Tom Cruise has opened up on his experience of working with Jack Nicholson on the 1992 film A Few Good Men and the huge interest that his scenes with the legend generated within Hollywood.
Cruise starred opposite Nicholson in the thriller, which is based on a play, as Lt Daniel Kaffee, a military lawyer who defends two US marines accused of murder at Guantanamo Bay which he is convinced was ordered by Nicolson’s Col Nathan R Jessep.
Rob Reiner’s film was a huge success and earned four Oscar nominations (Best Picture, Best Actor for Nicholson, Best Sound, Best Editing) and is probably most fondly remembered for the intense court debates between Cruise and Nicholson, with the latter uttering the now famous line: “You can’t handle the truth.”
Speaking to Edith Bowman at the British Film Institute on Sunday (11 May) the Mission: Impossible star said that working with Nicholson on the film was an “extraordinary experience” and shared a behind-the-scenes detail that wasn’t featured in the movie.
“I remember the Nicholson scene when we were in in the courtroom, suddenly I’m looking around and the rafters were filled,” said the 62-year-old. “We were making movies in LA at that point, and the rafters were filled and people were coming in just to see the scene and the town knew.
“We were shooting it, and they would come just to see the scene. To see us go at it,” he added. “People, people were kind of surrounding and filling the rafters around just to, just to watch Nicholson and I go at it. It was magnificent to watch him and see what a, what a wordsmith he is, you know, like a great crooner.
“ To see him carve up the dialogue and make it his own, find his own stillness. He’s very generous, an actor’s actor. He is off camera the whole time just feeding, feeding me and very supportive. He’d be like, ‘That was a good take Tommy, nice work Tommy.’ He’s just really lovely and he just loved it.”
Cruise also spoke at length about what he learnt from greats like Nicholson and Paul Newman, who he starred alongside in The Color of Money (1986). “ You know, it’s important to understand your, the tools around you and what, what you’re doing. Nicholson understands the [camera] lens. And those guys that came up [Paul] Newman, all of them understood the lens.
“It’s like understanding the stage as an actor. But a lot of artists are not, it’s not taught in film school to understand what the lens is. What to do and why The eye movements and not the eye movements, the eyebrows or the breath, and recognize what effect that has. The derivation of art is a skill.
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“ Nicholson, he understood it so well, the stillness and what he knew the power of that character. He was looking for a centre and you could feel his voice start to relax and his face start to relax and you could feel the energy that he was going and he was just throwing lasers as the film went on.”
Cruise will join a prestigious list of names when he receives his BFI Fellowship on Monday (12 May), a list which includes Akira Kurosawa, Robert Altman, Cate Blanchett, Orson Welles, Martin Scorsese, Michael Caine, Spike Lee, Christopher Nolan, Ken Loach, Isabelle Huppert and Al Pacino.
