Tom Cruise, You Slay Us
The new thriller Collateral (opening today) offers up an unusual buddy-movie pairing: Tom Cruise is Vincent, a gray-haired, fortysomething hitman. ("He's rough trade in a good suit," the actor says, summing his character up.) Jamie Foxx is Max, the Los Angeles taxi driver he takes hostage for a night of deadly errands. How'd this unlikely do get together?
Foxx jokes that he'd "sing showtunes and do my ABCs" in a film, as long as he got to co-star with Cruise. "This cat is on the top of the food chain," he says. "There's nobody bigger in movies. I had met Tom before, when I read for Jerry Maguire. I didn't quite, um, get that part, and Cuba went on to get my Oscar."
For Cruise, the big draws were a killer role (sorry, we couldn't resist) and acclaimed director Michael Mann. "I like taking on challenges," he says, "and this is a great part. Vincent's riding on that razor's edge; he's an enigmatic character. As an actor, everything that's happened in my life and all the success is wonderful, but the real passion for me with my work is making the movie. You dream about having creative partners like this and scenes like this to play.
"There's a line I love in [Mann's 1995 movie] Heat: 'The action is the juice.' That's what it's like working with Michael Mann for me."
Cruise also loves picking up new skills on his films — and Collateral required him to get a little trigger-happy. "I had to learn weapons extensively," he enthuses. "I'd never shot live rounds before! That gun is an extension of who Vincent is. He's very confident, so I had to work to be confident with that gun. I got surprisingly confident, like, 'Did I hit that from this distance?!'
"It was like shooting pool," he adds. "When I did The Color of Money, I was shooting pool 12 hours a day. To make it look real, you need the muscle memory from practicing."
