From shimmying across the floor in his skivvies to leaping off of humongous skyscrapers, drinking blood, driving fast cars, and faster jets; there are very little roles that Tom Cruise can’t pull off. People sometimes like to ridicule his private life choices, but those choices helped to create the dedicated and focused personality that has been able to pull off any role he steps into.
Name a bad Tom Cruise movie... Ok, there are still some of them out there, but those missteps were usually not his fault, or very early on his career. Even some of those are still fairly watchable. Here are Tom Cruise’s 10 most iconic roles, ranked.
Lestat
When it was announced that Tom Cruise was going to star as the vampire Lestat in the adaptation of Anne Rice’s Interview With A Vampire, the author practically lost her mind, fearful that she’d see her greatest creation turned into a big grinning hit shot vampire.
But in one of his first decidedly “non-Tom” roles, he played Lestat to the hilt as he was supposed to be - a massively horrific vampire with a huge ego. After seeing his performance, Rice took out a full-page ad in Variety praising the performance.
Maverick
33 years after its initial release and Top Gun remains one of, if not THE defining and most recognizable role of Cruise’s career. It’s not his best work, but it is certainly his most memorable.
Even if you’ve never seen the movie, you’d be hard pressed to find someone who doesn’t know this film, the references (“I feel the need for speed”), or the Kenny Loggins song, “Danger Zone.” Next year, Cruise cruises to the skies again in the long anticipated sequel, Maverick.
Ethan Hunt
From a sleek adaptation of a 1960’s TV show came a huge tent pole franchise, and it’s all thanks to Cruise both in front of and behind the scenes.
Thanks to his production team, plus Cruise’s commitment to the story and doing his own crazy stunt work, Ethan Hunt and Mission: Impossible has become one of the most enduring characters and franchises of the past 20 years or so. There’s also not much Cruise won’t dangle himself off of, a hallmark of each film.
John Anderton
The very first pairing of Tom Cruise and Steven Spielberg came in the form of the classic science fiction movie, Minority Report. As John Anderton, Cruise is the leader of a team of officers who stop crimes before they happen, using a trio of precognitives plugged into a machine that gives them the name of the future perp and footage of the would-be crime.
Imagine Anderton’s surprise when his name comes up. The movie is not a “whodunnit,” but a unique “who's-gunnadoit,” and its also Cruise doing some of finest action work.
Les Grossman
He doesn’t command a lot of screen time and if you haven’t seen the movie Les Grossman is a part of, then stop now and go watch Tropic Thunder. Now that you have, back in 2008 when the movie first came out, every bit of Cruise’s performance was unbeknownst to the audience until the end of the movie.
Because of how ridiculous the whole performance is as the profanity-laced film executive, Cruise not only earned praise for the role but was able to get back into the public good graces after a few embarrassing public appearances.
Charlie Babbitt
In what is one of his first “adult” roles, Rain Man is also one of Cruise’s early standouts. As Charlie Babbitt, Cruise plays second fiddle to Dustin Hoffman’s autistic savant Raymond in the film.
But he’s no less charismatic, playing off of several other cocky characters he took over the years to play the smarmy fast dealer Charlie, who kidnapped his newfound brother Raymond to travel cross-country with him. Rain Man is a fairly typical story but one that is elevated by both Hoffman and Cruise.
Jerry Maguire
After writing a memo detailing the dishonesty in being a sports manager, super-agent Jerry Maguire winds up being let go by his firm. He scrambles to secure a few clients but only manages to secure one - Rod Tidwell, who has Jerry (and most of the country in 1996) screaming “Show me the money!”
It's Cruise at some of his most vulnerable and heartfelt moments of his career, and his first time teaming up with director Cameron Crowe.When talking about Cruise’s career, Jerry Maguire is still one of his most quoted movies of all time.
Vincent
With gunmetal gray hair and the suit to match, Tom Cruise looked menacing as Vincent in Michael Mann’s Collateral. He’s also as magnetic as ever, as he constantly goads Max (Jamie Foxx), who chauffeurs him around Los Angeles so he can complete his “jobs,” which are several murders.
If you ever wanted to know how meticulously dedicated Cruise is to a role, look no further than Vincent: a hitman who has to be able to blend in, get in, and get out fast. Mann made Tom Cruise deliver FedEx packages all day to try and go undetected.
Joel Goodson
Aside from being suspended on wires doing super spy work in the first Mission Impossible film, Risky Business contains the most famous scene of Tom Cruise’s career. With his folks away on vacation, Joel Goodson (yes that’s the character’s last name) decided to slide around the house in nothing but his underoos and a button-down shirt.
From Saved By The Bell to Heidi Klum to recreating this scene (and 800 others) on James Corden's show, it’s a classic piece of Hollywood at this point.
David Aames
Cameron Crowe’s remake of the Spanish film, Abre Los Ojos called Vanilla Sky is an increasingly heady bad dream of a movie. It’s also quite a journey that Tom Cruise takes on. After the opening dream of watching Tom bolt through a completely barren Times Square, we learn that he is David Aames, a magazine magnate who after a tragic series of events finds himself in horrific accident, wearing a mask and on trial for murder. Or is he?
There are several movies on this list and elsewhere that play with the fact that Tom Cruise’s face is nearly impeccable. Sky not only disfigures him, but puts him in a mask, allowing Cruise to act in a variety of ways he had yet to pull off.