dailynewsnblog
Sometimes, an unexpected cameo can elevate an otherwise solid movie into a genuine cult favorite. Matt Damon’s unhinged performance of “Scotty Doesn’t Know” is the most prominent thing I remember about 2004’s EuroTrip, as he belts out a punk-rock song about cuckolding poor Scotty. Bradley Cooper appearing as a charming little halfling with a fetish for burly barbarian women remains one of the funniest scenes in Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves. And who can forget Bill Murray appearing as himself posing as one of the undead in Zombieland so he can golf in peace?
Damon, Cooper, and Murray are no strangers to comedy; so it comes as no surprise that they’d delight in taking these small roles for the sake of a good bit. But the most iconic surprise celebrity cameo of all time came in 2008, thanks largely to the fact that a satirical comedy put an always-serious A-list action star in a bald cap and fat suit, with layers and layers of body hair that extended all the way to his knuckles.
In Tropic Thunder, Tom Cruise plays Les Grossman, a despicable film studio executive who is so outrageous you almost can’t even believe it’s him. It remains perhaps the single wildest performance of Cruise’s career, and you can now watch all of Tropic Thunder for free with ads on YouTube.
Directed by Ben Stiller, who co-wrote the screenplay with Justin Theroux and Etan Cohen, Tropic Thunder follows the disastrous production of a big-budget Vietnam War movie. Its cast includes the fading action star Tugg Speedman (Stiller), drug-addicted comedian Jeff Portnoy (Jack Black), rapper and aspiring entrepreneur Alpa Chino (Brandon T. Jackson), and Kirk Lazarus (Robert Downey Jr.), an Australian method actor so committed to the role that he underwent a pigmentation procedure to play a Black soldier. Each of them is uniquely terrible and a worse version of recognizable movie star archetypes.
After novice director Damien Cockburn (Steve Coogan) loses control of all these big personalities, he drops the entire cast into the jungle, hoping that hidden cameras and staged explosions might lead to better performances. Everyone is quickly put in serious danger without realizing they’re no longer making a movie.
What follows is an escalating series of chaotic, violent events that includes severed limbs, drug withdrawal, explosive diarrhea, accidental gunfire, and movie stars who can’t recognize a genuine crisis even when it literally explodes in their faces. Oh, and a young child gets hurled from a bridge into a river at one point — in case you weren’t sure whether Tropic Thunder was downright irreverent or not.
Tropic Thunder starts out as a lavish action movie before making that hard pivot into a vicious parody of the Hollywood machine. It makes fun of the various shades of egomania that actors exhibit while also zooming out to satirize the industry’s biggest flaws. If anything about Hollywood or movie stars in general has ever given you the ick, Tropic Thunder probably makes fun of it. That includes everything from celebrity product endorsements to the ridiculous things that actors might do to themselves in the glorious pursuit of an Oscar.
In some ways, it seems like Tropic Thunder was precision-engineered to offend modern audiences. Characters repeatedly use an ableist slur, and Stiller’s Tugg Speedman is coming off an Oscar-baity role as a young farmhand with an intellectual disability. We see plenty of footage from Simple Jack and are subjected to even more of it when Tugg is captured by the local gang and forced to perform the movie over and over. (Disability advocacy groups protested the movie leading up to its release.) Robert Downey, Jr. also spends the entire runtime in blackface. Would a real actor ever do that? I hope not, but plenty of actors have done appalling things in the name of going “method.”
It’s easy to see parallels between Tugg’s Simple Jack and well-known performances like Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man or Tom Hanks in Forrest Gump. During one press conference promoting the movie, Downey said he based Lazarus on Russell Crowe and Daniel Day-Lewis, “with a little” Colin Farrell. Tropic Thunder sells these caricatures with reckless abandon, and the end result is a ridiculous and wickedly fun dark comedy.
Tom Cruise becomes Hollywood’s most repulsive studio executive
In an ensemble of Hollywood’s most despicable archetypes, Les Grossman is the studio executive looming above it all. Cruise plays him like a rabid animal with a Bluetooth earpiece. Grossman berates every person he interacts with. And when his leading man is abducted, Grossman considers whether Tugg is worth more dead than alive as he weighs the demanded ransom against the potential insurance reimbursement. The scary part is that imagining an executive treating human beings as assets and liabilities does not seem all that far-fetched.
Even when he’s starring in a romantic comedy like Jerry Maguire, Tom Cruise always comes across as a very serious actor. He’s funny at times, yes, but not in the physical, visceral way that actors like Jack Black or Ben Stiller manage. He’s funny in the way that your most handsome friend can be when he says something clever with an easy smile. Clad in the buttery armor that is the Les Grossman fat suit, Cruise cuts loose in an unhinged way. He’s having so much fun doing it, and that glee is infectious.
All of this becomes even more compelling when you learn that Cruise himself created the character — reportedly in just nine minutes.
Stiller originally wanted Cruise to play Rick Peck (Matthew McConaughey), Tugg’s overly devoted friend and agent, but Cruise asked how the film studio might react while the rest of the film’s events unfolded. Thus, Grossman was written into the story. Across four days of makeup tests, Cruise contributed a number of ideas for the character, including his abnormally large hands. It wasn’t until somebody handed Cruise a Diet Coke and his hips started swaying that Grossman truly came alive.
The sight of Tom Cruise dancing as Les Grossman “Get Back” by Ludacris remains as memorable as it is absolutely disturbing.
Cruise reprised the role at the 2010 MTV Movie Awards, where Grossman insulted Robert Pattinson, bullied Jaden Smith, and danced with Jennifer Lopez. Not long after, Paramount announced a Grossman spinoff written by Scott Pilgrim vs. the World co-writer Michael Bacall. Bacall envisioned it as an R-rated movie with an unexpectedly heartfelt origin story that would explain the source of Grossman’s anger issues, but it never made it into production. Cruise and his longtime collaborator Christopher McQuarrie began discussing another potential Grossman project years later. In May 2025, McQuarrie said the pair were having “very serious conversations” about how best to make it, but for now the idea remains in production limbo.
The next best thing may be Alejandro González Iñárritu’s upcoming Digger, for which Cruise will again suit up in prosthetics and makeup — plus a potbelly, a comb-over, and extensive body hair — to play Digger Rockwell, an oil magnate trying to save humanity from a disaster that he caused. The “comedy of catastrophic proportions” is due in theaters on Oct. 2.
Tom Cruise is famous for risking his life to entertain audiences, whether that means clinging to an airplane during takeoff or yeeting a motorcycle off a mountain. He’s fearless. Playing Les Grossman proved Cruise also has a very different kind of fearlessness: the willingness to compromise the meticulously crafted image of Hollywood’s biggest movie star.
Nearly two decades later, it’s still impossible to look away, because those hips don’t lie.
