I would like to bring up an issue of film casting. People tell me that in theatre/film, appearance is almost everything. Oftentimes, one does not get the part because one does not "look the part." Given this, why does Tom Cruise continue to get film roles? He does not look like a lawyer (The Firm, A Few Good Men), a doctor (Eyes Wide Shut), a magazine CEO (Vanilla Sky), a warrior (The Last Samurai, Legend, Born on the Fourth of July), a covert ops agent (Mission Impossible I, II, and III, Knight and Day), an SS member (Valkyrie), a senator (Lions for Lambs), and most certainly not like an ordinary person with a menial labor job (War of the Worlds.)
No, in fact, America's most beloved Scientologist and former Brat Pack member looks too much like himself, which is to say, a model. That's right, more so than any other actor or actress in the game, I cannot suspend my disbelief when I am watching Cruise alternate between mugging to the camera and yelling. He is too pretty-boy looking to be believable in any career he plays, because people just don't look like that, and if they do, they model. Additionally, he also is incapable of doing accents, so he sounds awfully strange as a French vampire in Interview with a Vampire, or a straight American-accented Nazi renegade. Imagine doing Shakespeare in Brooklyn accents. It just doesn't work. I tried:
Whad a piece ah woik is a man! haw Noobile in
Reesin? haw infinite in facullty? in fawm an' mawnin'
haw exprasshun an' admerrable? in Ahcshun, haw like n' Angel?
Having said that, I find Thomas Cruise Mapother IV's most convincing role to be in Magnolia, where I swear he was playing himself. I get the feeling that every person on earth can act in at least one role, and at least Cruise was lucky enough to have been cast in a film where he got to play his.
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