'Interview with the Vampire' Director Reveals Why Tom Cruise was Cast as Lestat
Tom Cruise, with his history as an action star in a multitude of blockbusters, might not have been the first choice for the role of Lestat de Lioncourt in Interview with the Vampire.
However, director Neil Jordan saw something in the 60-year-old superstar that convinced him he was right for the part in 1994.
He revealed what it was during a recent interview.
Read more about how Tom Cruise got cast in Interview with the Vampire…
Neil told /Film that Tom’s life in the spotlight drew parallels to Lestat’s character. For starters, they both possessed “an icy control and beauty.”
“I also saw, I suppose, that Tom‘s life — because he was the biggest star in the world at the time — he has to retreat to the shadows because he can’t expose himself too much,” he explained. “I saw kind of a parallel between the life of a vampire and the life of a very, very big star, let’s put it that way.”
Clearly it all worked out, as Neil recognized in the interview: “Everybody said [Tom] was miscast, he proved them wrong, didn’t he?”
Speaking of Tom‘s history as an action hero, get the latest about a third Top Gun movie.