When Neil Jordan‘s “Interview With the Vampire” film adaptation released in 1994, Tom Cruise was already a worldwide star. He had led the highly successful “Risky Business” and “Top Gun” and received an Oscar nomination for “Born on the Fourth of July.” But, not everyone was convinced he could play the titular vampire, Lestat de Lioncourt, and his casting caused a considerable amount of backlash among fans of Anne Rice’s original book.
In an excerpt from his new memoir published in The Telegraph, director Jordan reflected on his decision to cast Cruise opposite Brad Pitt and the outrage that followed, recalling how he originally offered the role to Daniel Day-Lewis.
“The problem was the casting of Lestat. Brad Pitt had agreed to play Louis and somehow assumed Daniel Day-Lewis would be playing Lestat, an assumption shared by Anne. I offered it to Daniel, who read it, and, as I expected, didn’t want to play the character,” Jordan wrote. “A few years before, he had confined himself to a wheelchair to play Christy Brown in ‘My Left Foot.’ He would have had to sleep in a coffin for the entirety of this production if he followed the same practice. So we moved on.”
After meeting with Cruise twice at his house in Brentwood, Jordan realized that the actor actually had a lot in common with Lestat, something that made him sure of his decision.
“I finally got it,” Jordan wrote. “He had to live a life removed from the gaze of others. He had made a contract with the hidden forces, whatever they turned out to be. He had to hide in the shadows, even in the Hollywood sunlight. He would be eternally young. He was a star. He could well be Lestat.”
Jordan noted that Cruise is “also a superb actor,” but “that small fact got lost in the outrage that followed.”
“Half of America, it seemed, had read Anne Rice’s books and wanted a say in the casting of Lestat,” he continued. “Anne herself took to the airwaves, saying that it was as if I had cast Edward G Robinson as Rhett Butler. But she was wrong and was later big enough to admit it.”
Of course, Cruise’s performance later came to be appreciated by critics and is one of the defining roles in his oeuvre. Jordan further expanded on the topic in an interview with The Guardian, saying that “it must have been very difficult” for Cruise amid the backlash.
“The entire world said, ‘You are miscast,’” Jordan said. “He’s a great actor. If he says he can do something, he will do it in a way that people will be shocked by. Tom has become the last remaining film star. It’s kind of strange.”
Pitt, who joined the film straight after “Legends of the Fall,” was exhausted by the night shoots and the character’s nature, Jordan said. “It simply wore him out. Brad’s a very active guy, that was the direction he wanted to go in. The passivity of the character got him down.”
Jordan’s next film is “The Well of Saint Nobody,” adapted from the director’s acclaimed 2023 novel of the same name.
Jordan’s “Amnesiac: A Memoir” will be published by Head of Zeus on June 20.