Tom Cruise once collaborated with Rosamund Pike in the 2012 feature Jack Reacher. But the actor worried she’d cost herself a big role in the film after speaking up against her Reacher co-star.
Pike had a pleasant time working on the 2012 action thriller Jack Reacher. The movie saw Cruise playing the titular character, and Pike filling in the role of Cruise’s love interest. Like many, Pike always considered herself a fan of Cruise. So she was more than excited at the opportunity to work with him.
“It’s a thrill, obviously! It’s kind of every teenage girl’s dream — certainly mine, and then suddenly 20 years later here I am working with the man in such a close way that I actually got to know the man. Really, that was such a privilege, because I now count him as a friend,” she once told MTV News.
What also surprised Pike was the actor’s generosity and ability to relax his co-star while working together. Still, acting alongside Cruise wasn’t always an easy process. The former Bond girl quipped that she found herself getting distracted whenever Cruise went shirtless.
“I told [Director Christopher McQuarrie], ‘I can’t believe you’re asking me to try to act while Tom is standing three feet away shirtless,’” she said. “’What are you trying to do to me here?’”
Pike once thought she might have jeopardized her chances of working with Cruise before she was even officially hired. The former Bond girl first caught McQuarrie’s and Cruise’s eyes when she sent in an audition tape for her Jack Reacher role. But when it came time to audition for the film in person, Pike found herself being distracted by Cruise’s and McQuarrie’s constant chatter.
“In my audition there was a moment where I was doing a scene with a guy who was standing in for Richard Jenkins, who plays my father,” Pike once explained to Blogstalk Radio (via Hollywood). “I could see Tom Cruise and McQuarrie out of the corner of my eye kind of talking during my scene and it was distracting. So I said, ‘I’m sorry guys, do you think you could not talk during my scene?’”
But it was a decision she instantly regretted.
“I thought, ‘Oh my goodness, what have I done?’ I’m probably the only actress in 30 years who’s ever told Tom Cruise to stop talking,” she said.
Pike’s response, however, ended up being exactly what clinched her the part.
“Chris sent me an e-mail saying, ‘Now that’s how you book [the job],’” she recalled.
Pike had such a good time with Cruise that she wanted to collaborate with the megastar soon after. But the Doom actor felt this had a better chance of happening in the older days of Hollywood. Back then, Pike noticed celebrities were often paired together in different films if they conveyed good chemistry. It was a practice she sometimes wished was more prevalent in the film industry today.
“It’s funny enough because in the old days when the studio saw that the chemistry between a couple was electric, they’d say, ‘OK, we want these two together on-screen again and again!’ And now it’s funny how rarely that happens. The studios don’t really set people up for another film together just because they were great together,” she said.