Now this is pretty interesting. There is definitetly a significant difference between an actor and a movie star. If you were to think back to Tony Scott’s 1986 high-octane action classic TOP GUN, you’d probably picture roaring planes set against a sunset backdrop, young, fit men with their shirts off playing volleyball, and Tom Cruise in a role that catapulted him to superstardom. He was the definition of a movie star, and remains in that lucrative position to this very day, but TOP GUN was definitely not considered an example of his best acting.
Everyone has their opinion of this movie, and perhaps the most famous one was from celebrated filmmaker Quentin Tarantino, who drilled into the homoerotic elements of the film (see this clip from the 1994 movie SLEEP WITH ME where Tarantino describes the film as a story about a man’s struggle with his own homosexuality).
An interesting new take on the film, and in particular the performance of Tom Cruise, emerged online today courtesy of LA Weekly’s Amy Nicholson, who delved deep into the actor’s mannersims and acting. The world pretty universally panned Cruise’s acting abilities when the film was released, but Nicholson offers an opinion that everyone was very much wrong – that this isn’t Tom Cruise ‘ the movie-star’ on show, but perhaps the actor in one of his best performances over his thirty-plus year film career. Say what?
This is excellent, and I might just agree… What do you think?
