After kicking off his acting career in the early '80s, Tom Cruise quickly became a household
name, regularly fronting successful franchises like Mission: Impossible.
But this A-list actor is no stranger to controversy.
Let's take a look at the wildest Tom Cruise interviews ever.
As one of Scientology's most famous proponents, Tom Cruise's involvement with the religion
has been well-documented.
So it's entirely unsurprising that he's enthusiastically discussed his commitment to the Church in
multiple interviews throughout his career.
In 2004, for example, he opened up about the matter to The Guardian's Neil Strauss, saying,
"Some people, well, if they don't like Scientology, well, then, f--- you."
Strauss noted that at one point, Cruise rose from the table and pointed at an imaginary
enemy while his face reddened.
The actor's intensity only continued throughout the interview, as he revealed,
"Yeah, I lose my cool.
But I'm not a hothead.
I'm not someone who screams at people.
It takes a lot.
It depends on the situation, know what I mean?
You look at something and you think, 'How much is it going to take to get it done?'"
Clearly, Cruise is a man of passion, but don't even think about criticizing Scientology when
he's around.
In 2005, Cruise voiced his Scientology-fueled feelings on psychiatry.
He openly slammed actress Brooke Shields' use of antidepressant medication to treat
her postpartum depression.
Then a few weeks later, he appeared on The Today Show and had a rather intense chat on
the subject with Matt Lauer.
"I understand there's abuse of all of these things."
"No, you see, here's the problem: You don't know the history of psychiatry.
I do...The thing that I'm saying about Brooke is that there's misinformation.
Okay?
And she doesn't understand the history of psychiatry."
For her part, Shields penned an op-ed in The New York Times in response to Cruise's comments.
She took umbrage with his claim that vitamins and exercise could be valid replacements for
medication, while noting,
"I'm going to take a wild guess and say that Mr. Cruise has never suffered from postpartum
depression."
Cruise's 2005 interview on The Oprah Winfrey Show immediately caught the public's interest
thanks to his hyper antics.
He blushed profusely when pressed for details about his blossoming relationship with his
future wife Katie Holmes, and he infamously jumped on the host's yellow couch.
"I can't be cool, you know what I mean?
I can't be laid back."
Indeed, Cruise was anything but "laid back" throughout the appearance.
"We've never seen you behave this way before."
"I know."
When asked if he was getting enough sleep, Cruise admitted,
"No, I'm not."
Much to the in-studio audience's delight, Cruise went on to drag Holmes out from the
green room.
And all these years later, the Internet still hasn't forgotten that much-memed couch jump.
One of the wilder rumors surrounding Tom Cruise is that Christian Bale allegedly based his
performance as Patrick Bateman in American Psycho on an interview with Cruise on The
Late Show with David Letterman.
Mary Harron, who directed the film, told BlackBook in 2009 how she and Bale discussed how Martian-like
Patrick Bateman was.
She revealed,
"One day [Bale] called me and he had been watching Tom Cruise on David Letterman, and
he just had this very intense friendliness with nothing behind the eyes, and he was really
taken with this energy."
It's never been confirmed exactly which Late Show interview Bale saw.
Since American Psycho came out in 2000, it's possible he caught Cruise's 1999 appearance,
in which the actor burst into hysterical laughter while regaling the host with a story of the
time he had to conserve limited oxygen on a plane he was piloting by turning off the
air supply to the passenger section.
"Looking at it from another direction, isn't that, isn't that attempted manslaughter?
Just turn a guy's oxygen off?"
In July 2018, comedy writer-director Ryan Perez tweeted out a screenshot of a magazine
interview Tom Cruise had done with Moviebill, which started the internet's hilarious debate
about whether or not the actor had ever actually seen a movie.
When the publication asked Cruise about his "most memorable movie going experience," he
replied,
"Boy, that's hard to say because I can basically look at my whole life in terms of films I've
seen.
To just name one?
There's so, so many films that have been memorable to me.
I love movies.
I can remember since I was a little kid, going to the theater or the drive-in and what it
meant to me.
When the lights go down and I'm just taken on a journey, going to places that I didn't
even know existed or different worlds that I wished were real.
Incredible adventures.
Drama.
Comedy.
That's what I love."
Readers noticed that the one thing Cruise didn't do was actually name any of his favorite
movies.
As a result, ScreenCrush conducted a tongue-in-cheek investigation to determine if Cruise had,
in fact, ever watched a movie.
Ultimately, the article concluded that he had seemingly seen at least some movies during
his life, but his seriously evasive Moviebill interview remained pretty funny.
Check out one of our newest videos right here!
Plus, even more Nicki Swift videos about your favorite stars are coming soon.
Subscribe to our YouTube channel and hit the bell so you don't miss a single one.