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When you first lay eyes on the eccentric billionaire Digger Rockwell, what strikes you immediately is the age lines on his face, his protruding belly and his thinning hair, accented by a comb over borrowed from the 1970s. The one thing he certainly doesn’t look like is Tom Cruise, the 64-year-old movie star who plays him.
Cruise’s four-decade-long movie career has transitioned from compelling character pieces, like Rain Man, A Few Good Men and Jerry Maguire, to fast-paced blockbusters, backed up with spectacular stunt work, such as Top Gun, Minority Report and Mission: Impossible.
So what, exactly, is he doing in Digger, an edgy, absurdist comedy from Alejandro G. Iñárritu, hidden behind a skin suit of ugly-old-guy prosthetics?
In part, it is because Cruise is a fan of the celebrated Mexican filmmaker. “I go to every one of his films,” Cruise told a group of international media last week, at a closed-door screening of the trailer for Digger. “He’s just a beautiful human being and a very gifted artist. Everything that he’s doing, it’s a discovery, and it’s surprising.”
And in part, it is because Cruise was looking to do something very different. “He’s never made something like this before, nor have I,” Cruise said.
“There’s nothing better than to physically and metaphorically stand on the edge of a cliff and go, let’s do this, I trust you and whatever we’re going to do, I know this is going to be a hell of an experience and let’s come together and let’s do it,” Cruise said.
“I have never had something that could challenge me in this way and neither has Alejandro when we went in, ever. And when you see this film, it’s totally original,” Cruise added.
The film is described as “a comedy of catastrophic proportions”, about a billionaire whose company is responsible for a major global catastrophe and is then pressured by the US president, played by John Goodman, to fix the disaster he has created. Digger then, according to the film’s marketing material, “embarks on a frantic mission to prove that he is humanity’s saviour before the disaster he’s unleashed destroys everything”.
The film’s cast is rounded out by Riz Ahmed, Jesse Plemons, Sandra Hüller, Michael Stuhlbarg, Sophie Wilde and Emma D’Arcy.
In person, on a stage, spruiking the film to international media, Cruise is a compelling figure. Perhaps because he is an actor without a discernibly public private life, and has also resisted the lure of big-budget television, he retains the luminous quality of an old-school matinee idol.
And perhaps in that sense, Cruise is Hollywood’s last true movie star. Which says as much about his enduring charisma, as it does about the complex state of the movie industry in 2026, battered and sometimes forcibly reshaped by steaming, the long shadow of mergers and acquisitions and a marketing machine that demands even trailers get their own premieres these days.
“I love movies,” Cruise said. “I love all kinds of movies. I love going to opening weekend, I like being there with an audience. I want people to be immersed in the movie, so, [we do] whatever it takes to tell that story. And it takes all of us. Making movies is a beautiful thing because it’s all of us together. Really, it is very special.”
“Since I was a kid I’ve travelled the world and I go and I watch movies with audiences, and I’m very curious about, [the question] do they feel the same way I do?” Cruise said.
“That’s the beauty of this art form, everyone has the things they like and their own taste and what works and what doesn’t work. I tell people, learn these skills and go off and communicate your own stories. You don’t have to do it like I do. Do your thing.
“Everyone has a different point of view of life, their own experience, and it’s a lifelong journey of learning,” Cruise said. “It’s always the next dream, the love of this art form and the passion, it’s all encompassing.”
Cruise’s own fascination with Iñárritu’s work began 25 years ago, with the Mexican director’s feature film directorial debut Amores Perros (“Love’s a Bitch”), which knitted together three linked stories in Mexico City, about a teenager, a model and a hitman.
“What a brilliant film. It was amazing,” Cruise said. “I was one of the first audiences, and I heard about it early on, so when I saw that film, I don’t know how you felt, but I was like, what the f---? This guy!
“The performances. The design. The colour in the movie. Every aspect of that film was very thought out, very detailed, and you could feel the powerful human voice of someone who was incredibly skilled at what they were doing,” Cruise said.
For his part, Iñárritu promises Digger will be a compelling personality on the big screen. In a pre-taped message screened at the trailer preview, he said: “Digger is charming. He’s funny. He’s impossible not to watch.” Which might be the first glimpse into why Cruise, who seemed at first to be a surprising choice, may actually be perfectly cast in the role.
It’s hard to ignore another key detail: Iñárritu has five Academy Awards to his name. More significantly, his leading men also have a tendency to win nomination to the movie industry’s most beloved prize. Benicio del Toro, Javier Bardem, Michael Keaton and Tom Hardy were nominated for Oscars for 21 Grams (2003), Biutiful (2010), Birdman (2014) and The Revenant (2015) respectively, and Leonardo DiCaprio won the best actor Oscar for The Revenant.
So, is this also strategic? Only time will tell, but Cruise’s 2027 Oscar campaign may have begun last week in Los Angeles to the sound of his winning smile.
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