yeah, it’s time to direct again.” Shockingly enough many people told Crowe not to have Cruise in Jerry Maguire though we can’t imagine the movie without him.
“Your friends take you aside and say, 'If Tom Cruise says yes, you lose your power. You can't do a thing. It just becomes a freight train that's out of control, and it's a Hollywood freight train, you'll be lucky if you see the back of the caboose.'”
We’re glad that he didn’t listen to them.