People never really talk about Tom Cruise's brow-raising role in Rock of Ages, Adam Shankman’s 2012 adaptation of the Broadway musical that mission-improbably cast Cruise as a hair band frontman named Stacee Jaxx. If you wondered what it might be like to hear the star of Mission Impossible straight-facedly belt out Pour Some Sugar on Me and Paradise City, get thee to the streaming platform of your choice.
But if you always wanted to hear him sing along with Oasis, you had to be in the VIP section at this weekend's Glastonbury Festival, where you'd find Tom Cruise alongside film sidekick Simon Pegg, MI director Christopher McQuarrie, and The Crown's Margaret Thatcher stand-in, actor Gillian Anderson.
The trio were there to catch Coldplay, the headliner of Saturday's day of acts. Cruise, Pegg, and Anderson reportedly cooled their heels as they waited for the show to begin, even joining the crowd in a sing-along set to Oasis's “Don't Look Back on Anger,” posts to social media show.
Cruise's performance from the VIP perch was relatively restrained compared to his work as Jaxx: according to an interview from 2012, Cruise insisted that his character be joined onscreen by a baboon.
Jaxx was “totally outrageous but yet I wanted to play it straight and have these different moments that evolve,” Cruise said, explaining the addition of a monkey to the cast. "Adam [Shankman] kept going, ‘Look, do we need the monkey?’ And I kept saying, ‘I really need the monkey. And then he came at me with the baboon.”
Is Cruise feeling nostalgic for those rock star days? Perhaps, as this is his second concert weekend in a row. Just last week, the actor was in a VIP tent at Wembley Stadium, dancing and singing along to Taylor Swift during a London stop on her Eras Tour. Alongside VIPers including Hugh Grant, Travis Kelce (one night before his landmark performance), and Greta Gerwig, Cruise reportedly joined in as Swift performed “Shake It Off.”
Cruise's tentmates were in for a show, if a 2012 interview with Rock of Ages co-star Malin Akerman is any indication. “He’s just superman,” she said then. “He can do everything, and he has an absolutely brilliant voice.”
According to Def Leppard’s Joe Elliott, who visited the Rock of Ages set for some of Cruise's scenes, the action star “did a fantastic job” when he performed Pour Some Sugar on Me, a 1987 hit for the band.
And according to Elliott, Cruise had nothing but respect for the real-life musicians he was attempting to channel. “Look, I just want you guys to know, I’m doing this with the most integrity as possible," Elliott says Cruise told him. "I’m not poking fun. I’m doing this to honor you guys.”
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