Tom Cruise has been a super-famous Hollywood star who won hearts globally by flawlessly performing extremely difficult stunts. Even from the other side of the screen, one can feel the harsh conditions that the actor gets indulged in to give his best shot. It definitely comes with hours of practice, which he is quite accustomed to by now, but one might be unaware of a movie that saw the initial action-star spark when he did something commendable.
The actor starred alongside Paul Newman who had already established a great career before working with a then-rising star in the 1986 film, The Color of Money.
Tom Cruise Impressed Paul Newman With His Pool Skills
Martin Scorsese directorial, The Color of Money originated from Richard Price’s screenplay, based on the 1984 novel of the same name by Walter Tevis. The late actor, Paul Newman reprised his Edward “Fast Eddie” Felson role from 1961’s The Hustler. The film is set 25 years after the 1961 film’s timeline when Felson retired from pool hustling and encounters Vincent Lauria who was played by Tom Cruise.
Pool sports being the core of that film was a basic thing that the stars had to master. While both of them got trained by Pro pool player Michael Sigel, the latter shared how his young co-star was good at his shots.
In an interview with Russell Harty, the late actor shared,
“Cruz was fantastic. He never had a pool cue in his hand. Really? And he was as good, if not better than I was, in five weeks.”
Getting recognized by an actor like Newman was a great feat on its own. However, it was not pure luck as the Top Gun actor worked a lot on cue sports to get on par with the Hud star.
Tom Cruise’s Pool Trainer Shared His Views on His Skills
Michael Sigel in an interview with UPI opened up about his experience in coaching Cruise and Newman at the time to prepare for their role. While he knew that he had to start from scratch to guide the Mission: Impossible star for the sports, he shared,
“I could see that he has natural talent in the game. He worked at it. He devoted a lot of time and it paid off.”
The then young star perfectly learned all the difficult shots required for the film except one which involved the cue ball jumping over others. It was eventually taken care of by Sigel. While many would think that the shot might have been trickier for Cruise to execute, the actual reason was quite simple. Had the Rain Man star continued to practice the shoot, it would have delayed the filming which was why it eventually ended up in the professional’s hands.
The film garnered average reviews that grossed $52.3 million at the box office. The film is available on Amazon Prime Video.
Source: Youtube
