Tom Cruise Tom Cruise Thomas Cruise Mapother IV (born July 3, 1962) is an American actor and producer. He started his career at age 19 in the film "Endless Love" (1981), before making his breakthrough in the comedy "Risky Business" (1983) and receiving widespread attention for starring in the action drama "Top Gun" (1986) as Lieutenant Pete "Maverick" Mitchell. After starring in "The Color of Money" (1986) and "Cocktail" (1988), Cruise starred opposite Dustin Hoffman in the Academy Award for Best Picture-winning drama "Rain Man". For his role as anti-war activist Ron Kovic in the drama "Born on the Fourth of July"
Tom Cruise and "The Last Samurai" can also be considered to be part of this formula. "Widescreenings" noted that for Tom Cruise's character Daniel Kaffee in "A Few Good Men", "[screenwriter] Aaron Sorkin interestingly takes the opposite approach of "Top Gun", where Cruise also starred as the protagonist. In "Top Gun", Cruise plays Mitchell who is a 'hot shot' military underachiever who makes mistakes because he is trying to outperform his late father. Where Maverick Mitchell needs to rein in the discipline, Daniel Kaffee needs to let it go, finally see what he can do." Sorkin and director Rob Reiner are praised