Tom Cruise (64) Needed Prosthetics to Play a 65-Year-Old on ‘Digger’

Tom Cruise has spent the better part of four decades cultivating one of Hollywood’s most consistent images, a trim, high-energy action star who seems immune to the effects of aging. Between hanging off airplanes for ‘Mission: Impossible’ and starring as a fighter pilot in ‘Top Gun: Maverick,’ the actor has rarely, if ever, let audiences see him look anything less than fit and youthful onscreen.

That’s exactly what makes his upcoming project with director Alejandro G. Iñárritu such a striking departure. ‘Digger‘ marks Cruise’s first true character-actor transformation since he disappeared into prosthetics for studio executive Les Grossman in 2008’s ‘Tropic Thunder,’ and this time the change goes even further.

At 64 years old, Cruise still needed extensive prosthetics and makeup work to convincingly play a man just a year older than himself, oil tycoon Digger Rockwell, complete with thinning gray hair, facial prosthetics and a noticeably heavier frame. The transformation marks such a sharp break from his usual look that early trailers deliberately kept his face hidden, teasing only his silhouette before revealing the full extent of the makeover.

In ‘Digger,’ Cruise plays an eccentric oil tycoon with a thick Southern accent whose company unleashes an ecological disaster that pushes the world toward the brink of nuclear war, forcing Rockwell to scramble and fix the very crisis he caused. It’s a role built entirely around eccentricity and moral chaos, a far cry from the disciplined, square-jawed heroes Cruise has built his brand on for years.

Iñárritu, who has been developing the project since shortly after winning his second consecutive directing Oscar for ‘The Revenant,’ didn’t hold back when describing what Cruise put into the role. “The transformation he went through was astonishing,” Iñárritu said in a video message shared at a Warner Bros. event, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “‘Alejandro, it took me 40 years to become this character,’ he told me once. And I think we both know what it means to carry an entire career into a single moment like this.”

The director added that neither he nor Cruise had ever attempted anything quite like it before. “We both knew that throughout our journeys, we had never done anything even close to this,” Iñárritu said.

Cruise himself has echoed that sentiment, describing ‘Digger’ as the culmination of his career and a challenge unlike anything he’s tackled in his filmography. Speaking about the character work behind the transformation, Cruise noted the process starts with figuring out how to serve the story. “When we’re looking for characters, we’re looking for humor, drama, certain constructs [and asking] ‘How do we communicate this?'” Cruise said, per Variety.

The physical shift required to pull off Rockwell involved more than just makeup, relying on facial and body prosthetics alongside a thinning, white hairpiece to fully sell the character’s age and eccentricity. It’s the kind of full-body commitment that has fans and critics alike buzzing well ahead of the film’s release.

‘Digger’ is set to hit theaters October 2, giving audiences their first extended look at what may end up being one of the most surprising performances of Cruise’s career.

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