3 Times Tom Cruise Inspired Other Actors in Unhinged Ways

As far as Hollywood stars go, Tom Cruise is high on the list.

The legendary, Academy Award-nominated actor has starred in dozens of major films since he made his debut in 1981's Endless Love, and his iconic roles in films such as Risky Business, Mission Impossible, Jerry Maguire, Interview With the Vampire and more have influenced countless other actors in their own careers.

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From his diverse and charming character portrayals to his daring commitment to doing his own dangerous stunts in his many action movies, as well as his intense charisma off screen, Cruise is a force of nature who has inspired both his peers as well as the younger generations of movie stars who have come after him.

Below, discover three actors who have been open about being inspired by Cruise's acting style, personality and more.

Florence Pugh Decided to Do Her Own Scary Stunts

Florence Pugh is an incredible actress in her own right, but she was inspired by the Hollywood icon when shooting Disney and Marvel Comics' 2025 superhero flick Thunderbolts.

Pugh plays expert assassin Yelena Belova in the film, and the role required some serious athleticism. Instead of relegating all her stunts to the professionals, the British actress decided to follow in Tom Cruise's bold footsteps and do her own stunts—including jumping off the second-tallest building in the world.

"No one can top Tom. He has inspired me 100 percent. I don’t know if anyone will ever be as brilliant as him. His respect for the stunt world has educated so many people," Pugh said in an interview during the London red carpet premiere of the film, joking that she won't be flying any helicopters or planes any time soon.

Christian Bale Found His Unlikely Inner 'Psycho'

Christian Bale played a suavely psychotic serial killer effortless in 2001's American Psycho. Hilariously, the Australian star's genius portrayal of Patrick Bateman was actually inspired by a series of real-life Tom Cruise talk show interviews from the '90s.

Director Mary Harron revealed in an interview in 2009 that before filming, Bale called her to tell her he had found the perfect inspiration for his portrayal of corporate psychopath Patrick Bateman while watching Cruise doing an interview on late-night television. Bale was especially inspired by Cruise's intense mannerisms, uncanny geniality and wide, sterile grin.

"We talked about how Martian-like Patrick Bateman was, how he was looking at the world like somebody from another planet, watching what people did and trying to work out the right way to behave. And then one day he called me and he had been watching Tom Cruise on David Letterman, and he just had this very intense friendliness with nothing behind the eyes, and he was really taken with this energy," Herron revealed.

Adam Scott Tapped Into Action's Most Iconic Running Man

Adam Scott's role as Mark in Apple TV's excellent Severance is nothing short of brilliant and singular. The role is very much his own, but he admits that a certain now-iconic scene was inspired by "the king" Tom Cruise.

The Season 2 opening scene, which features Mark running in a suit manically down a series of liminal space hallways, was inspired by Cruise's infamous action movie sprint. "There’s no way, if you’re running that much in a suit ... you can avoid any sort of comparison to Tom Cruise because he’s the king. What I find is something that he does that’s incredibly impressive is, at one point when we were shooting the opening sequence for the first episode of Season 2, we did a bunch of different stuff,"  Scott said on SiriusXM’s Literally! With Rob Lowe podcast.

"And at one point I was on a treadmill with a harness connected to me, and what we found was there was some uncanny valley thing that would start happening because if you’re on a treadmill, you’re running at a consistent speed. There’s no variation in your speed, whereas if someone is actually running, there’s constant variation in speed that isn’t even perceptible to the human eye. But you clock it when you’re watching Tom Cruise run. There’s something very human about it because he’s actually doing it," he continued about the scene, which took five months to properly film.