Thandie Newton says she was 'scared of Tom Cruise' on 'Mission: Impossible 2'
Thandie Newton has revealed that she was 'scared' of Tom Cruise while making Mission: Impossible 2, and was not invited back for a second movie.
The Westworld star played pro-thief Nyah Nordoff-Hall in the movie, recruited by Cruise's Ethan Hunt to avert a pandemic instigated by Dougray Scott's villain Sean Ambrose.
However, the movie, directed by Hong Kong action icon John Woo, was a 'nightmare' experience for Newton, notably one scene shot in Spain.
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“I was so scared of Tom,” she told Vulture. “He was a very dominant individual. He tries superhard to be a nice person. But the pressure. He takes on a lot. And I think he has this sense that only he can do everything as best as it can be done.”
Newton explains that the scene – for which she hated the lines – was not going well, with Cruise getting more and more frustrated, eventually insisting they rehearse the scene on camera, but switch around their roles.
Woo, meanwhile, who did not speak English, watched the scene on monitors in a separate room a floor below them.
“It just pushed me further into a place of terror and insecurity. It was a real shame. And bless him. And I really do mean bless him, because he was trying his damnedest,” she added.
But the tension of the situation emerged in a particularly unusual way, Newton goes on to say.
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“I remember at the beginning of the night, seeing this slight red mark on his nose, and by the end of the night, I kid you not — this is how his metabolism is so fierce — he had a big whitehead where that red dot was,” she say.
“It would take anyone else 48 hours to manifest a zit. I saw it growing, and it was like the zit was me, just getting bigger and bigger.”
She adds that Cruise 'wasn’t horrible... it was just — he was really stressed. I had the most extraordinary time'.
You can check out the full interview here...