Famed lightning rod Tom Cruise strikes again on actors strike

Tom Cruise may be the last remaining genuine movie star, but he may also be the most divisive. The man is a lightning rod for entertainment discourse: he’s been hailed as the savior of cinema for championing the theatrical experience and scorned as a prominent longtime cultist with a history of odd behavior. Cruise has only become more inscrutable in recent years, doing less press and bigger stunts. His one, true public passion is protecting the cinema, and that puts him in a precarious position amid the current Hollywood strikes.

With SAG-AFTRA in the first week of what will likely be a prolonged battle with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP), Cruise finds himself trapped between a rock and a hard place, wherein both the rock and the hard place are existential threats to the entertainment industry as we know it. On the one hand, movies as a business are in critical danger, particularly after the pandemic did serious financial damage to theaters everywhere. On the other hand, acting as a profession is at risk, with the majority of working actors struggling to make a living, their jobs jeopardized by the looming specter of artificial intelligence.

So how does the Savior of Cinema—so deemed by one of its patron saints, Steven Spielberg—deal with a crisis from all corners? As we’ve seen so far, there’s been an attempt to play both sides. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Cruise participated in a negotiating session between SAG-AFTRA and AMPTP in June, the highest-profile member of the union to do so. Cruise reportedly joined to throw his support behind SAG-AFTRA’s concerns regarding A.I. as well as to advocate on behalf of stunt performers (a segment of the guild famously near and dear to his heart).

However, he also apparently advocated for the guild to allow performers to promote their movies, a task which qualifies as struck work amid a work stoppage. The conversation was “uncomfortable,” according to a THR source, but Cruise (whose film Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One premiered just before the strike was called) had his own concerns about the “fragile state of movie theaters.” Per a recent Variety report, guild leadership “countered by asking Cruise to join the picket lines, noting that having one of the world’s biggest movie stars visibly in its corner would send a strong message to the studios.” Cruise allegedly wouldn’t commit to walking the line, “but offered to assist in other ways.” No promotional waiver has been granted. (Cruise’s team did not immediately respond to The A.V. Club’s request for comment.)

Tom Cruise is everywhere and nowhere

And so Cruise finds himself as a lightning rod once again, this time in an entirely new context. SAG-AFTRA president Fran Drescher, presumably in the room when Cruise joined the negotiations, made an example out of him, apparently unprompted, in an interview with Variety. “Remember, Tom Cruise and top people make their own deals,” she said. “That’s not who we are striking for. We’re striking for the journeyman.”

Better Call Saul star Bob Odenkirk, double striking as a member of both the Writers Guild of America and SAG-AFTRA, responded to a question from The Wrap about general “actors” who wanted a waiver for promotion while he walked the picket line. (Cruise wasn’t named, but he’s the only actor currently making headlines for doing so.) “Don’t,” was Odenkirk’s advice. “It’s a strike. Strike. You lose. We lose. Everybody loses. That’s tough shit.”

Odenkirk is one of many stars who’s been out on the line since the WGA began striking in May. Now that SAG-AFTRA is on strike, there will likely be even more famous faces populating the picket line. As yet, though, no one of Cruise’s caliber has joined the picket. A-Listers have certainly supported the strike, but mostly from afar: big names like Meryl Streep and Jennifer Lawrence joined hundreds of other actors in encouraging leadership to walk away if a deal couldn’t be reached; the cast of Oppenheimer left their own premiere; George Clooney released a brief but approving statement.

Yet because of his waiver request—and perhaps because he’s recently been elevated to cinema’s most ardent protector—Cruise is the one catching the most heat for not showing up in person. “Tom cruise doesn’t care about this shit because he’s in that top 1% and rich af,” wrote one commenter, while another similarly posted, “his net worth is probably like a billion lol of course he doesn’t care.” Then there’s another line of thinking as to why Cruise wouldn’t (or shouldn’t) show up: “It would be chaotic the streets would be swarmed with people,” one commenter tweeted. “It would be about him not about the strike, not worth it.” Writer and A.V. Club contributor Richard Newby mused, “I wonder if the reason why we haven’t seen many (any?) A-list actors on the picket line is because it would further the incorrect assumption that this is about the already wealthy actors and not about those living paycheck to paycheck. Curious if their visibility would be helpful.”

To address one set of complaints, it’s clear that caring too little is not the issue. If there’s one thing we know Tom Cruise cares about, it’s movies, and helping SAG-AFTRA succeed in their aims is the best way for him to support movies at this time. As far as swarming the picket line goes, visibility is clearly what SAG-AFTRA is after. They wouldn’t have asked Cruise to join the line if they didn’t feel his presence could be helpful. And while the public’s assumptions about the relative wealth and glamor associated with acting is one of the major PR hurdles of a Hollywood strike, the priority, ultimately, is getting through not to the average audience member but to the execs behind AMPTP. And what would sway those businessmen more than a solid box office bet like Tom Cruise?

Still, it’s hard to imagine Cruise on the picket line. Not because he doesn’t care, and not because it would cause a riot or create (yet more) wealth discourse, but because it’s hard to imagine Tom Cruise moving amongst mere mortals these days. Much as his co-stars might try to insist that he’s just an ordinary guy, in this stage of his career he’s only become more unknowable and less human. He’s done no in-depth interviews in a decade, putting in the requisite appearances on chat shows and junkets before disappearing from the public eye. When he does reappear, it’s often to do death-defying stunts that regular people can barely comprehend, like accepting an MTV Movie Award while flying a plane. To walk amongst the jobbing actors on the picket line—let alone the average citizen of Los Angeles—would mark a serious shift in how Cruise conducts his public life.

Cruise’s strategic silence has become a double-edged sword in the wake of the strike. In a way, it has served as image rehabilitation. Dodging questions about his involvement with Scientology has been “massaged into something like a sacrificial duty to audiences,” writes The New York Times’ Caity Weaver: “He goes away so that audiences may experience the thrill of his reappearance, and delight in the promise of movie magic he heralds.” Yet in the context of the strike, his silence becomes problematic. It allows audiences to project upon him the worst intentions (“he doesn’t care”) and isolates him from his union, which wants him to use his platform to speak up on his behalf. Perhaps he’ll “assist in other ways” that will become clear in time. Perhaps, if the strike goes on long enough, he’ll even concede to marching on the picket line. Until then, he’ll likely remain a lightning rod, at the center of every conversation without actually being part of the conversation at all.