Tom Cruise bemoans young actors’ lack of technical knowledge

Film schools should teach editing and camerawork to help performers get the most out of cinema, the Hollywood’s Tom Cruise says.

Tom Cruise on the set of Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. Picture: Paramount Pictures.

It is a risky business wanting to be top gun without knowing the tools of the trade, Tom Cruise has warned.

Cruise, who at 62 is arguably still the most bankable star of his era, was speaking in London last week as he received a British Film Institute fellowship for his support for Britain’s big-screen industry. The actor bemoaned the failure of film schools to teach budding actors technical skills as he praised those of the Jack Nicholson and Marlon Brando generations for their understanding of lenses and lighting.

Cruise said he was constantly having to tell young actors to study the art of filmmaking by, for example, spending time in editing rooms and understanding why certain lenses were being used to film particular scenes.

He said that since his breakthrough in the 1980s he had devoted himself to “understanding the tools, the camera, the story structure … the conveying of emotions”, that he had studied and listened to greats such as Nicholson and Paul Newman.

“Nicholson and those guys who came up with him understand that lens,” Cruise said. “It is important to understand the tools around you. There is tech. It is like understanding the stage as an actor, but for a lot of artists it is not taught in film school: how to understand the lens and what it can do, and why there is eye movement and recognise the effect it has.

“I always tell actors: ‘Spend time in the editing room, produce a movie, study old movies, recognise what the composition is giving you, know what those lenses are, understand the lighting and how to use it for your benefit.’ Understand the art form to that degree. Brando absolutely understood lighting. All the greats did.”

Cruise also spoke of a formative experience early in his career, when a highly acclaimed supporting role in the 1981 police thriller Taps was setting him on the road to stardom while he was also starring in a flop, Losin’ It.

“The quality wasn’t there, nor was the intention to make a great film,” he said of the dud, directed by Curtis Hanson. “It was the first time I realised that some people didn’t know how to make movies.” Yet the experience was just “as valuable and important”, the actor said, adding that it taught him to spend “more time interviewing people before I go into work with them”.

He revealed that after the success of Risky Business in 1983 he played hard to get with the producers of Top Gun to secure more of a say in the filmmaking. “I negotiated a deal where they had to allow me into every production meeting and to see every aspect behind the scenes,” he said. “This is when I started to get more creative controls.”

Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie on the set of Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. Picture: Paramount Pictures.

It had been “an amazing experience” to work with Tony Scott, brother of Ridley Scott, on Top Gun and Days of Thunder.

“What he accomplished with those jets on Top Gun was extraordinary and (with cars) on Days of Thunder. He changed aerial photography, and the way you see motorsports being filmed today is because of Tony Scott.”

Cruise’s first official producer credit came in 1996 with the first Mission: Impossible movie; the eighth and final film in the franchise, The Final Reckoning, was unveiled at this year’s Cannes film festival. He paid tribute to Christopher McQuarrie, who has been involved in the franchise since an uncredited writing role “saved” the fourth film, Ghost Protocol, in 2011. Cruise said he called McQuarrie in desperation, knowing that while he had “a lot of pieces in place (for the film), there was no story”. The actor said the film’s most bravura scene – Cruise free-climbing the Burj Khalifa in Dubai – had been filmed even though he “did not know why I was on the side of the Burj”. Cruise said McQuarrie arrived and immediately resolved the dialogue for a scene involving special gloves the actor was using to “climb” the building, which, if lit up red, would not stick but if blue could be used.

“Without a breath he said, ‘Oh well, blue is glue, red is dead.’ He proceeded to write the rest of the scene,” Cruise said. “He structured that movie. He (wrote) the film in the other room and we’d shoot it right there. That is how movies are made.”

Ben Roberts, chief executive of the BFI, which is hosting a season of 27 Cruise films, praised the actor for his “incredible versatility (and) advocacy for cinema-going” as well as “huge impact” in Britain, creating industry jobs and helping determine how films are made.

THE TIMES

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is in cinemas.