For much of the past 15 years, Tom Cruise has been in all-action mode. There are all his Mission: Impossible<\/em> collaborations with Christopher McQuarrie, his return to the cockpit in Top Gun: Maverick<\/em>, interspersed with the time-looping alien warfare of Edge Of Tomorrow<\/em> and outings as the cinematic Jack Reacher. All of which might make you think, it\u2019s been a long time since he did something like the upcoming Digger<\/em> \u2013 a big, wild, out-there character performance, with director Alejandro G. I\u00f1\u00e1rritu aiming that signature Cruise charisma in a very different direction. Except, the truth is, nobody \u2013 not even Tom Cruise \u2013 has made something like Digger<\/em> before.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n As the star tells Empire<\/em>, the process of crafting this larger-than-life character was \u201ca real leap into the unknown,\u201d from which all his other projects were the runway. \u201cIt took all of my knowledge, from all of the years of every film I made, to be able to play this character and fulfil the ambition of this movie,\u201d he says. So, who is Digger Rockwell? The literal answer is, an uber-powerful oil tycoon who\u2019s in it up to his neck. The truthful answer? Our doom, and perhaps our saviour too; the best of us, and the worst of us; an American nightmare at the apex of the American dream. Cruise knew he wanted in. \u201c[I\u00f1\u00e1rritu] showed me, \u2018Here\u2019s kind of the character that I want,\u2019\u201d he recalls. \u201cI was like, \u2018Let\u2019s fucking go.\u2019 I couldn\u2019t wait.\u201d<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n Key to crafting that character was a very special script-read \u2013 with I\u00f1\u00e1rritu performing the screenplay aloud to Cruise across several days. \u201cI\u2019ve always done that,\u201d says Cruise. \u201cI want the writer to read me his idea, because then I can see where we\u2019re going. We\u2019re exploring rhythms, and I\u2019m feeling the world. I\u2019m literally an audience. I want to hear his voice. I want to understand, and see the world the way he sees it.\u201d The seeds of Digger<\/em> were planted there, and continued to flourish as Cruise found his way into the physicality of the character. \u201cI can change the voice and as the make-up\u2019s coming on, you start feeling the movement, you put the suit on, the boots, and I find my own rhythm with it,\u201d he says. Tom Cruise has left the building; Digger Rockwell has arrived. And, action!<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Read Empire<\/em>\u2019s world-exclusive Digger cover story \u2013 speaking to Tom Cruise, Alejandro G. I\u00f1\u00e1rritu, Sandra H\u00fcller, Riz Ahmed and more \u2013 in the October 2026 issue, on sale Thursday August 27. Pre-order a copy online here. Digger<\/em> comes to UK cinemas from October 2.<\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" For much of the past 15 years, Tom Cruise has been in all-action mode. There are all his Mission: Impossible collaborations with Christopher McQuarrie, his return to the cockpit in Top Gun: Maverick, interspersed with the time-looping alien warfare of Edge Of Tomorrow and outings as the cinematic Jack Reacher. All of which might make […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":13169,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"Default","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-13168","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-47"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13168","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=13168"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13168\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":13170,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/13168\/revisions\/13170"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/13169"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=13168"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=13168"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=13168"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"Empire](\"https:\/\/imdbnews.ir\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/digger-is-a-leap-into-the-unknown-for-tom-cruise-it-took-all-of-my-knowledge.jpg\")
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