Tom Cruise: ‘All the Great' Actors Should Know the Technical Elements of Filmmaking
Tom Cruise is sharing his advice to fellow actors: Become a filmmaker. The 'Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning' star and producer said, while receiving the coveted British Film Institute Fellowship (via Times of London), that it is imperative for actors to understand the below the line elements of filmmaking to better their own craft.
Cruise even pointed to how fellow stars such as Marlon Brando worked with the camera. 'I always tell actors: spend time in the editing room, produce a movie, study old movies, recognize what the composition is giving you, know what those lenses are, understand the lighting and how to use it for your benefit,' Cruise said. 'Understand the art form to that degree. Brando absolutely understood lighting; all the greats did.'
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Cruise further pointed to how film schools do not widely teach production tools and filmmaking technology to acting majors.
'It is important to understand the tools around you,' Cruise said. 'There is tech. It is like understanding the stage as an actor but for a lot of artists, it is not taught in film school: How to understand the lens and what it can do, and why there is eye movement and recognize the effect it has.'
Cruise, as his co-star and mentee Glen Powell shared in 2024, has his own six hour film school for colleagues. Powell told GQ UK that Cruise explained how cameras worked in the custom tutorial.
'He said, 'This is just for my friends',' Powell said. '[In the video Cruise] is like: 'Do we all agree that this is what a camera is? This is the difference between a film camera and a digital camera…' The funniest part is on flying. It was like he put together this entire flight school. So he would literally go, 'OK, this is what a plane is. Here's how things fly. Here's how air pressure works.''
Of course, for those who aren't part of Cruise's famous six hour film school, auteur Werner Herzog has another way to encourage aspiring artists to learn about filmmaking. Herzog hosts an 11-day workshop that he deemed a 'film school for rogues,' and recently told CBS that he tells attendees to embrace their rebellious nature to make features. 'You do not become a poet by being in a college. […] You have to go outside of what the norm is,' he said. 'You have to have a certain amount of, I say, good criminal energy [to make a film.] [Filmmaking is] not for the faint-hearted.'
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