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Tom Cruise has spent over 40 years refining his image into one of Hollywood’s most reliable and enduring stars. He has faced almost every genre there is, from action and science fiction to comedy, romance, and high-stakes drama. Yet there is one kind of film he touched only once and never returned to again.
Legend, directed by Ridley Scott from a screenplay by William Hjortsberg and starring Tom Cruise, Mia Sara, Tim Curry, David Bennent, Alice Playten, Billy Barty, Cork Hubbert, Peter O’Farrell, Annabelle Lanyon, Kiran Shah and Robert Picardo, was released on this day in 1985 (USA) pic.twitter.com/PZLDpuQQn2
— Horror31 🎃 (@Horror31) April 18, 2023
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Tom Cruise & The Troubled Fantasy World of Legend
In 1985, before the world knew him as the daredevil pilot from Top Gun, Cruise appeared in Ridley Scott’s Legend. The film, a fantasy adventure filled with fairies, goblins, and a towering villain played by Tim Curry under heavy makeup, told the story of Cruise’s character Jack trying to save Princess Lili, played by Mia Sara. Though it looked stunning, the movie stumbled at the box office and failed to win audiences, but for Cruise, the experience left a mark he would never forget.
According to Rolling Stone, he later called his role in Legend “another colour in a Ridley Scott painting,” a polite way of saying the film was beautiful to look at but hard to love. The troubled production only added to his frustration. A massive fire destroyed a key set just days before filming was complete. When the movie was finally finished, Scott’s original cut of 125 minutes was trimmed down brutally to 95 minutes in the UK and 89 minutes in the US, leaving much of the story scattered and confused.
