Tom Cruise Rathbun claims that wife Nicole Kidman was wiretapped on Tom Cruise's suggestion (which Cruise's lawyer denies). In 2006, "Premiere" ranked Cruise as Hollywood's most powerful actor, as Cruise came in at number 13 on the magazine's 2006 Power List, being the highest ranked actor. The same year, "Forbes" magazine ranked him as the world's most powerful celebrity. The founder of CinemaScore in 2016 cited Cruise and Leonardo DiCaprio as the "two stars, it doesn't matter how bad the film is, they can pull [the box office] up". In August 2006, Paramount cited Cruise's "recent conduct" as the reason they did
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