Michael Cera has been acting since he was a kid, but even he runs afoul of film industry veterans sometimes — including Tom Cruise.
The Arrested Development alum, 37, opened up about his first interaction with the “very friendly” Cruise, 62, during a Tuesday, June 24, episode of “The Louis Theroux Podcast.” The pair met in 2010 while filming pretaped segments for that year’s MTV Movie Awards.
“It was surreal to work with Tom Cruise. It was fascinating,” Cera recalled. “Tom, like, runs the set. I was really there for, like, five minutes, but what I observed was like he was like the first [assistant director] on the set. … It was his thing. He was such a leader.”
Cera, however, soon found himself getting called out by Cruise, who was seemingly in unofficial director mode.
“The first moment I had with him, I arrived, they were shooting and I was talking to the writer … we were just kind of mumbling while they were shooting, but they could hear us,” Cera explained. “It was just, like, 40 feet away, and Tom Cruise looks at me — I’ve never met him, they’re in the middle of a take — and he looks and he goes, ‘Is that Michael Cera talking during a f***in’ take?’ He was joking, but it was also like, ‘Do shut up.’ It was so surreal.”
The duo met later for real after the playful interaction, but Cruise still gave Cera a bit of a hard time about his faux paus.
“And then I met him and he was like, ‘Talking during a f***in’ take,’” Cera remembered. “I knew he was playing around, so I was like, ‘It wasn’t me, it was the writer!’ He was like, ‘I’m kidding, I’m kidding.’ I was like, ‘ … I’m kidding too.’”
While Cruise is known for being a stickler on movie sets, he’s also earned the praise of many Hollywood stars for his good nature and generosity. He famously sends tons of friends a coconut cake from California’s Doan’s Bakery every holiday season, including costars he hasn’t worked with in decades.
Last year, Kirsten Dunst revealed that she still gets a cake 30 years after appearing alongside Cruise in Interview With the Vampire. Her husband, Jesse Plemons, gets one too. “So we’re doubling up on our cake,” she quipped to Entertainment Tonight in April 2024.
Cruise’s Mission: Impossible costar Simon Pegg, meanwhile, has said he’s found the relatable side of the world-famous movie star.
“I’ve been able to hack my way through all the bizarre mythology that surrounds him,” Pegg, 55, told The Times in 2023. “On one side he’s Tom Cruise — this enigmatic film star everyone wants to know about. And on the other he’s just a guy. I like being normal with him.” When asked what Cruise does to unwind, the actor replied, “I don’t know if he ever unwinds. He took us go-karting and zip-lining. He hates doing nothing.”
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