Not only does Tom Cruise have his head in the clouds, he himself spends a lot of time in the sky, risking his life for the stunts he refuses to get a stunt double for! Now, while the actor has achieved great heights (pun intended) in his career in the entertainment industry, controversies have followed him since time immemorial.
Tom Cruise
One such controversy took place when Tom Cruise while laughing hysterically, described a time when he put a passenger’s life at risk on an airplane. While the actor was flying a plane, he realized there wasn’t enough oxygen and so, he decided to turn it off for the passenger at the back. Even though Tom Cruise laughed about the incident, people obviously couldn’t see the humor in it. In fact, Christian Bale revealed that he got the inspiration to play the psychotic Patrick Bateman in American Psycho from this very interview!
Tom Cruise Put a Passenger’s Life at Risk
Tom Cruise laughs as he recalls the incident
What started off as an innocent interview with David Letterman, soon took a sinister turn. While recalling an incident where he was in charge of flying a plane, Tom Cruise stated that they had to go on oxygen because of high altitudes. However, he soon realized that they can’t stay at that altitude because of a lack of oxygen in the aircraft. His solution? Turn the oxygen off for the passenger at the back.
“I fly, I am a pilot. One time we were flying to Colorado and I was flying this airplane and we had to go to oxygen. Winds are better at higher altitudes, so we climbed up. I realised we couldn’t stay at that altitude…because we didn’t have enough oxygen. So, [we] had a passenger at the back. We figured ot , you know, me and the co-pilot, that we turned the oxygen off for the back guy, we could make it at this altitude.”
As if things couldn’t get worse, Cruise couldn’t stop laughing as he remembered the state of the passenger who slept throughout the flight. This baffled Letterman who stated, “You just turned a guy’s oxygen off” and added that Cruise was lucky he didn’t get booked for attempted manslaughter.
Christian Bale Found Inspiration in Tom Cruise
Christian Bale as Patrick Bateman in American Psycho (2000)
Inspiration can be found anywhere if you are willing to look for it hard enough. The same went for Christian Bale who found his inspiration in the renowned actor. Well yeah, the inspiration was for a psychotic character, but inspiration is inspiration, right?
American Psycho’s director, Mary Harron, stated in an interview with BlackBook how Cruise unknowingly inspired Bale for Patrick Bateman.
“We talked about how Martian-like Patrick Bateman was, how he was looking at the world like somebody from another planet, watching what people did and trying to work out the right way to behave. And then one day he called me and he had been watching Tom Cruise on David Letterman, and he just had this very intense friendliness with nothing behind the eyes, and he was really taken with this energy.”
Well, with the way Cruise recalled the “Attempted manslaughter,” during the interview, can you really blame Bale? It’s pretty weird to think Bale found his serial-killer inspiration in Cruise rather than an actual serial killer!
