The rivalry between Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt has been a thing of the past and the present, existing on the fringes of Hollywood’s unspoken truths, and amid the numerous hushed scandalous rumors that are brushed under the rug without needing a proper reason at all. This rivalry, whether originating as a box office duel or because of some behind-the-scene contest of the man with the biggest star-making quality, exists all the same and for better or for worse, has made the industry a space where Pitt and Cruise can dominate their individual films without getting in each other’s path.

Neil Jordan Defends Casting Tom Cruise as Lestat

During the production of Interview With the Vampire, Brad Pitt’s casting as Louis, who would go on to serve as the better and more moral half to Tom Cruise’s corrosive and volatile Lestat, was taken in better stride than the latter’s. Outcries leading to public accosting faced by the director did hardly anything to deter him from pursuing Cruise by whatever means necessary. His vision did ultimately pay off in the end, but the director recalls the backlash faced by the Top Gun actor with much sympathy.
“Oh, they hated him. Anne Rice found it perplexing. As did Brad Pitt, actually. I’ve always thought he’s a great actor, but his life is also not unlike the life of a vampire, you know what I mean?

Famous people don’t want to go out into an unmediated space. They have to control who they meet and how they meet them. They have to control their image. It’s almost like they live in a spectral kind of world. Just as an analogy, that made sense to me. So we agreed to do the film together, and then everybody got really angry.”
According to the director, the people wanted Daniel Day-Lewis in the role. But there was something inherently electrifying about Cruise’s presence that drew the director’s uncanny senses toward him.

Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt in Interview With the Vampire (1994)
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Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise’s Homoerotic Vampire Saga

The star-studded affair of the Neil Jordan film that launched the career of many artists at once was the first and the only movie that would be privileged enough to host two of the biggest A-listers of Hollywood on its sets – Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise. Despite being a star of considerable weight by then, Cruise was yet to achieve the status of megastardom that he boasts today. And yet, his eye for projects that not only challenge his skills as an artist but also pushes boundaries in Hollywood was impeccable even then.

Tom Cruise as Lestat with Piit’s Louis

But despite the unequivocally astounding efforts delivered by the relative newcomers, Brad Pitt and Kirsten Dunst, Cruise’s performance still overshadowed the mellowed-out melancholy emanating from Pitt’s Louis. Perhaps this was the setting off point that gave rise to the infamous “sh*t list” of actors that Pitt says he will never work with. Perhaps it was Cruise’s psychopathic enthusiasm toward the making of the film that put the others off. Whatever the reason, the increasingly charged atmosphere created by the veiled animosity between the pair gave the audience one of the most subtly enjoyable pieces of modern cinema through the eyes of a revolutionary filmmaker.

Interview With the Vampire is available for streaming on Vudu.

Source: The Independent