Reading a script? Mission: Impossible.
Tom Cruise revealed that he has directors read scripts to him when he’s considering whether to take on a new project.
“What I do with directors and writers is, I don’t read the scripts. I have them read it to me,” Cruise, 64, said during an appearance on Jason and Travis Kelce’s “New Heights” podcast Sept. 18.
“I have them read it to me because I don’t want my ideas to invade it yet. I want to understand: What is their communication? They’ve been working on it, and they have things that are just there,” he explained, gesturing toward his head.
The “Digger” actor said he puts himself in the shoes of a moviegoer while listening to the script.
“I’m a popcorn guy. I’m a meat-and-potatoes popcorn [guy],” he said, explaining that he asks himself, “Is it moving me, or am I invested? Am I not invested? Where am I engaged? Where am I not engaged?”
“That’s just who I am,” he added.
Cruise said he also likes to hear the wardrobe and lighting departments’ plans for a particular scene and understand “their take on it.”
“We get to a place where I start to understand and then I’m like, I know how to contribute to that motion now,” he continued. “It sparks ideas and I kind of have certain ideas that I have and certain things that I’d like to play with and then I don’t necessarily talk about it. I just do it.”
Just days before his “New Heights” appearance, Cruise was spotted chatting with Travis’ wife, Taylor Swift, in a VIP suite at Arrowhead Stadium during the Kansas City Chiefs’ Sept. 14 game against the Denver Broncos.
Their conversation immediately had fans wondering what they were talking about, with Cruise later explaining on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon” that Swift was “schooling” him “on football” and calling her a “genius.”
“I hadn’t been to a football game since pre-COVID, where I was working and everything, so to get to hang out there and have that moment, it was a lot of fun … she knows her stuff,” the “Top Gun” star said.
He also revealed that Swift told him she knew nothing about football when she first met Travis and that the Chiefs tight end was “so patient.”
“I said, ‘I’m sure he was.’ I think everybody would be very patient [with her],” Cruise said.
The Golden Globe winner previously confirmed long-standing rumors that he’s “intense” on film sets in a GQ cover story published Sept. 15.
“Even when I was a kid, they were like, ‘Oh, come on, Tom. You’re so intense.’ I’m like, ‘I don’t know what to say. I am intense,’” he told the outlet.
Cruise added, “I work hard, and people that work with me, they know. I expect a lot, and I’m up-front about it. It’s like, ‘The rumors are true. And do you want this?’”
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