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Tom Cruise, 64, Looks Unrecognizable in the First ‘Digger’ Trailer
The actor calls the dark comedy a challenge unlike any he has faced during his 40-year career
Tom Cruise, 64, appears with thinning gray hair and a heavier frame as oil tycoon Digger Rockwell in Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s dark comedy 'Digger,' opening Oct. 2.
Courtesy of Warner Bros. Pictures
Key takeaways
- Tom Cruise appears with thinning gray hair, facial prosthetics and a heavier frame as oil tycoon Digger Rockwell in Digger.
- Cruise said his four decades as an actor prepared him for the character’s many layers.
- Director Alejandro G. Iñárritu describes his transformation as “astonishing.”
Tom Cruise is letting the years show, with some help from a makeup chair.
The actor, 64, appears with thinning gray hair and a pronounced belly in the first trailer for Digger, director Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s dark comedy opening in theaters Oct. 2.
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Cruise plays Digger Rockwell, an eccentric oil tycoon with a thick Southern accent whose actions unleash an ecological disaster that pushes the world toward nuclear war. Rockwell then scrambles to save the planet.
Cruise has repeatedly described Digger as the culmination of his four-decade career and a challenge unlike any of his previous work.
“I have never had something that could challenge me in this way and neither has Alejandro when we went in, ever,” Cruise said during a moderated Q&A at a Digger trailer event on the Warner Bros. lot shortly before the trailer’s July 13 release, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “And when you see this film, it’s totally original.”
The transformation marks a sharp visual break from the athletic image Cruise has maintained across the Mission: Impossible films and Top Gun: Maverick. In Digger, gray hair, a heavier frame and extensive makeup help turn him into a character who looks far removed from trim secret agent Ethan Hunt or fighter pilot Pete “Maverick” Mitchell.
Cruise has used prosthetics for comedy before, most notably as studio executive Les Grossman in the 2008 satire Tropic Thunder. He described his process at the Warner Bros. event, Variety reported.
“When we’re looking for characters, we’re looking for humor, drama, certain constructs [and asking] ‘How do we communicate this?’ ” Cruise said. “I’m always asking, ‘How do I communicate this?’ The physicality, the makeup, that is stuff that you find.”
Iñárritu, the four-time Oscar-winning director of Birdman and The Revenant, praised Cruise’s changed appearance during the preview.
“The transformation he went through was astonishing. ‘Alejandro, it took me 40 years to become this character,’ he told me once. And I think we both know what it means to carry an entire career into a single moment like this. We both knew that throughout our journeys, we had never done anything even close to this,” Iñárritu said, per The Hollywood Reporter.
At the same trailer preview, Cruise said Iñárritu spent time reading the screenplay aloud so the actor could absorb the filmmaker’s intentions and decide how to contribute.
“Alejandro took several days during which he was just reading the script to me, and I’m listening to everything that’s in his mind, so that I can understand that, and then I know how to contribute to it, and bring that collaboration together,” Cruise said.
Cruise and Iñárritu first discussed the project about seven years ago, while Cruise was filming Top Gun: Maverick, Reuters reported. Cruise had admired Iñárritu’s work since seeing the director’s 2000 film Amores perros.
Tom Cruise arrives at CinemaCon 2026 in Las Vegas on April 14.
Mindy Small/WireImage/Getty Images
Once he heard Iñárritu’s idea for Digger, Cruise was all in, he said at the trailer preview event: “There’s nothing better than to physically and metaphorically stand on the edge of a cliff and go, ‘Let’s do this. And I trust you, and whatever we’re going to do, I know this is going to be a hell of an experience,’ ” Cruise said, according to Variety.
He’s been promoting this movie since the spring.
“It took 40 years to be able to put on the boots of Digger Rockwell and play the many, many layers of this character,” Cruise said at CinemaCon in Las Vegas on April 14, according to Reuters. “The movie is wild, it’s funny, and I can’t wait for you all to see it.”
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