Actor Tom Cruise is an icon, who has managed to become a worldwide superstar over the past four decades. He made countless friends in the industry who have been supporting the actor for quite some time now. Actor Curtis Armstrong worked with Cruisse in 1983’s Risky Business and around that time, he closely observed Tom Cruise.
In his 2017 memoir, Revenge Of The Nerd, Armstrong revealed a lot of information about Cruise, including how he balanced “Bible studies and B**wjobs.” In the memoir, the actor also explained the friendship between actor Sean Penn and Tom Cruise, and how Penn bagged a cameo in 1983’s Risky Business.
Sean Penn had a Cameo in Risky Business (1983)
In actor Curtis Armstrong’s 2017 memoir, Revenge Of The Nerd, he talked about the time he worked with actors Sean Penn and Tom Cruise in Risky Business (1983). Armstrong recalled that Penn was in town when he and Cruise were filming,
“During that summer we were shooting in Chicago, and Sean Penn was also in town filming Bad Boys. Tom and Sean knew each other from Taps and had bonded closely during filming. Sean, who turned 22 that August, seemed to spend any time he wasn’t needed on his set hanging around ours with Tom. Sean would hang out on set with Tom and actually appears in the movie in an ‘uncredited cameo,’ driving Joel’s (Cruise) Porsche out of the garage. Why this was done escapes me. Sean probably just wanted to drive the Porsche.”
Sean Penn’s cameo was missed by a lot of people, but it only happened because Cruise and Penn were close friends who bonded while working in 1981’s Taps.
Was Sean Penn a Bad Influence?
Further in the memoir, Armstrong explained that whenever Penn visited Cruise, his neat and tidy room would quickly become a typical messy bachelor pad,
“I spent a fair amount of time in Tom’s room and was always struck by how neat and well-kept it was. Going into the room just a couple of days after Sean’s arrival was a revelation. It looked like someone had blown up a convention of rising young ’80s actors. There were clothes covering the entire floor. There was a heady scent to the place, too: a rich musk of dirty laundry, cigarette smoke, alcohol, and young white male. The curtains were drawn against the light no matter what time it was. The two of them, like as not, would either still be in bed or lounging in underwear. It looked like a Calvin Klein ad.”
Even in Risky Business, fans got to see Cruise sporting Ray-Bans while dancing in his underwear. In a way, that particular scene massively boosted the sales of the sunglasses brand.
Tom Cruise Frequently Invited Multiple Women to His House
In the memoir, Armstrong also revealed that Cruise would often back out from plans claiming that he has to read the Bible before bed, however, the actor once saw a woman leaving his house,
“I would ask him at the end of the day if he would like to join us at the bar for a drink. ‘No,’ I recall him saying, ‘Got an early call tomorrow. Got to work out still, study my lines. And then I like to read the Bible a little before bed.'” When Armstrong stopped by Cruise’s house later, he discovered something else, “I found three or four young girls – late teens, I suspect – lined up in the hall outside of Tom’s room. They just stared at me, and at that moment, Tom’s door opened and another girl came out, adjusting her hair and taking off down the hall, while the first girl in line slipped into Tom’s room. This was a young man who knew something about time management and understood how to successfully juggle Bible study and b**wjobs. I went to bed alone that night thinking it served me right for not being religious.”
Cruise’s looks are one of the main reasons behind his successful career. Combined with his remarkable acting skills, he has managed to prove himself as one of the biggest stars in the history of Hollywood.
Source: Revenge of the Nerd: Or . . . The Singular Adventures of the Man Who Would Be Booger by Curtis Armstrong via The Hollywood Reporter
