10 Famous Roles Tom Cruise Almost Played
Top Gun to Frank T.J. Mackey in
Magnolia to Ethan Hunt in the
Mission: Impossible franchise. But for every great part he’s played, he’s turned down many more including the leads in some of the biggest hits of the last 30 years.
In a way, it makes sense. By the late 1980s, Cruise was (metaphorically, if not literally) one of the two or three biggest movie stars in the world. That made him producers’ first choice for almost every major film in Hollywood for a decade. If things had turned out slightly differently, Cruise could have made pottery with Demi Moore to the sounds of the Righteous Brothers, or escaped from Shawshank State Prison in a sewage pipe, or maybe even launched the Marvel Cinematic Universe as an arms manufacturer who suddenly sprouts a conscience.