Series Site
Jun 20 — Aug 17, 2025
Tom Cruise has been so central to our conception of Hollywood for so many decades that he’s more than a movie star—he encourages us to ask: what is it that makes a movie star? He was instilled with an undaunted charisma and confidence that became the metatext of his early star-making 1980s roles (from Risky Business and Top Gun to The Color of Money and Cocktail). Then, at the end of that decade, Cruise began to select parts that deftly subverted his golden-boy image, from his galvanizing, Oscar-nominated role in Born on the Fourth of July to the homoerotic horror of Interview with the Vampire and the end-of-the-millennium one-two punch of Eyes Wide Shut and Magnolia—all movies that still drift through the cultural consciousness. He has long been a mainstay of elegantly constructed crowd-pleasers working with major directors (A Few Good Men, The Firm, Jerry Maguire, Minority Report), while in the 21st century Cruise has become increasingly dedicated to the physical spectacle of action cinema, producing and performing his own stunts in the Mission: Impossible films and beyond. Cruise’s entire captivating career speaks to his legacy as a singular movie star, and all the contradictions—of mystery and emotional transparency, of relatability and untouchability, of strength and vulnerability—that entails.