The actor Paul Thomas Anderson compared to Jesus: “Because he is, you know?”

Posted On February 12, 2025February 12, 2025

Following in the footsteps of great filmmakers like Robert Altman, Paul Thomas Anderson has become known for working with large ensemble casts, allowing the stories of various characters to weave and interact with one another. You could say that Anderson is a real actor’s director, making sure that he squeezes the best performances out of his stars as possible.

As a result of his incredible directorial skills, Anderson has repeatedly worked with some of Hollywood’s most impressive actors, like Daniel Day-Lewis and Philip Seymour Hoffman (it seems he has a thing for actors with three names, like himself). Knowing how to connect with his stars and work with them to coax out stunningly complex character studies, Anderson has subsequently made movies featuring some of cinema’s most breathtaking performances, like There Will Be Blood, Boogie Nights, The Master, and Phantom Thread. He even gave Adam Sandler a career-defining serious role in 2002’s Punch Drunk Love that, quite frankly, shocked everyone.

Evidently, Anderson knows how to get what he wants from an actor. Yet, there’s one star he has only worked with once that he was bold enough to compare to Jesus. He told Rolling Stone in 2000, “Tom Cruise is the fucking greatest of all time, ever, ever, EVER.” The director cast Cruise in his 1999 film Magnolia, with the actor playing Frank TJ Mackey, a motivational speaker.

“It’s like, no kid thinks he’s going to be president of the United States, you know what I mean? No kid thinks he’s going to get Tom Cruise in his movie. He’s like, ‘What do you want me to do, do you want me to stand on my head, do you want me to do back flips? I’ll do it. I’ll do anything you want,’” Anderson explained.

Cruise really will do anything a director wants, it seems, as evidenced by his propensity for undertaking his own stunts in the Mission: Impossible franchise. He has climbed the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world, and he has put himself in many life-threatening situations, from hanging off planes to riding a motorcycle on a cliff.

“He is the guy you think he is, in terms of, ‘Let’s go get ’em, let’s do the best we can and try as hard as we possibly can’ – he is that guy to a tee. I met his mother for the first time the other night, and I said I find it very ironic that her name is Mary, considering that she gave birth to Jesus, because he is, you know?” the director continued. 

Cruise is a Hollywood icon, there’s no doubt about it, having risen to prominence in the 1980s with roles in popular films like Top Gun. While the actor has caused considerable controversy due to his dedication to Scientology and his incredibly polished Hollywood persona (Christian Bale was even inspired by Cruise when playing Patrick Bateman in American Psycho), Anderson is under the impression that he is truly one of the best actors of his generation.

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