Tom Cruise, much like actors Brad Pitt and Dwayne Johnson, is one of the biggest movie stars on the planet, and this has come after years of incredibly hard work and dedication. Cruise has anchored massive franchises and has starred in countless hit films over the yers. Sure, his personal life makes headlines, but many people know him best as a true legend of film.
During the '90s, Cruise was a massive star that was looking to bolster his reputation. Eventually, he would find himself attached to a little film called Edward Scissorhands, but things wound up falling through.
Let’s go back to the 90s and see why things didn’t work out!
Cruise Has The Role In The Bag
Edward Scissorhands is one of the most bizarre and popular characters to emerge on the big screen back in the 1990s, and Johnny Depp gave an iconic performance as the character. Before Depp landed the role, it was actually Tom Cruise who was attached to the project.
It’s always interesting to go back and see just what a movie studio was thinking before the final casting decisions on huge projects are made, and it’s pretty hard to imagine anyone other than Johnny Depp playing Edward Scissorhands and completely nailing the role. Depp has always excelled in playing offbeat characters, and this would have been a drastic shift for our Tom Cruise.
Johnny Depp would open up in an interview about the studio having someone else in mind for the role.
He would say, “20th Century Fox were interested in me for the part, but they had someone else in mind too. A few days later, they called me to say that the studio preferred the other actor. It was Tom Cruise.”
Things, of course, did end up working out for the film itself, but the alleged reason why Tom Cruise didn’t end up playing Edwards Scissorhands is a pretty bizarre one.
He Asked Too Many Questions
In the film industry, performers turn down roles for a variety of reasons all the time, but the reason that Tom Cruise ended up not playing Edward Scissorhands has got to be one of the most bizarre in film history.
Despite being attached to the project, it has been reported that Tom Cruise asked way too many intricate questions about the character. This soured a lot of people on him playing the character and it also made him reconsider taking on the role.
Writer Caroline Thompson would say, “Part of the delicacy of the story was not answering questions like, ‘How does he go to the bathroom? How did he live without eating all those years?’ Tom Cruise was certainly unwilling to be in the movie without those questions being answered.”
It makes sense that an actor taking on the role would want to know anything and everything they can about a character in order to give the best performance possible, so it’s funny to see that the people working on the project were not willing to divulge a ton of information about the character.
Ultimately, Tom Cruise would not take part in the Tim Burton project. What this would do is open up the door for the perfect actor to come along and give what would become an iconic performance.
Johnny Depp Steps In
While Tom Cruise was an extremely popular movie star coming on the heels of one hit film after the next, it wound up being Johnny Depp who would take on the role of Edward Scissorhands and turn in a performance that would spark a massive amount of fanfare.
Even though it became a joke over time, Johnny Depp has done some exceptional work with Tim Burton at the helm, and the pair have made a ton of movies that people still enjoy to this very day. Edward Scissorhands is still regarded as one of the most popular films from the 90s, and a huge reason why that’s the case is because of the dynamic acting that Burton was able to get out of Depp while filming.
According to Dazed, other performers like Tom Hanks and Jim Carrey had expressed interest in taking on the role, and at one point, Robert Downey Jr. was in consideration to play Edward Scissorhands. All of these performers are fine in their own right, but Depp was simply perfect.
Things would eventually work out in the end, though it is still hilarious to see exactly why Tom Cruise wound up not landing this role. We are assuming that the folks behind Mission: Impossible were willing to answer all of his questions