Tom Cruise touched down in Cannes on Wednesday to launch “Top Gun: Maverick”, making his first appearance in three decades at the world’s premier film festival and cementing his status as a champion of the big screen.
Cannes waited 30 years for Tom Cruise to return – so a 12-hour wait in the Riviera’s scorching sun was no hassle for Tania Lopez-Palayo, first in line to catch a glimpse of Hollywood’s last great superstar as he hit the red carpet.
“Nothing could have stopped me from coming,” said the 17-year-old “Cruise super fan”, who made the five-hour drive from Grenoble to Cannes with her mother last night. “It’s a little mad, but it’s a passion too – he’s the top, the greatest.”
Mother and daughter showed up at 7 in the morning on the Croisette, a few steps away from the festival’s famed red carpet, desperate for a “selfie, an autograph”.
Further down the rapidly-growing line, 70-something local resident Martine was relishing a chance to add a coveted picture and autograph to her collection of American movie stars.
“The French stars snub us, whereas the Americans know it’s part of their job to pose for selfies and sign our cards,” she said. “I started back in 1994, just after Cruise last came to Cannes. I’ve got George Clooney, Brad Pitt, Sharon Stone – but I never got him!
Soon to turn 60, the seemingly never-aging Cruise has become a metaphor for an industry gnawed by self-doubt, clinging to its last bankable icons and franchises.
After two years of pandemic disruption, his fleeting appearance on the Croisette is a reassuring presence, feeding into the nostalgic mood that has gripped Cannes as festivalgoers return to an event they had tired of and are now learning to love again. As Empire magazine put it, his latest “magnetic movie-star performance (is) as comforting as an old leather jacket.”
When Cruise was last in Cannes for the premiere of the ill-fated “Far and Away” with his then-wife Nicole Kidman, he was just one among many in the Hollywood star system. Thirty years on, he is the only one who can compete with the superhero franchises that now dominate the studios.
In the words of IndieWire, he is “the last Hollywood movie star of his kind – short as ever but still larger-than-life in an age where most famous actors are only as big as their action figures.”