Tom Cruise prepared for his assassin role in Collateral in some bizarre ways, including posing as a delivery man. The 2000s saw Cruise gradually slip from an actor who jumped between different genres - as he had done throughout the '80s and '90s - and focusing largely on action roles. Mission: Impossible 2 seems to have inspired this, as not only was the sequel an enormous success but Cruise was praised for performing most of his own stunts.
Many of his follow-up projects like Minority Report or The Last Samurai featured heavy action elements, as did 2004's Collateral. This Michael Mann-helmed thriller cast Cruise in a rare villainous role as Vincent, an icy hitman who forces Jamie Foxx's cab driver Max - a role Adam Sandler turned down - to drive him around L.A. as he commits five killings. Cruise and Foxx both received praise for their work, with the film being both an absorbing character drama and a slick thriller.
Both Mann and Cruise are well-known for doing heavy amounts of research and prep for their projects, but obviously in the case of Collateral's Vincent, this posed a problem. Cruise wasn't going to learn how to become a professional killer through firsthand experience, so both star and director had to get a little creative in their approach. A major part of Vincent's method is to go about his work without drawing attention to himself or being recognized, so on that front, Cruise went undercover as a USP courier.
Tom Cruise Became A Courier To Learn How To Blend In
According to the special features on Collateral (which may be an unofficial Transporter movie) the object of this exercise was for Cruise to enter a crowded place - in this case, L.A.'s Central Market - and deliver a package without anybody noticing him. Mann stated that the star is instantly recognizable from his voice down to the way he walks, so he wanted to test and see if Cruise could just blend into a crowd like Vincent. The star can be seen in the above video delivering a FedEx package - complete with his Last Samurai hair and beard - and later striking up a conversation with nobody realizing it's Tom Cruise.
According to a Q&A with Mann in 2019 (via Russ Fischer), he also trained Cruise with mock assassination exercises. Mann - who produced forgotten gem Band Of The Hand - would select people from his office for the actor to stalk, so he could learn their patterns and "kill" them by slapping a post-it note with "You're Dead" written on it. While these exercises were certainly unorthodox, the end result is that Cruise gave one of his best performances in Collateral, so there was a method to the madness.