Cover Story: Tom Cruise
The Good German
After a lifelong fascination with the Second World War, Tom Cruise finally makes his first WWII movie, Valkyrie. And while it’s no surprise that he plays the hero, it is surprising that he’s not an American. In an exclusive interview with Famous, Cruise explains
By Marni Weisz
As a kid, Tom Cruise didn’t play cops and robbers. He didn’t play Batman and Robin. He didn’t even play Mission: Impossible.
He and his friends would watch World War II documentaries on TV, and then play war.
Tom Cruise and Carice Van Houten
in Valkyrie
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“And when we played war it was always against the Nazis, and we
always wanted to kill Hitler. Always wanted to kill Hitler and
Mussolini,” Cruise recalls. Call it some early acting classes that
would come in handy three decades later.
Cruise, now 46, is sitting in the home office of his L.A.
mansion, alone on this day — wife Katie Holmes is in New York appearing
in a Broadway production of Arthur Miller’s World War II play All My
Sons. Suri’s in the Big Apple too. And Cruise is taking a break from a
long day of meetings to do this interview.
In one of those meetings he “locked picture” on his latest film, Valkyrie,
about a plot to kill Hitler that was orchestrated by high-ranking
military officers who were also part of the German Resistance,
including the man Cruise plays, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg. “Right
before I spoke with you we said, ‘We’re finished,’” says Cruise. “It’s
a moment. I feel like, okay, good, done. Next!” |
Not so fast. First Cruise has to go out and sell Valkyrie to the world. And it’s not hard to see that he has more of a stake in this one than in most of his movies. It is, after all, being produced by United Artists, the studio Cruise revived in 2006, and which has had a bit of trouble taking flight. Plus, it’s not often that you get a call from a publicist offering an interview with Tom Cruise, as we did, and then have the man himself on the other end of the line just 48 hours later.
“You know, I always promote my films,” he says. “But I also love the film. It’s a story that I’d never heard, an inspiring story…. When I first read the script, I guess it was about two years ago, I thought, ‘My God this is an incredible suspense thriller.’”
It wasn’t until Cruise met with director Bryan Singer (X-Men) that he realized it was also a true story.
Known alternately as Operation Valkyrie and the 20 July Plot, if successful, the scheme would have seen von Stauffenberg and his cohorts — including Major-General Henning von Tresckow (Kenneth Branagh), General Friedrich Olbricht (Bill Nighy) and General Ludwig Beck (Terence Stamp) — manipulate Hitler into signing a document that would hand power over to Germany’s Reserve Army should he be killed. And then they would have killed him themselves. (Without this provision, power would have simply passed to one of Hitler’s henchmen, like Heinrich Himmler or Joseph Goebbels.)
Shooting took place on many of the historic sites in Germany, and being surrounded by the genuine Nazi artifacts used to dress the set was an understandably unsettling experience. “It was very strange putting on the uniform, very strange seeing, you know, the swastika and going back into that time period,” says the man whose first of three Best Actor Oscar nominations came for playing another soldier, a Vietnam vet in Born on the Fourth of July. (The other two were for Jerry Maguire and Magnolia.)
But Cruise says that unsettled feeling helped him get into character, since von Stauffenberg would also have been uncomfortable surrounded by swastikas. He describes von Stauffenberg as a poet and philosopher who came from a long line of nobility and felt he owed his country a lot. He dreamed of a Germany that was a positive force in the international community, and Cruise says that as early as 1939 von Stauffenberg said of Hitler, “Someone oughta shoot that bastard.”
“If you think about it,” says Cruise, “Stauffenberg was very religious, Catholic. But he opposed all of these things to where he felt — you have to get in the mindset — I am willing to go to Hell for eternity for killing these people.”
Much like the plot itself, the filming of Valkyrie did not go off without a hitch. There was the accident during which 11 extras playing soldiers fell out of a truck. They’re now suing. And then there were the persistent rumours near the start of filming that some Germans didn’t want Cruise in Germany, or even to play their revered hero, because he is a Scientologist. Scientology is considered “unconstitutional” in Germany.
“That got blown out, to be honest,” Cruise says of those reports. “They never said that. And I know people jumped on it, and kind of went there. We were talking about a location — the Bendlerblock —that it ended up we got. No major film had ever shot there. And they never said that. I never heard that.”
The Bendlerblock is the Berlin building complex where the story comes to its dramatic end. It’s hallowed ground in Germany.
“I actually felt very wanted when we were shooting there, and the people were great with me,” Cruise continues. “So that was something that got spun. You know, spun out. This is a story, for [the Germans], that means a great deal.” Then he adds, “And it wasn’t everyone, most of the people were very excited to have it done. Of course, they just wanted it done properly and accurately.”
It’s clear that Cruise’s passion for the story is deep-rooted. He talks about the war with the sort of fascination that comes from having watched World War II documentaries since he was a boy.
And as most Canadians know, a few years of Cruise’s nomadic childhood, from nine to 11, were spent living in Ottawa, where, when he wasn’t playing Nazi-killer, he was, of course, playing hockey.
“Loved hockey,” Cruise says. “I learned how to play ice hockey, I still play. I haven’t played in a couple of years, but for me that was the sport. I just loved it. It was great. I would wake up before school to teach myself because, you know, if you didn’t play hockey no one would talk to ya.”
The man who now owns mansions in Los Angeles, California, and Telluride, Colorado, talks about open-air ice rinks like they’re cathedrals, and remembers another place he put his blades to use. “Skating on the canal,” he says wistfully. “I have great memories of that. The first time I ever had a crepe was on the canal there.”
And then there was learning to ski in the Gatineau Hills. “You know, it was really beautiful country,” he says. “And I’ve gone back. I love going back.”
Another of Cruise’s passions was stoked in Toronto decades later, in the mid-1990s. Cruise was in the process of getting his pilot’s license when he was in Toronto with then-wife Nicole Kidman while she was shooting To Die For.
Cruise and Van Houten
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“I did a lot of my cross-country hours in Toronto,” he says. “I had the
time, and I would do it at night because [daughter] Bella was very
young, and so I would fly all night so that I could get my hours up.”
Bringing the conversation back to his childhood, Cruise says that as a
kid he always travelled with pictures of two fighter jets — “a Spitfire
and a Mustang.” He still flies, and now he owns his own P-51 Mustang, a
plane used by the Allies during World War II. In fact, the very plane
Cruise flies has a special connection to the war.
“My P-51 was part of the Tuskegee Airmen corps. It was part of their
training squadron,” Cruise says proudly, referring to the famous
all-black fighter unit. “I like history, I like aviation, and just
preserving the history of that. So it’s fun. A lot of people come by
and like to look at the old planes.” |
Speaking of history, last year marked the 25th anniversary of Risky Business and Cruise’s first starring role — a teen who celebrates his independence by throwing a party and dancing in his underwear. When asked to briefly describe the best and worst ways his life has changed over those 25 years Cruise lets loose with one of his famous peals of laughter and says, “Briefly?”
“You know, it was a dream of mine to make movies and tell stories and learn about film, and to have been able to do that is incredible. It’s just been an extraordinary time, and I feel fortunate to have been able to do that,” he says.
Boring.
And the worst? Oprah’s couch? The bitter parting with Paramount? High-profile relationships being dragged through the tabloids? Being hunted by the paparazzi?
“You know…life has ups and downs and even the worst is better than I thought.”
Hmmm. What do you mean?
“Well, you look at things. It’s challenging making films and you live life, and I’m not someone who looks back. I mean [Paul] Newman just passed, and Sidney [Pollack] passed, and you know, I think that you have a choice of just living your life and making films. And it is a love of mine and so I don’t really think in terms of the worst, you know what I’m saying? I just think, no, I’m living life and going hard and, ummm, trying to make films that I believe in.”
Marni Weisz is the editor of Famous.
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BENDLERBLOCK RESHOOT
We’re not going to tell you what happens in Valkyrie’s climactic scene at the Bendlerblock (seen here as it looks today). Suffice to say it’s dramatic and intense and probably something you wouldn’t want to shoot more than once. But that’s exactly what the cast and crew had to do when the film stock was accidentally destroyed at a German lab.
“Yeah, sometimes it happens when the labs, and I’ve had this happen on other films,” says star Tom Cruise, “the lab is developing different films at the same time and you have different settings for different films — you could have three movies, or five or six movies shooting at the same time — and then it goes to the film lab and each picture has a different setting where the film needs to be exposed, you use different chemicals.”
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Unfortunately, the lab used the wrong setting and the very scene the
filmmakers had to fight so hard to shoot at the hallowed Bendlerblock
was destroyed. Fortunately, they got permission to reshoot. Cruise
insists he wasn’t upset because, he says, “You can always find stuff
and make it better.”