Timothée Chalamet says Tom Cruise sent him a list of stunt experts to step up his Old Hollywood game
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Gone are the days of the studio system, when stars were put through rigorous training — some might say light torture — to shine their very brightest. But one movie star who refuses to dim his light is Tom Cruise.
Famous for still doing his own extreme stunts at an age when most people are contemplating retiring, Cruise is like a modern-day Errol Flynn...without the debilitating alcoholism. And in that grand tradition of Old Hollywood, Cruise passed on some of his hard-earned knowledge from his many years in the game to a young Timothée Chalamet.
In a new profile from GQ, Chalamet reveals the email of Cruise-approved stunt experts the Top Gun sent him that really lit a fire under him.
JC Olivera/Getty Images; Marilla Sicilia/Archivio Marilla Sicilia/Mondadori Portfolio via Getty Images Tom Cruise and Timothée Chalamet
"After I met Tom Cruise, right after finishing the first Dune, he sent me the most wonderfully inspiring email," Chalamet said. The email contained all the experts he might need for stunt training, from a motorcycle coach to a helicopter coach.
Chalamet continued, "He basically said, in Old Hollywood, you would be getting dance training and fight training, and nobody is going to hold you to that standard today. So it's up to you. The email was really like a war cry."
Cruise has got a point. The triple threats in the Golden Age of Hollywood were actual threats. You couldn't throw tap shoe on the MGM lot without hitting someone who could sing, dance, and act the house down.
While filming Dune: Part Two, Chalamet went full Cruise control, watching Top Gun: Maverick eight times over the production, even renting out a movie theater in Budapest for the entire Dune cast and crew to see what he regards as "one of the greatest films I've ever seen."
According to Dune: Part Two director Denis Villeneuve, all that Cruise-fluence really helped and made the 27-year-old into "a real leading actor on this film."
"Action-wise," Villeneuve told GQ, "I felt that he was much more trained than in Part One, and ready for the fighting sequences. I was impressed by his level of discipline for Part Two."
Good for Timothée Chalamet, honing new aspects of his craft and what not. Though if we're being honest, the kid didn't need any help in the dancing department:
Tom Cruise could never.
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