Tom Cruise and George Clooney may seem to have little in common except for this: Pushing through their mid-60s, the two stars proved this year that it’s possible to defy the odds and create strong third acts for their acting careers. And to relish the risks.
Clooney’s Broadway foray was a major success and so was its debut on CNN over the weekend. Having filled its theater for a month, Good Night, and Good Luck was re-invented as live theater on TV. For Clooney, it was a welcome turnaround: Only a year earlier, his popcorn movie with Brad Pitt (Wolfs) had tanked, and he was hearing rumbles about his politics and personal life.
Cruise’s eighth Mission: Impossible re-awakened the global box office yet again, even invading the Guinness Book of Records (do they really chart burning parachute jumps?). But a year ago, his budget was drifting ominously toward $400 million as a result of strikes, the pandemic and his perfectionist stunts that were pushing the envelope.
Their fans thus confront two mythic actors who are proving they can successfully defy Hollywood’s gerontological time table and create their own “end game.”
Third acts in Hollywood have not been easy. Over the years we’ve all played trivia games, bandying about lists of “worst last pictures.” Did Humphrey Bogart really have to go down with The Harder They Fall? Or Marlon Brando with Big Bug Man?
I’ve had candid conversations with actors as they’ve pondered the tactics of bowing out gracefully. “At some point you say to yourself, ‘You’re no longer getting the girl’,” Paul Newman once explained to me. “It becomes ‘character’ over ‘charisma.’” Newman didn’t get the girl in Road to Perdition.
Should John Wayne have hung it up before playing a cancer patient in The Shootist? Cancer caught up with Duke soon thereafter. I’d proposed that True Grit would have been a favored finale.
According to legend, Rita Hayworth knew that Alzheimer’s disease was encroaching when she committed to Wrath of God in 1972. Her dialogue was limited. Jimmy Stewart had promised friends he’d given up acting when he voiced Sheriff Burpe in American Tail. They should have believed him.
Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe in 1961’s ‘The Misfits’
The bizarre John Huston picture The Misfits (1961) reflects the typical problems endangering Hollywood third acts. Huston himself was in fragile health when he recruited Clark Gable for his leading role, despite the fact Gable had retired with serious heart problems. Arthur Miller, the distinguished playwright, had written the misfits screenplay specifically to co-star his wife, Marilyn Monroe — she played a former stripper who fell for Gable, a retired cowboy.
Despite Huston’s prodding, the Gable-Monroe relationship was volatile during the shoot. That was fine by Miller, who’d hoped his wife would quit Hollywood anyway after the movie’s release. To underscore the ill-fated casting, Huston had signed Montgomery Clift for yet another role.
Inevitably, neither critics nor audiences could quite figure out The Misfits. Fans stayed away in droves. Gable died of a heart attack a week after the end of the shoot. Clift was killed in a legendary auto accident a year later. Monroe was to die of an overdose a year after that.
The Misfits was thus consigned to the history books as the ultimate tragic “finale” for movie stars. It reminded many actors to renew their insurance and say no to stressful shoots.
Clooney and Cruise, meanwhile, have made it clear that for them, at least, it’s business as usual. Both are living high-octane lives steeped in complex business and artistic relationships. Cruise has completed an action comedy directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu whose credits include Birdman, a movie about a washed-up Hollywood star. And Chris McQuarrie, his Mission director, says a “gnarly” follow-up to that franchise is in the works.
As for Clooney, several projects are presently in preparation, but he’s made it clear his primary interest is in philanthropy. “After surviving Broadway’s traumas he knows he’s had his share of ‘good luck,’” says one associate. “He’s not prepared for the ‘good night’ part.”
Content shared from deadline.com.