15 Times Tom Cruise Surprisingly Went Out Of His Way To Do Something Nice
Quick Links
Tom Cruise has been ripped apart in so many ways over the years because of his lifestyle and belief in Scientology. For the most part, people think he’s a freak. He makes darn good movies, though, and there’s no denying that he’s box office gold. His movies have grossed over $100 million dollars over the years and China is such a huge fan that they have named October 6th as the official “Tom Cruise Day.” One thing that seems to have been proven over time is that Cruise is the type of guy that will literally give you the shirt off his back.
Sure, there are some negative stories out there and he definitely has had some weird rumors surrounding him, but he’s generally known as a nice guy in Hollywood. But we have all had weird or bad experiences in our lifetimes and those things don’t define who we are. When it comes right down to it, we can all admit that actions speak louder than words and Cruise has done a lot of nice things over the years. Sometimes the positives outweigh the negatives and in the case of Cruise, he’s done some seriously nice things for people. He’s professional when on set and goes out of his way to help people. You might be shocked to hear about how others see him. Check out these 15 times that Tom Cruise went out of his way to do something nice.
He Taught Zac Efron how to ride a Motorcycle
Zac Efron found himself on The Graham Norton Show with guest Tom Cruise and he pretty much gushed all over him. They were fast friends and the two connected at a party where Cruise asked him if he knew how to ride a motorcycle. Efron was to star in the movie New Year’s Eve at the time and it would have required Efron to ride a motorcycle. Cruise then offer to teach him how to ride and invited him over to his house. Talk about honor.
“I hung out with Tom the next day and he literally sat there for two hours and showed me how to ride a motorcycle. It’s just a testament to the kind of guy he is,” said Efron.
Cruise went through everything with Efron and “taught him how a motorcycle engine works, showed him the hangar with his dozens of pristine bikes — including the Triumphs he rode in the Mission: Impossible movies.” When Efron was interviewed by Details magazine they asked him why he thought Cruise would do such a thing. “I don’t know. I don’t even want to know,” he said. “It’s just so cool that he gave a shit, the fact that he cared at all. No one else did that.”
He Wants The Audience to Have the Best Experience
Tom Cruise basically lets the directors do whatever they want to him if it means that the movie will be as good as it could. He’s apparently a really good sport about a lot of things when he’s on set. “I think there’s something very right with him in that he cares so much about the audience experience,” his Mission: Impossible co-star Simon Pegg told Jimmy Fallon. “It’s like he’s obsessive with giving people an authentic experience.” When it came to the movie Eyes Wide Shut, actor-director Todd Field described a similar situation when it came to working with Cruise.
“You’ve never seen [an actor] more completely subservient and prostrate themselves at the feet of a director.”
That was, of course, Tom Cruise working with Stanley Kubrick. There is no denying that Tom Cruise is a talented actor and he goes all out when it comes to his movies. Doing his own stunts over the years has put him on a whole new level and he seems to have done the impossible at times. For the new movie Mission: Impossible—Fallout he did a helicopter stunt that was almost unbelievable. “Flying a helicopter takes a lot of skill,” aerial coordinator Marc Wolff said about the scene. “To put someone like Tom in a situation like this is almost impossible to imagine.”
He Helped A Co-Star Get Into Shape
When it comes to being in shape Tom Cruise is a great person to talk to. He’s 55 now and is still in amazing shape. Jake Johnson was in the movie Mummy with Tom Cruise and when he was interviewed by Thrillist he told them how Cruise helped him get into shape. “Here’s a story that is very anti-Hollywood, but very Tom. He wanted me to work out with him and get in shape for the movie. People have told me in the past, including New Girl, that I need to lose weight and stay in shape. But they don’t tell me how. It’s like, ‘Hey tubbo, fit into these slacks!’” But Cruise was more than willing to give Johnson a hand. Cruise invited him to his gym which just so happens to be called the Pain Cave. “He said, ‘You’ll be training with me and my trainers. If you want, I’ll put you on a food plan with my chef. The food is great,’” Johnson recalled. There was someone on the set of the Mummy who actually suggested that Johnson wait until Cruise was done working out so that he could be alone in the gym. When Tom heard that, he was furious. Cruise stated,
“Let me make something crystal clear: I don’t care what anybody on the crew says to you, they don’t know what I’m saying to you,”
Johnson remembered him saying. “And I’m saying to you that you are always welcome. I don’t care what I’m doing in there. You’re not other people. You’re my castmate. Come in.”
He’s Tight With The Black Eyed Peas
Tom Cruise wanted the Black Eyed Peas to do a song for his movie Knight and Day. When Cruise wants something, he usually gets it, but he doesn’t go around just demanding things. You might be surprised to hear that Cruise is a “big fan of the Peas” and while filming the movie Knight and Day he, Cameron Diaz and wife at the time Katie Holmes went to watch them in concert over Super Bowl weekend. While watching them in concert, he got an idea. “As we were watching, it occurred to me that this is the perfect time, so I called up Will, and he doesn’t have any time, but I asked, ‘Are you interested [in doing a song for the film]?’” It’s not surprising that they agreed to do a song. Who would say no to such a big actor? In 2010, Cruise got up onstage with the band and helped them with their final song. Will.i.am stated,
“Even we were surprised. Fergie was the only one who knew about it.”
Cruise talked about the incident, “Fergie gave me a formal invitation to come onstage,” Cruise said. “The way she said it was, 'Don't be a wuss, you've got to come on stage for the last song.’” Will.i.am said, “He rocked out to I've Got A Feeling. The crowd loved it.”
He Stayed in Touch With The Cute Kid From Jerry Maguire
Jonathan Lipnicki was the kid in the movie Jerry Maguire, but there was another kid that played the role before him. He started in the role, but after a few weeks of filming he had to quit the movie because he “ran out of gas.” He left the movie and the role was recast. Cameron Crowe got a call from the kid's mother a few weeks later.
“Weeks later, the mother of the first kid calls the office. I got on the phone and she says, ‘Will you please tell Tom Cruise thank you for the way he has kept in touch with my son, sent him letters and gifts, and just let him know all is well?’ I thought, wow, I had no idea Tom Cruise was doing that,”
he said. Crowe continued saying, “She said, ‘It really helped my son. He’s over it now, he’s fine, and Tom did a beautiful job helping him transition back to his life.’ I went to Tom, later, and said, you quietly helped this kid through what could have been a terrible transition. Thank you, but why did you never tell any of us? Tom said, ‘I just didn’t want that first actor to go to the movies, look at the screen and think he’d failed. I wanted him to love movies, his entire life.’ That is the quiet way Tom Cruise conducts his professional life.”
He Gave Kanye West Advice About A Career in Comedy
There was a time when in 2013, Kanye West was thinking about a career doing improv comedy. He had even tried to get a comedy pilot up and running for HBO. Stand-up comedian Wyatt Cenac told Vulture that he had overheard a conversation on the phone between Tom Cruise and Kanye West. “Kanye had been trying to get Tom Cruise to be in the pilot. And he had asked him because they were friendly. And we’re shooting a scene [in the Escalade] and at one point Kanye’s like, ‘Shut up, it’s Tom Cruise,’ and because he couldn’t get out of the car, he had to take the phone call smashed between people,” Cenac said.
“You can hear Tom Cruise laughing as Kanye goes, ‘Yeah, man, I’ve been working on the improv stuff, you know, all your suggestions were great.’ That went on for like 15 minutes. Tom Cruise never did the show and we had to hire a Tom Cruise look-alike that was like five-feet taller than Cruise.”
That’s pretty cool of Cruise and we can’t blame him at all for not wanting to be part of a TV show, he’s a huge star.
He Helped A Victim
It’s never surprising to hear that Tom Cruise has a hero personality. Judging by all the movies he has done over the years and the stunts he is capable of, why wouldn’t he help someone in real life. Tom Cruise was driving down Wilshire Boulevard minding his own business when he watched someone get hit by a car. It was a rainy night and 23-year-old Heloisa Vinhas, who happens to be an aspiring actress was struck by a car. Cruise went into action and asked someone to call for help. When the ambulance arrived, he didn’t just walk away from the scene but instead accompanied the girl to the UCLA Medical Center. People magazine reported that he even paid her $7,000 medical bill. Vinhas suffered from a broken leg and broken ribs. When Cruise found out that she wasn’t insured, he made sure that her medical bills were paid before he left.
“If he’s not Superman, he can be Batman — Batman doesn’t have superpowers,”
Vinhas told the mag. That’s a pretty awesome story and one that shows just how nice he really is. He didn’t have to go through all that to make sure that she was okay, but he did.
He Helped Bill Hader Get Home
In 2010, Tom Cruise and Bill Hader were in Los Angeles doing promos for the MTV Movie Awards. When they were on set, everyone was notified that a car bomb had gone off in Times Square. Hader’s wife and new baby were in New York at the time and he was worried. Cruise asked Hader when he was expected to return home which was still two days away. That’s when Cruise took over the set and made sure that Hader could get home by 8 a.m. the next morning. Hader told the story,
“He thinks for a second. ‘No,’ he says. ‘We’ll get you home tonight.’ And in that moment, Tom Cruise, as Les Grossman, in a karategi, began to direct all my coverage,”
Hader recalled. “All my footage, all my close-ups. Boom! We do three perfect takes. Boom, boom, boom. Everyone’s chest-butting each other, some people are chest-butting themselves, people are going insane.” Two days’ worth of work, Hader said, “and he got it done in 45 minutes.” As if that wasn’t awesome enough, he was then approached by Katie Holmes who handed him his new flight information. “You’re on the red-eye tonight,” she told him. “I’m like, ‘What?!’” Hader said. “So that’s what it’s like to work with Tom Cruise.”
He Allowed Cuba Gooding Jr.’s Dad to Ask Him Weird Questions
It can be hard for stars to bring family members to the set because they can never be sure if they will embarrass them in front of major actors. That was the case when Cuba Gooding Jr. brought his dad to the set of Jerry Maguire. His dad started asking Cruise awkward questions about his sexuality. Yikes! Cuba Gooding Jr. told the embarrassing story. “He gave Tom Cruise a hug and said, ‘I love you, man. Now seriously, are you gay or not?’” Gooding Jr. recalled, years later.
“I almost fainted. And thought, 'Please, Lord, let me disappear.'”
Cruise didn’t even blink an eye, though, and just took it all in stride. “Tom just laughed and said, "No,” his co-star reported. It’s a good thing because it could have gone a very different way. Gooding Jr. also mentioned that he is annoyed when people go up to him and shout, “Show me the money!” “It doesn’t go away. I get it all the time. I wish I had a wand that would make people disappear whenever they say it,” he said. “It’s hard, especially when some drunk in a bar asks and finally you say it and he says, ‘No, say it like you said it in the movie!’”
He Was Giving Away $500 Pens
If anyone is going to own a $500 pen, it’s surely going to be Tom Cruise. When he was on the set of A Few Good Men, Kevin Pollock noticed that Tom Cruise was writing with a huge pen as he made notes in his script. They joked around about the ridiculously large pen and Cruise told Pollock that he should try writing with the pen. “It’s like an angel wing floating on a cloud. It was a magical pen,” Pollock recalled to the Chive. It wasn’t just Pollock that got to use the pen either, Demi Moore also took a turn using it. She also thought the pen was awesome to write with. Pollock wanted a pen of his own but when he found out that it cost $500 he was really bummed out. It wasn’t long before Cruise’s assistant showed up with a pen just for Pollock. Cruise eventually asked Pollock how he was enjoying the pen and Pollock admitted that it was showcased on his mantle because he thought it was too special to use. So, Cruise bought him a second $500 pen so that he could use it and still keep one on the mantle.
He Buys Dakota Fanning A Birthday Gift Every Year
If you remember Dakota Fanning played Tom Cruise’s daughter in War of the Worlds. She was such a cutie in that movie. Judging by the picture, these two were super close and that’s just about the cutest thing we have seen in a while. The movie was great and it was really because of both of them. The two bonded in the movie and he never forgot Dakota Fanning’s birthday, even years later. He was kind enough to let her know that he was still thinking about her. “He sent me a birthday gift every year since I was 11 years old,” Fanning told Andy Cohen on Watch What Happens Live.
“I always think, 'Oh, when I’m 18, he’ll probably stop. Oh, 21, he’ll stop. But every year. It’s really kind.”
That’s 13 years of gifts from the actor and that’s pretty cool that he keeps sending them to her. So, what does he buy her? Usually he sends her shoes and what more could a girl want? We can imagine that they were probably very expensive shoes. She was also asked if Cruise did any weird things while he was on set. Nothing," she admitted, "Honestly, I have nothing odd that he did."
He Spoiled His Publicist's Daughter At Her Wedding
It must be a great day when you work for a huge star. Pat Kingsley is Tom Cruise’s publicist and they have a pretty tight relationship. They have been working together since A Few Good Men and they often talk every day. The two had a disagreement once over whether he should discuss Scientology in an interview during the press tour for The Last Samurai. She just didn’t think he should discuss it at that time even though he wanted to open up a discussion about it. While she was being interviewed she also talked about how he went to her daughter’s wedding. “We talked constantly,” she told The Hollywood Reporter that they shared 11 p.m. calls almost nightly. “He was an insomniac. I liked the fact that he was so much fun.
And he was so thoughtful. He remembered birthdays, my daughter’s birthday.
He came to her wedding; she was registered somewhere for the China and he bought out everything. They’ve got things they haven’t even opened yet, and they’ve been together 15 years!” It makes you start to think how you can get him to come to your wedding, doesn’t it?
He Sends Kirsten Dunst A Cake Every Year
He definitely has a soft spot when it comes to the kids that he has worked with over the years. Kirsten Dunst was only a little girl when she co-starred with Tom Cruise in 1994’s Interview With The Vampire. When Dunst was on Jimmy Kimmel Live she told a sweet story about Cruise.
“I ran into Tom like five years ago, and now I get this cake every year that’s one of the best cakes I’ve ever had. It’s from Dylan’s Bakery in Thousand Oaks,” she explained. “We call it the ‘Cruise cake’ at my family’s house. We’re like, ‘Cruise cake’s here!’ And it’s gone within a day.”
Jimmy Kimmel agreed with her that the cake was delicious because apparently, he also gets one from Cruise every year. One fun fact about the movie was that Brad Pitt hated every moment of it. He had to wear yellow contact lenses that basically left him blind. "I am miserable," Pitt said. "Six months in the dark." "The great thing that came out of that movie is that it birthed my love affair with New Orleans," he said. "We were shooting nights. So I just rode my bike around all night. I made some great friends there.”
He Was Friends With Bill Wilder
Billy Wilder played the role of Jerry Maguire’s mentor, Dicky Fox in the movie Jerry Maguire. Cameron Crowe offered Wilder the role which he originally turned down. But Crowe went to Cruise to get him to help him get Wilder in the movie. “Cruise says, let’s go talk him into it. We drive to Billy Wilder’s office. Billy is there, and he lights up when he sees that it’s Tom Cruise. He invites us in,” Crowe recalled to Deadline. “He tells Tom these stories about Cary Grant, and Sunset Boulevard.
He’s just magnificent. And I realize he is in full Hollywood director, getting-ready-to-make-another-picture-as-soon-as-possible mode, and he’s got Tom Cruise in his office. And I’m virtually invisible at this point, as that romance is happening.”
Wilder still ended up declining the role but Cruise remained close friends with him. They were friends right until the old director’s death. “He loved Billy Wilder and we talked about him, constantly. Tom wrote notes to Billy, and they developed a little bit of a friendship. When Billy passed away, Tom came to the memorial and really let everybody know how much he loved Billy. I think Tom got a big kick out of Wilder. How could you not?”
He Convinced Cameron Crowe to Get Back Into Directing
Elizabethtown wasn’t the success that Cameron Crowe thought it would be and he was actually thinking for a while that he might not direct another movie. When Tom Cruise heard that he wasn’t having any part of it. he decided to take Crowe for a drive to talked to him. The two ended up on the set of Knocked Up, oddly enough. “Mr. Cruise introduced Mr. Crowe to Mr. Apatow, who joked that he’d been stealing for years from Say Anything, the sharp-witted teen comedy that first established Mr. Crowe as a director in 1989,” the New York Times reported. “Cruise sidles up to me and goes: ‘See? Get out of your house, man, it’s fun,’” Crowe recalled to the Times. “And that’s when it felt like, yeah, it’s time to direct again.” Shockingly enough many people told Crowe not to have Cruise in Jerry Maguire though we can’t imagine the movie without him.
“Your friends take you aside and say, 'If Tom Cruise says yes, you lose your power. You can't do a thing. It just becomes a freight train that's out of control, and it's a Hollywood freight train, you'll be lucky if you see the back of the caboose.'”
We’re glad that he didn’t listen to them.
References: hollywoodreporter.com, variety.com, dailymail.co.uk, vanityfair.com, independent.ie, cinemablend.com
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7tbTEq6CcoJWowW%2BvzqZmqaegYrC2uNOuqZ5nYWp6tbXMnqpmrJ%2BieqS%2B1KKqnmWjqr%2BxvsisoKefnK56uLHNrWSoraRivKd5x6KqZq%2BRrnq1u4ydpmarn6KytbTIp55mppmYsnA%3D