Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography pdfdrive com

part in his next movie, Rumble Fish, the third of S. E. Hinton’s books to get the
big-screen treatment. To Coppola’s surprise, the teenager turned down the
opportunity to rub shoulders with actors of the caliber of Dennis Hopper and
Mickey Rourke, as well as some of his colleagues from the cast of The
Outsiders. Twenty years later, Cruise still remembers the look of incredulity on
Coppola’s face as he found himself explaining that he was declining the chance
to work with the director of Apocalypse Now to make a film about a suburban
teenager who runs a brothel out of his home while his parents are out of town for
the weekend. “Here I am turning him down to do this movie about hookers,” he
recalled, trading a bit part in an ensemble movie for a chance at solo glory.
Even so, it was a gamble. The movie, entitled Risky Business, was director
Paul Brickman’s first film, and the budget was so low that the lead actors wore

---

their own clothes on-screen, paid their own air fares, and stayed in cheap hotels.
More than that, Brickman, who also wrote the script, was firmly against Tom’s
participation. He had tentatively cast the male and female leads for his
brainchild, and his provisional choices, Kevin Anderson and Megan Mullally,
had already read with other potential cast members. Brickman felt that Tom,
from what he had seen in Taps, was much too muscled and tough to play the
soft-bodied, rather weak boy who finds himself in a sexual predicament rife with
comic possibility.
Tom’s agent, Paula Wagner, heard differently. The Hollywood tom-toms were
pounding out the news that whatever the views of novice director Paul
Brickman, coproducers Steve Tisch and Jon Avnet were still having trouble
casting the male lead. She took Tisch and Avnet for a steak lunch and organized
a meeting between the young actor and the moneymen. “Tom stuck his head in
the casting office, gave us the twenty-five-million-dollar smile, and that was
pretty much it,” recalled Tisch.
When he took time from filming The Outsiders for a screen test, Tom was still
tattooed and pumped up from his role. Even his famous smile was not quite at
full wattage after removing the crown from his front tooth to make him look a
more credible greaser. As he told writer Tom Shales, “I was like filthy, dirty,
stunk, and my hair’s all greasy . . . and here I am explaining to Paul Brickman
which way I’m going to go with the character in terms of losing the weight and
what I would wear. So it’s pretty amazing that they cast me in the role.”
He was being much too modest. The way he took over the script reading,
making slight changes to the dialogue, finding the moment in a scene, left the
watching director and producers deeply impressed. He had won over a tough
audience. As he had to leave the following morning, he was asked to take a
screen test with Rebecca De Mornay, a young actress they had considered and
rejected because they were unsure she was up to playing a leading role. Before
she snagged the role of the tart with the heart of gold, her screen-acting
experience had been limited to one line—“Excuse me, those are my waffles”—
in the box office bomb One from the Heart, directed by Francis Ford Coppola.
As there was no money in the wafer-thin budget for further screen tests, Tom
and Rebecca drove to Tisch’s home and, with Avnet holding his own video
camera, played six short scenes. Before shooting began, Tom washed the grease
out of his hair, cleaned himself up, and put on a preppy, button-down shirt. At
five in the morning when filming finished, the director and his coproducers
knew they had their leading man and lady. Producer David Geffen was equally
thrilled. In fact, he was so pleased with the handsome youngster that he had a
copy of the videocassette made for himself, which he displayed in his office with

---

the name “Tom Cruz” scrawled on the side. The producers had solved their
casting problem—although Paula Wagner made them pay the full $75,000
asking fee for Tom’s services. It meant that Brickman’s contender for the lead
role, Kevin Anderson, would have to make do with a secondary part.
Tom returned to Oklahoma penciled in for the role of Joel Goodsen, a
conventional young man eager to explore his sexuality who finds himself
running a brothel from his parents’ home. After he finished filming The