Interview with the Vampire Awoke Something Fierce in Tom Cruise

30 Years Ago, Interview with the Vampire Awoke Something Beautifully Fierce in Tom Cruise

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Upon its release in 1994, Neil Jordan’s Interview with the Vampire was riddled with so many controversies that it’s a wonder the film ever made it to release. After a 20-year production limbo that allowed both the fans of the beloved Anne Rice novel and the author herself to stew in their expectations, Jordan was approached by Warner Bros to take the reins after the success of 1992’s The Crying Game, which saw the director earn a whole host of Oscar and BAFTA nominations. With wind in his sails and a healthy $70 million budget in his back pocket—an amount previously unheard of for something as tawdry as a “vampire movie”—Jordan set forth to create one of the most sumptuous Gothic horrors ever to be made, but he almost immediately faced intense criticism for his casting choices.

Opening in late 20th century San Francisco, Interview with the Vampire begins with the (uncharacteristically gregarious toward humans) vampire Louis de Pointe du Lac, played by a wooden Brad Pitt, recounting his life to bright, young journalist Daniel Molloy (played by Christian Slater, taking over from a recently deceased River Phoenix). Molloy is initially disbelieving of Louis’ story—a 200+ year old vampire coming to San Francisco of all places to ask a young reporter to document his several lifetimes? Well, it sounds more like a fever dream or the result of a particularly bad trip than it does reality. But Molloy is quickly swept up in this story of bloodlust and revenge, particularly entranced by the mention of the fascinating Lestat de Lioncourt, Louis’ vampire mentor played by none other than Tom Cruise.

When Cruise, the A-list star of everything from Cocktail to Risky Business, was announced to be playing Lestat, fans were immediately in uproar. Anne Rice herself publicly criticized the decision, calling it a “bizarre” choice (she would later retract these comments and apologize to Cruise in an eight page ad after seeing the finished product). Since the character’s first introduction in Rice’s 1976 novel and his subsequent appearances in the later additions to her Vampire Chronicles, Lestat had amassed a legion of devoted fans whose love for the anti-hero could only be surpassed by the author herself. In fact, Rice was so particular about how Lestat should be portrayed that she adapted her novel for the screen with specific actors in mind: She initially wanted French actor Alan Delon to play Lestat before championing Julian Sands for the role. By the early ’90s, Cruise had already crafted a very particular image of himself as a golden boy of Hollywood, and this image was the furthest thing from Rice’s mind when she pictured Lestat on screen. Cruise was the plucky it-boy of cinema, riding high on the success of films like Top Gun and Born on the Fourth of July, the latter of which earned him an Oscar nomination for Best Actor. His clean-cut, all-American persona seemed completely at odds with the muddy, toxic personality of French aristocrat Lestat, but Cruise gave a performance so beguiling that most of his detractors were eventually forced to eat their words.

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Everything that made Cruise attractive in his previous roles makes him equally as terrifying in this one. Rather than a charming hero, Cruise played the charming villain, all twinkling eyes and mischievous smiles in his quest to find a suitable eternal companion. When we first see Lestat on screen, it is a delicate, porcelain hand resting on a mahogany bannister that we see as the vampire looks down on a reckless and suicidal Louis gambling with his life at a bar. He watches transfixed, and so do we. One look at Lestat and Louis is immediately captured in his web of wickedness, enthralled by this pale creature who claims to be the answer to his prayers. Later, when he appears at Louis’ bedside, veiled by the wispy curtains and tempting him with the promise of a release from the pain of living, he comes across as some kind of angel of darkness.

That anyone had ever opposed Cruise’s casting in the film feels ridiculous in retrospect. Now, 30 years after the film was first released, Cruise’s performance as the horrifying villain is considered the defining feature of the film, especially because it marked such a departure from the kinds of roles that Cruise had garnered a reputation for playing. That Jordan could convince this budding star to be part of his film speaks to Cruise’s early bravery in branching out as an actor. The easy flamboyance and exuberance with which he embraced grotesque horror made Interview with the Vampire stand out in his filmography. Gone were his typical, somewhat stagnant hero roles, and in their place lay a complex, queer-coded monster who is, for all intents and purposes, also the villain of this story. Captured through a jaded Louis’ eyes, Lestat is a cold and calculating killer, unconcerned about damning Louis to an eternity of undeath alongside him, and Cruise embodied these traits with ease. Lestat is animated in his brutality, playful in his villainy; he revels in the theatricality of killing and takes pleasure in his role as both the giver and taker of life. There is very little sympathy to be found for Cruise’s version of Lestat, and that’s part of his design. When he waltzes around a room with the recently deceased corpse of a young girl’s mother, singing and cackling with glee, the sight is so jarring that you almost forget it’s Tom Cruise underneath all those lacy ruffles.

In the lush setting of Rice’s decadent vampire world, Cruise is the antithesis of everything he usually represents on screen. The hyper-masculine machismo of Maverick is swapped out for a more alluring character who is defined as much by his temperamental personality as he is by his mane of blond curls and the plethora of billowing white shirts that adorn his frame. Lestat is just as seductive as he is terrifying, and he is explicit in his desire to find an eternal companion he can mold in his own image. Just as Louis breaks free of Lestat’s spell, he is reeled back in by an impossible situation: Lestat has turned a young girl named Claudia into a vampire with the promise that he and Louis will raise her as their own. This action captures the lengths to which Lestat is willing to go in order to avoid an eternity of loneliness, revealing the inherent tragedy behind the character. That Cruise managed to pull off such a captivating and layered performance while acting opposite a very obviously uninterested Brad Pitt feels like an achievement. Where Pitt delivers his lines as though he was forced onto set every day against his will, Cruise delivers his with a buoyancy and verve that is matched only by the scene-stealing performance given by a very young Kirsten Dunst as Claudia.

To a modern audience, Cruise’s choice to play Lestat may feel a little on-the-nose. Like Cruise, Lestat is shrouded in mystery and as a character who has ties to a secret society, who hides in the shadows and is constantly performing when he does make public appearances, Lestat is perhaps the closest in character to Cruise’s own public persona, but this just adds to the mysterious allure of the role. In the years following Interview with the Vampire, Cruise would turn down the opportunity to reprise his role as the vampire Lestat and instead continue carving out a niche for himself as an irreplaceable action star who does all his own stunts. His next film would see him find his forever role as Ethan Hunt, the intrepid young agent in Brian De Palma’s Mission: Impossible (1996). Cruise wasn’t to know it at the time, but he would spend the next 30 years perfecting this hyper-masculine character in order to keep the Mission: Impossible franchise alive, and maybe even to erase any memory of the more effeminate version of Cruise captured in Jordan’s film. But try as he might to dazzle audiences with death-defying stunts, each more preposterous than the last, his brief turn as the formidable Lestat de Lioncourt is still the most tantalizing performance he has given yet.

Nadira Begum is a freelance film critic and culture writer based in the UK. To see her talk endlessly about film, TV, and her love of vampires, you can follow her on Twitter (@nadirawrites) or Instagram (@iamnadirabegum).

30 Years Ago, Interview with the Vampire Awoke Something Beautifully Fierce in Tom Cruise