"I'M FORTUNATE THAT MY FIRST TIME THAT I PRODUCED A FILM WAS WITH BRIAN DE PALMA, AN INCREDIBLY SKILLED FILMMAKER"
The June 2025 issue of Sight And Sound features Tom Cruise on the cover - he's interviewed for the magazine by Isabel Stevens:
Mission: Impossible [Brian De Palma, 1996] was your first film as producer.Yes, with Sherry Lansing, who was the first female head of a studio-Twentieth Century Fox. I met her when I was doing Taps. And she was always a huge supporter of mine. And when she moved to Paramount, she came and said, Look, please start a production company. And I looked at the landscape, and I wanted something that was exploring motion in a different way. I wanted to go make a film foreign, it was always my passion to go to different countries. And I said, "Look. I will take Mission: Impossible, and I want to produce this as my first producing gig. And I remember, at that time, people were like, "What are you making a TV series for, into a movie?" You know what I mean? I remember. I was like. "I think it's gonna be cool, you know, we'll see what happens!"
I'm fortunate that my first time that I produced a film was with Brian De Palma, an incredibly skilled filmmaker. He started his career in the 60s and the guys that he was training with, some of them were from the 30s and 40s and 50s. So, that wealth of knowledge, that craftsmanship that has been passed down to me, that's stuff that I very much value.
