Tom Cruise from The Outsiders (courtesy OutsidersHouse)
Highlights
- Rob Lowe co-starred with Tom Cruise in 1983 film 'The Outsiders'
- It marked Tom Cruise's third film
- Tom Cruise was around 18 when he auditioned for the movie
Actor Rob Lowe, who co-starred with Tom Cruise in the Top Gun star's third ever film The Outsiders, shared an interesting anecdote from the Eighties. Tom Cruise, who must have been around 18 and just two-films-old in Hollywood, apparently didn't like the idea of sharing a room with Rob Lowe during their trip to New York for The Outsiders after the auditions in Los Angeles. Speaking on podcast show Armchair Expert With Dax Shepard, Rob Lowe recalled his experience of his trip to The Big Apple years ago and said: "All of the LA people survived the LA auditions, and then the hand-picked people had to go to New York to face the New York version. So it was me and Tom Cruise and Emilio (Estevez) and C Thomas Howell... first time I ever stayed at The Plaza Hotel, and we check-in and Tom finds out that we're sharing a room and just goes ballistic," People quoted him as saying on the show.
The Outsiders, which is based on SE Hinton's 1967 book of the same name, had Tom Cruise, who was just a rising star, play the role of Steve Randle while Rob Lowe featured in a relatively more significant role as one of the greasers - Sodapop Curtis. The movie released in 1983, when Tom Cruise was almost 21.
In his interview, Rob Lowe added that while he was taken aback by the then budding star's behaviour, he remembered thinking to himself: "Wow, this guy is the real deal. I mean it made me laugh, it was gnarly. But in the end of it, you can't argue with the results. He's had his eye on the ball since day one," People quoted him as saying.
Referring to Tom Cruise's roles in his first two films Endless Love and Taps and his eventual journey to stardom, Rob Lowe added: "To me, what's great about the story is, there are certain people who have always been who they are, and that element of them has powered them to where they are today and the rest is history. And the notion that an 18-year-old actor with a walk-on part in Endless Love and like a 7th lead in Taps could have that kind of like wherewithal."
On the work front, Tom Cruise was last seen in Mission: Impossible - Fallout and will return as naval pilot Captain Peter Mitchell in Top Gun: Maverick, slated for June 2020.