Frank T.J. Mackey: Tom Cruise's Most REAL Role

Who is Tom Cruise? What's hiding behind this icon's—the so-called "last, real movie star of Hollywood"—charm, extreme kindness and absolute fascination for evolving? These questions led me down a one-way road a few weeks ago already. After the last installment of the Mission: Impossible saga premiered, I had doubts over who or what Tom represents. Who could be interested? Why is there so much analysis and mysticism around his figure? Let's review some of the thousands of achievements, facts and anecdotes that define this modern alien:

• He's the only actor who has worked with Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg and Stanley Kubrick.
• He was the first actor to star in five consecutive movies that grossed over $100 million dollars at the box office.
• He was the inspiration for Aladdin's main character.
• He was honored with a certificate by the Irish government.
• He was the first and only actor to have a TV channel featuring his movies exclusively.
• He collects and restores classic vehicles, from tanks to World War II aircrafts.
• In Japan, there's a "Tom Cruise Day" (October 6).
• And yes, as expected, he holds a Guinness Record: the only actor who jumped 16 times from an airplane with a burning parachute to achieve the perfect shot.

Nonetheless, despite Cruise's delayed but welcoming reputation as the mentor of the new Hollywood generations, these impressive, sensationalist data apparently hide a mask, "a person within a person." Tom Cruise hasn't always been this action hero we admire today—I include myself without any shame nor denial—with an apparent blindness and undeniable sense of devotion. Yes, I'm devoted to him. To what he means to and represents for so many people today. But I'm also completely conscious of the fact that it was his participation in The Rosie O'Donnell Show what inspired Christian Bale for his twisted, sadistic, narcissist Patrick Bateman in American Psycho. Because yes, there's something weird about Cruise: a subtly visible void disguised with exaggeration, a striking silence that sometimes ends up knocking us more than his Mission: Impossible punches… and a past that, on the surface, seems to be worthy of a separate analysis.

He went from being youth's new face in the 80s, challenging himself with more diverse roles in the 90s to definitively reaching success in the 00s. And, for 15 years now, he has dedicated himself to the greatness of the action genre as the sole resource of his well-deserved cinematic wealth. We have seen him climbing buildings, flying an F-15 aircraft and running around the whole world accepting missions one larger than the other. But there's one role in which an extremely young but highly talented Paul Thomas Anderson was able to "hack" this person to transform him into a character. One that eerily interweaves with the person Tom Cruise was back then. Or at least the one he let show under the glamour, red carpets and camera flashes.

Magnolia is an epic structured as a dramatic mosaic in which several short stories—that unfold within 24 hours in the chaotic city of Los Angeles—end up collapsing with each other, inevitably colliding. After the box-office success and critically acclaimed provocative Boogie Nights, the American director was contacted by the production company New Line Cinema with the offer that everything he could think of in the short term would be funded. Secluded for several weeks in actor William H. Macy's cabin, Anderson came up with, among many, the idea of an alcoholic, drug addict woman finding love in the most unexpected way and, from there on, he started to branch out more stories.

In one of these tales, there quickly appeared within the first minutes the figure of a sex guru slightly inspired by Ross Jeffries, a writer and pick-up artist who sold the idea of speed seduction as the extremely effective method for any "loser" in the early 90s. But Anderson managed it with subtlety, using this idea of a disguise. We see Cruise on TV, talking to us, as if he weren't someone "real" in these stories:

"In this big game that we play, life, it's not what you hope for, it's not what you deserve, it's what you take."

After babbling several words typical of any telemarketer, we see Claudia, initially and theoretically, the movie's sole protagonist. Claudia is in a bar, lost, distant… and, out of the blue, one of these "losers" approaches her with a "Hey" to draw her attention. Nonetheless, we also witness the first twist that occurs due to the ridiculous lie spread by Frank T.J. Mackey, this article's sole subject of analysis: Claudia only sleeps with this man because he offers her drugs. The lie is apparent from the beginning. There are no magic formulas nor essential guides to boost the male ego. Ultimately, we all end up selling ourselves or buying something one way or another.

T.J. is the fictional reflection of the real-life Tom. Like his character, the actor changed his birth surname. Mapother became Cruise in real life… Partridge became Mackey in the movie. "I didn't want the name nor the surname," Tom Cruise said in 2004 to James Lipton in Inside The Actors Studio before the eyes of the audience. In Magnolia, Mackey is interviewed by Gwenovier, an intrepid but respectful journalist willing to expose this chronic seducer's secrets and, from that moment on, things get interesting. What starts with Mackey—or Tom, as you please—using his body as a lethal weapon he believes to be irresistible ends up being completely paralyzed by what's unobjectionable. The harsh reality.

Not only the lies of what he preaches are discredited, but also his sexual gestures and books are. His past, or rather the act of hiding it, has backfired now. What's the point of creating fiction within reality? From this unveiling, regarding that information he never wanted to hear even knowing it was the sole truth, his temper changes. Now he's unsettling and lacks any emotion but the coldness of knowing he's not in control. Of knowing there isn't such power in him. Like it happened to Tom many times in real interviews. How to differentiate the real Tom from the character? It's hard to come up with an answer, but Paul Thomas Anderson at least leaves us an irrefutable idea: many times, cinema is nothing more than a mirror.

Published on JUNE 12, 2025, 00:49 PM | UTC-GMT -3

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