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Tom Cruise’s ‘Paul Newman Era’ Is Coming: Cameron Crowe Predicts a Mind-Blowing Pivot to Drama
Hollywood’s most tireless action star may finally be slowing down—at least to pivot back toward his roots. According to filmmaker Cameron Crowe, who famously directed Tom Cruise in Jerry Maguire and Vanilla Sky, the actor is poised to leave behind his high-octane franchise days for a “Paul Newman-style” late-career renaissance. Crowe says the move will “fry people’s minds.”
In a new interview with The New York Times promoting his book The Uncool (out October 28), Cameron Crowe declared Tom Cruise’s transformation “imminent.” With the Mission: Impossible saga on pause and a new collaboration with Oscar-winning auteur Alejandro G. Iñárritu on the horizon, Tom Cruise appears ready to embrace layered, character-driven roles reminiscent of his turns in Magnolia, Collateral, and The Color of Money.
“I see that there’s a time coming, and it might have already started, where he’s going to segue into character roles as strongly as he segued into doing action movies of the highest quality,” Crowe explained. “That Paul Newman character phase is just around the corner and will fry people’s minds.”
To underline Tom Cruise’s stature, Cameron Crowe recounted a surreal dinner with Clint Eastwood: “Clint leans over and says, ‘Tom Cruise. In a hundred years, they’re gonna look back—that’s the career.’” Coming from a Hollywood legend, the remark frames Tom Cruise not just as a blockbuster star but as an enduring cinematic figure poised for reinvention.
Cameron Crowe with Tom Cruise: Jerry Maguire Days
Crowe also used the interview to revisit his own iconic moment in film history—the boom box scene from Say Anything. According to Crowe, actor John Cusack initially resisted holding the stereo aloft, believing it made his character Lloyd Dobler seem weak. Cinematographer Laszlo Kovacs even staged a “fake” shoot with no film in the camera to coax John Cusack into trying different approaches. Only at sunset on the last day did John Cusack begrudgingly lift the boom box for real. That frustration, Crowe says, gave the scene its perfect emotional edge.
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“He wanted to dial down his Cusackness when I met him. He was like, ‘I can’t do another teen movie,’” Crowe recalled. “I think Cusack grew up on that movie in a lot of ways.”
With The Uncool arriving this fall and Cruise’s new drama set to roll cameras soon, both men seem ready to revisit—and redefine—the legacies that made them Hollywood fixtures. If Crowe’s prediction is right, Cruise’s long-awaited “Paul Newman era” could be the most surprising sequel of his career.
