Tom Cruise offers a "war cry" to Timothée Chalamet

A detailed section of Timothée Chalamet’s new GQ profile is dedicated to praising his peers like Zendaya, Tom Holland, Austin Butler, and Florence Pugh (“I feel like I’m creating a community for myself of people who care about the right things”). Then there’s the older artists he’s been lucky to work with, like Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio (“That was the day Jennifer [Lawrence] said was the most annoying day of her life, working with me and Leo. I exploded out of my room”). Then there’s the mentors he hasn’t yet worked with, who have nevertheless taken an interest in his career. Enter cinema’s own Tom Cruise.

“After I met Tom Cruise, right after finishing the first Dune, he sent me the most wonderfully inspiring email,” Chalamet told GQ, adding that Cruise included a list of experts who could help him with stunt training. “He basically said, in Old Hollywood, you would be getting dance training and fight training, and nobody is going to hold you to that standard today. So it’s up to you. The email was really like a war cry.”

As it happens, Chalamet did get some dance training for his big movie musical Wonka. Tony-winning choreographer Christopher Gattelli sang the star’s praises for his dedication to learning tap, noting that his mother and grandmother are trained Broadway dancers. “He would joke about it—like ‘It’s in my blood!’ And I was like: It is. It literally is,” Gattelli said.

The process was “a throwback to LaGuardia,” the performing arts high school Chalamet attended in New York. “We’re telling a story here. This isn’t, like, athletic naturalism,” Chalamet explained. “It’s a shot of earnestness and sincerity, without the cynicism or dread or all the stuff we’re exhausted by.”

Tom Cruise would be proud—and surely very pleased, because on top of Chalamet’s training in the craft, he’s also a huge Top Gun: Maverick fan. “Top Gun was just hugely inspiring to me last summer when we were making Dune,” he gushed to the outlet. He saw the film eight times, one of which he rented a theater and brought the whole Dune team. “Some of the crew were kind of scoffing at going, but I just thought it was one of the greatest films I’ve ever seen.”