Tom Cruise vs. Philip Seymour Hoffman

11/21/07
by Scott Cupper

OK. So this isn’t really a title fight. In fact I won’t crown either one of these actors victorious. Which is probably shocking to some. Isn’t it apparent who would win? We are talking about acting, right?

Indeed we are talking about acting, and if it comes right down to it, yes, Philip Seymour Hoffman is the better actor. OK, I guess I did just crown a winner. But I’m exploring something here.

When it comes to actors, there probably aren’t two more disparate in the public mind. Philip Seymour Hoffman is often viewed as the paragon of actors: someone able to disappear into a role. Each time we see him in a movie, he is not much, if at all, like he was in his previous role. Tom, on the other hand, is criticized for being the same in every role. What I want to explore is this: Does it matter that Tom Cruise is the “same” in every role?

There’s a moment in the movie Magnolia that I love. Yes, I love Magnolia from beginning to end, so to those who know me, that probably sounds kind of…meaningless. Be that as it may, if you are to ask me what my top seven moments in Magnolia are, Jason Robards’s monologue would be at the top, but a bit of acting by Tom Cruise is right up there. He plays Frank T. J. Mackey, founder of a self-help conference that promises men the ability to get in any woman’s pants they wish. When we meet Frank, he’s onstage at one of these conferences, backlit, Richard Strauss’s Also sprach Zaranthustra playing (familiarly known as the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey). It’s a performance. He wears a shirt that’s too tight, pumps his chest, threads his speech with derogatory terms for women. He is what he preaches. During a break, he’s interviewed by a woman who probes a bit too deep for his comfort. When he comes back to the conference, he’s barely holding it together. He starts to talk to the men again and goes off on these tangents, one of them about women, how men are programmed to worship them. And in the middle of this monologue, he whispers the word “Woman.”

I can’t describe how it affects me every single time. It’s surprising. It’s odd. Frank’s been screaming at us since he appeared on screen and suddenly we barely hear him. And this word, this reading of this word, springs from everything that we know about this character. It is perhaps the most revealing thing Frank says.

And it all came from Tom Cruise.

You can’t write in the script:

MACKEY
(whispers)
Woman.

Well, you can, but you’re not going to get what Tom did. You could line up a thousand different actors and they couldn’t have arrived at that reading. It came from the actor, from the situation, from a set of circumstances so specific, that it can’t ever be recreated. If there is more footage of that scene, I’m sure it doesn’t read the same, yet each time I watch the movie, that moment hits me.

We get distracted by the chameleons of the trade. People like Phil, like Dustin Hoffman, like Daniel Day-Lewis, they come with all these trappings: accents, dress, movements, walks. I take nothing away from them. Daniel Day-Lewis is the best actor working now and may be the best actor ever, but what makes him so brilliant is not how he immerses himself in a role. It’s how this immersion affects his understanding of the character that affects his performance that affects us. If his performance as Hawkeye in The Last of the Mohicans was based solely on how he, Daniel Day-Lewis, learned to track animals, the women I know would not swoon when I mention the movie. All they can think about is him underneath the waterfall telling Madeline Stowe that he will find her.

Here’s a drastic example. Imagine Philip Seymour Hoffman showing up as Truman Capote in Along Came Polly. There’s no other way to describe this except wrong. Hoffman’s performance as Capote has no reason being anywhere but in Capote. Phil understands this, so he adapts to his roles. Tom understands that he is not as good at adapting to roles, so he chooses roles that don’t force him to adapt. But this does not make his performances lesser than Phil’s

Acting is creating truth in imaginary circumstances. That’s all, and by this standard, in my opinion, in both of the films that Tom and Phil are in together (Magnolia, Mission: Impossible III) they are equals.

The problem for Tom is we see his films. He releases one, we see it, he releases another one in a few years’ time, we see it, and he hasn’t changed. This doesn’t foster objectivity. Cary Grant never won an Oscar. I tell people this and they react as if it’s a travesty, and it is, but when he was working, the same thing happened. People saw his movies year after year and never saw him change. So they dismissed him. But history is the great thresher. It lets bad movies fall away and the good ones rise to the top. So we see Cary Grant now in His Girl Friday and Notorious and Bringing Up Baby and Philadelphia Story and we can’t believe he never won.

You know why James Dean is as revered as he is? He made three films and all of them have lasted. That’s all we’ve got to work with, three artifacts.

I’ve used Tom Cruise to make a point, not to turn you on to Tom Cruise. I don’t think he’s flawless. I don’t think he’s very good in The Last Samurai. I don’t buy the change to hero. Something strikes me as false about it. But more often than not, I think he’s very good if not excellent. So if you’re around me and criticize Tom or another actor for being the same in every role, just be forewarned, I’m going to ask for more.

NOTE: I first had this conversation with my former roommate and still friend Marisa. You can read her thoughts here.