CRUISE-ing into the MINORITY REPORT - Part Three

By: Jennifer H. Tomooka
Date: Thursday, June 27, 2002

In parts one and two of our interview with Tom Cruise, the veteran actor related some of his experiences from the set of his new genre thriller, MINORITY REPORT, and the joys of working with Hollywood power-list director Steven Spielberg. Today we continue our chat with Cruise.



On the set of MINORITY REPORT, Cruise volunteered to do his own stunts, even if that meant that he received some battle scars in the process. However, like everything else in his life, Cruise just rolls with the punches and goes with the flow.

"I got a couple of scars," says Cruise. "I actually don't get injured when I'm doing it. I banged my knee when I was going up the fire escape. That was really the only injury that I got. I slipped once and had a couple of stones in my hand, but generally it's fun. It's like being out in the backyard with your kids rolling around in the mud."

Cruise does do his own stunts and was able to continue this pattern in MINORITY REPORT. But he has no problem sitting back and letting the pros take care of business.

"Sometimes, in different shots, Steven would say 'Look, I don't need you for this,'" says Cruise. "It's good because I have to warm up to do it, and sometimes, if I go in, we come up with different things and it's just fun. It's fun to do and also, if I can do it, why don't I do it?"



This need to push his physical limits has its foundation in his childhood. Cruise was one of those kids who just couldn't keep still and was constantly testing his limits.

"[When] I was about three or four years old, I tore the sheets off my bed, dragged the monkey bars over to the garage, tied the sheet around me, [and] jumped," says Cruise. "I was hanging on the gutter, trying to pull myself up there. I got all the way up there, tied the rope around the sheet and jumped off the roof. Knocked myself out. I always wanted to parachute. Years later, we were living in Canada and we had high snow. I was jumping off, doing flips from the roof. You jump off the roof into the snow. I did this flip. It was a great flip. It was perfect. I went up and then I did the flip and I came straight down on top of concrete. That was the first time I broke my foot."


Cruise's early antics as a child certainly weren't completely rehearsed events and this flexibility and thirst for the unknown came in handy when working with Spielberg on MINORITY REPORT.



"Sometimes, what I like to do is just spend time with a director and work on a character and I'm one of those guys who shows up early," says Cruise. "I'm sometimes there before the crew and I like to walk around the set and I'll go to the sets early and just spend time on them. I do a lot of research beforehand, and some actors like rehearsing and some don't like rehearsing. Sometimes, if you're in the zone, you just save it and shoot and you do a lot of mental preparation beforehand just thinking about it, reading about it, working on scenes and coming up with ideas. Steven would be there and he likes to walk the set [in] the morning by himself and a lot of times he would be on the set and I would go see him, or I would be there before he got there and I would just stand up and start doing some things and he would start setting up his shots for the day. But [with] certain pieces, it's really important to get some rehearsal in. Sometimes we would rehearse and sometimes, we wouldn't. He's great at staging, Steven. He really has great instincts for actors."
Be sure to check back for the conclusion of our Tom Cruise profile.

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