Tom Cruise has clearly entered a different chapter of his career. We know him as the guy who hangs off airplanes, launches motorcycles off cliffs and talks about movie theaters with the intensity most people reserve for their children. What we have not gotten much of over the years is him simply sitting around doing long-form interviews. Apparently, Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Digger has changed that, too and, as a result, he’s sharing some not-so-fun details on playing the film’s lead character.
After recently hanging out with Taylor Swift at a Kansas City Chiefs game, the Mission: Impossible star sat down with her husband, Travis Kelce, and his brother, Jason, for their New Heights podcast. The conversation turned to Cruise’s physical transformation into Digger Rockwell, and somehow wearing a fake gut and prosthetics sounds almost as miserable as some of his stunts. As he tells it:
The first time I was like, you know, having that extra weight, my knees, I’m wearing the cowboy boots, sitting down. All of a sudden, we had a thing. It was like ‘Digger up, Digger down,’ you know? And I’m sweating, because I’m wearing these prosthetics, and the sea takes you were talking about, they’re long takes, and the rhythm of it and how you really have to know what you’re doing, but I’m sweating underneath.
Cruise is nearly unrecognizable in Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s upcoming black comedy. Digger Rockwell has thinning gray hair, a heavier body and extensive facial prosthetics, leaving very little of the familiar Ethan Hunt silhouette behind.
The Jerry Maguire actor is accustomed to making himself uncomfortable for a movie. Still, there is something uniquely awful about voluntarily wrapping yourself in layers of rubber and padding before performing extended takes under hot lights. Add cowboy boots (which you can get in size popcorn bucket), extra weight putting pressure on his knees and a director famous for elaborate long shots and I understand why the crew developed its own language for getting him out of the thing. The Days of Thunder franchise star continued:
So I came up with all these different things, like cooling machines. I’d be like, ‘Alright let’s Digger up.’ Everyone’s there. Now, we go like, in between a take it’s like, ‘Let’s Digger down.’
Nothing says movie-star glamour like somebody yelling “Digger down!” so your lead can be attached to an industrial cooling system. The challenge did not stop once the makeup was on. He also had to perform a lengthy monologue in the suit, something the Kelce brothers singled out during the conversation. He recalled:
Listen, a ten-minute monologue, one take, in a fat suit! And when you see it… I was like, ‘Oh man,’ because you start sweating. I don’t want to sweat my makeup off.
If the Kelce brothers’ reaction to Digger is any indication, all that sweat and those long hours paid off. Travis even called the movie a “masterpiece.” I’m sure the film had a great script, and Iñárritu is obviously a brilliant filmmaker, but I have to wonder how much of the movie’s magic comes from the man buried under all that makeup.
The Top Gun icon responded to the grueling process the way he seems to approach any complicated problem: by breaking it down. He wanted at least six hours of sleep, shooting could eat up 12 hours of his day, and removing the prosthetics took even more time. Something had to give. Naturally, Cruise treated the makeup routine like Ethan Hunt planning an infiltration of the Kremlin.
He brought in a chalkboard and had each stage timed with a stopwatch. The makeup team practiced the individual steps until the process sped up, eventually cutting what had taken six hours to less than one. According to the Minority Report veteran, they managed that without simply rushing through the work. That may be the most Tom Cruise solution imaginable. The man found himself facing hours in a makeup chair and apparently decided the makeup department needed training drills.
All that work serves a very different kind of performance for the longtime action movie performer. Digger follows an eccentric oil tycoon scrambling to prove he can save humanity after helping cause a massive ecological catastrophe. The cast also includes Sandra Hüller, Riz Ahmed, John Goodman and Jesse Plemons, with Iñárritu directing his first English-language feature since The Revenant.
See Tom Cruise sport that bodysuit and the prosthetics when Digger hits theaters on Oct. 2 as part of the 2026 movie schedule.
