{"id":102400,"date":"2025-05-15T02:47:09","date_gmt":"2025-05-15T02:47:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/102400\/"},"modified":"2025-05-15T02:47:09","modified_gmt":"2025-05-15T02:47:09","slug":"paula-wagners-mission-was-to-help-make-tom-cruise-a-huge-star","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/102400\/","title":{"rendered":"Paula Wagner\u2019s Mission Was To Help Make Tom Cruise A Huge Star"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tEXCLUSIVE<\/strong>: Paula Wagner<\/a>, the onetime budding actress-turned-superagent-turned studio owner in partnership with Tom Cruise<\/a>, who\u00a0helped produce the first three Mission: Impossible<\/a>\u00a0movies, was asked a question several years ago by students at DePaul University in Chicago that she was amply qualified to answer: What is a star?<\/p>\n

\n\tA star, Wagner explained that day, \u201clights up the sky and gives heat and light and energy, and then they burn out.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tGreta Garbo, she observed, \u201cretired at 30.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWhere does Wagner place Cruise, I ask, just as\u00a0Mission: Impossible \u2013 The Final Reckoning\u00a0was having its world premiere at the Cannes Film Festival<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\n\tRELATED: \u2018Mission: Impossible \u2013 The Final Reckoning\u2019 Review: The Sky\u2019s The Limit In Ethan Hunt\u2019s \u2018Last\u2019 Adventure \u2013 Cannes Film Festival<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHe\u2019s Tom Cruise, he is a phenomenon. He really is. And from the moment I met him in July of 1981, he exuded that quality. The difference is that his star is such a great magnitude that it\u2019s not burning out anytime soon,\u201d Wagner declares, referring to her earlier point about Garbo.<\/p>\n

\n\tHis \u201csecret sauce,\u201d she suggests, is that he\u2019s not only \u201can action star, and a real movie star, but he\u2019s a great actor.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHe has the substance, Wagner argues,\u00a0\u201cto match the glitter, the glow, the stardom. He\u2019s a real\u00a0talent, a great producer. I know him as an actor, he was my client, as a producer we were partners, and we\u2019re still good friends.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tTom Cruise in \u2018Taps\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t20th Century Fox<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cHe\u2019s fearless,\u201d states Wagner. \u201cThat was always the concept from the beginning, working with him really early,\u201d noting how she herself studied acting. She\u2019s nutty about Shakespeare and adores a good play or musical. She and I first\u00a0met in connection to her interest in the theatre.<\/p>\n

\n\tRELATED: \u2018Mission: Impossible\u00a0\u2013\u00a0The Final Reckoning\u2019 Director Christopher McQuarrie Reveals Tom Cruise\u2019s Scary New Stunt: \u201cNo One On Earth Can Do That\u201d<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cSo I knew as an actor what a great role was, what you looked for as an actor. And Tom has that instinct, that instinct as an actor. He does the research, he does the work, and he always finds something outstanding to do that demonstrates the essence of who the character is. He physicalizes something. Like\u00a0when you look at\u00a0Risky Business, when he slides across the floor. That moment, one knew \u2014 I knew, everybody knew the moment you saw that \u2014 that this is the star igniting. In every one of these movies he finds something to do physically that expresses the inner life of the character. It says something very human about who people are and how we express ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tTom Cruise in \u2018Risky Business\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tWarner Bros\/Everett Collection<\/p>\n

\n\tWhat\u2019s key is finding the great roles, Wagner says, and working with great directors. \u201cAnd the size of the role, the number of lines is not what\u2019s important. What\u2019s important is the quality in the essence and working with great directors and working with major actors. What did they say? If you\u2019re going to play tennis or do a sport, play with someone better than you.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cBecause when you have high-quality talent together, they all make each other better, and you make each other reach beyond the comfort zone. Actors push past their comfort zone,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

\n\tI\u2019ve often wondered why Cruise\u2019s greatest performances in pictures like Oliver Stone\u2019s\u00a0Born on the Fourth of July,\u00a0Sydney Pollack\u2019s\u00a0The Firm, Rob Reiner\u2019s\u00a0A Few Good Men, Cameron Crowe\u2019s\u00a0Jerry Maguire, Stanley Kubrick\u2019s\u00a0Eyes Wide Shut, the\u00a0Top Gun films, some \u2014 but not all \u2014 of the\u00a0Mission: Impossible\u00a0movies and there are others, are sniffed at by some critics. It often baffles me because he has such a compelling screen presence, a seemingly easy presence that belies the work that has gone into achieving that.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThat\u2019s right \u2014 you can\u2019t take eyes off eyes off him,\u201d she agrees.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhen I originally signed him, he had just done Taps. I saw dailies early on of him in\u00a0Taps. \u2026 and\u00a0then he played an entirely different character in\u00a0Risky Business. And he understands the depth of character. He does the work that an actor needs to do. I represented Oliver Stone and Tom Cruise for\u00a0Born on the\u00a0\u00a0Fourth of July. That\u00a0\u00a0film is a particular passion of mine. And when I read this script that Oliver Stone had written, it was magnificent, \u201c says Wagner, recalling that her conversation with Stone was that \u201cTom should do this. Tom knows how to do this. He has that kind of dimension.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tTom Cruise in \u2018Born on the Fourth of July\u2019 (Universal\/Everett Collection)<\/p>\n

\n\tWagner\u2019s \u201cvery proud \u201c to have been involved with\u00a0Mission: Impossible\u00a0films \u201cfrom Day 1.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tParamount had the rights to Bruce Geller\u2019s story \u201cbecause it was a Cold War television series and it was primitive for now in terms of what we can do with special effects.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSmiling, Wagner, says that members of the\u00a0Impossible Mission\u00a0Force \u201cslip in, they slip out, they fix the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe task, Wagner explains, \u201cwas to take this concept and turn it into a post-Cold War movie that would appeal to the new generation. And it was very challenging.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThere were a lot of naysayers, who asked incredulously, \u2018You\u2019re literally going to take a television series and try to turn it into a movie?\u2019 Well, yes. I always say that Shakespeare took from Plutarch. He took stories from existing intellectual properties, so why can\u2019t we?!\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWagner credits Sherry Lansing, John Goldwyn and the whole team that worked with her at Paramount.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe had been looking for something for Tom to star in, to have a vehicle, to have a franchise, have something. Although the concept of putting a franchise together wasn\u2019t fully there. The film started as a one-off. Tom\u2019s and my approach was, \u2018Let\u2019s make this film as great as we can make it. Let\u2019s make a great movie.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThis was Mission 1. And then go from there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tSitting back in her chair, she reflects that the evolution of the franchise has been \u201camazing,\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tTom Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie, right, on the set of \u2018Mission: Impossible \u2013 Fallout\u2019<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tParamount Pictures\/Skydance<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cThe evolution of what it has done and where it has taken this idea and this concept, and expanded it and made it this viable, beloved international franchise that people all over the world see. It is the quintessential epic\u00a0film experience.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAnd I think it\u2019s everything that we hoped and dreamed and wanted. And I credit Tom and his team for having done such an amazing job and committed so totally to seeing this through.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWagner was involved with the first three films but has obviously kept an eye on, from afar, the subsequent five\u00a0Mission: Impossible\u00a0pictures. She\u2019s \u201cthrilled,\u201d indeed \u201cabsolutely thrilled\u201d about its success\u00a0\u201cand to see what Tom has done with this and his team, and Chris McQuarrie.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tShe\u2019s rightly proud of the work Brian De Palma did on the first movie released in 1996, and she still gets excited by his vision of it, as do I!<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAll the twists and the turns, and it was the first three, which were the ones I was involved with, where it was really finding itself. What is this we asked ourselves? We know it\u2019s something amazing, but what is it and what are the concepts? And who is Ethan Hunt? That was always a big question. And I\u2019m proud of everyone that has taken this series to make it what it is today.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIt\u2019s a movie, and it was always designed that way to bring people into the theater, get them out of their houses into the theater.\u201d she adds.<\/p>\n

\n\tRELATED: As Tom Cruise Brings \u2018Mission: Impossible \u2013 The Final Reckoning\u2019 To Cannes, All Five Franchise Directors Look Back At The Wild Ride<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

\n\tI mention the stellar lineup of actors cast for the first\u00a0Mission: Impossible\u00a0movie. Vanessa Redgrave<\/a>, for starters!<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWhat happened,\u201d Wagner explains, \u201cis her agent called me and said, \u2018Do you have any male roles for Vanessa Redgrave to play? She always likes to play things kind of out of the box that aren\u2019t the obvious.\u2019 I said, \u2018Well, that\u2019s interesting.\u2019 I said, \u2018Let me talk to Tom and Brian.\u2019\u00a0So we all conferred about this. And the idea came up to have her play Max, the villain in\u00a0Mission 1. So that role was originally a man \u2026 but when Vanessa Redgrave wants to play a male role in your film, you go for it,\u201d she shrugs.<\/p>\n

\n\tWagner has had five careers.\u00a0Number 1 was actress. Number 2 was agent \u201cwith CAA, I was\u00a0one of the first female\u00a0agents there, and then producing partner\u00a0with Tom. We started a production company, Cruise Wagner, at Paramount, and then two years\u00a0at United Artists executive co-owner there. Tom and I did that, and then started my own production company and started producing theater in addition to doing movies.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHer Chestnut Ridge Productions keeps her busy.<\/p>\n

\n\tOn top of that Wagner\u2019s now an adjunct professor. \u201cI teach, I\u2019m on the faculty of a graduate course at Carnegie Mellon University,\u201d she tells me.<\/p>\n

\n\tPresumably, she lectures about acting and producing?<\/p>\n

\n\tShaking her head ,\u201dActually, no. [The course is] called Navigating the Practical Realities of the Entertainment Industry.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"\"<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\tTom Cruise greets Cuba Gooding Jr. with a group that includes Jim Carrey and Lauren Holly (standing), Kevin Sessums and Paula Wagner at the 1997 Vanity Fair Oscar Party (Dafydd Jones\/Hollywood Confidential)<\/p>\n

\n\tSo what do you tell them, I wonder?<\/p>\n

\n\tRelishing getting to this moment, Wagner smiles. \u201cI tell them that we are in the midst of a huge disruption, and out of it will come something fascinating. It always does, but you have to navigate your way through what it is now. Because every day something new happens in the business,.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cEvery day there\u2019s something new in the film industry. It\u2019s fascinating. I speak to younger people, and I say to them: \u2018Look, you\u2019re the future leaders. So what you want to be thinking about is, how do you take and understand the past and translate it into the future of it?\u2019 There\u2019s always disruption. And the movie business itself was disrupted. Technology changed theater [on stage]. It used to be that the prime entertainment was the theater that you went to, but that\u2019s the core elements. So I say you go back to the core elements: great actors. You can\u2019t do it without actors. And AI can\u2019t replicate that,\u201d she insists.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cAI,\u201d\u00a0Wagner continues, can\u2019t replicate an emotion \u201cor subtlety or irony \u2014 all of the things that are very human, it can\u2019t do. But I think AI can be our friend. I see it as more something to be in control of. \u2026 I envision it as something that we use as a supplement, as an adjunct to us as human beings, and that it will inspire us to evolve as human beings, our brains, our thoughts, our emotions, who we are, the worlds that we create because we create these worlds ourselves.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tI ponder why doesn\u2019t Trump want\u00a0U.S. citizens to enjoy culture unless it\u2019s on his terms. Why is he taking over these cultural institutions?<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI don\u2019t know. I have never met him. I don\u2019t know what he wants,\u201d she laughs.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI don\u2019t know how you have a world without the arts, but that\u2019s my proclivity,\u201d Wagner adds, sighing.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI think about early humanity where we have\u00a0the cave paintings and drawings and that all of these relics and things that we find ancient, that art was always so much a part of it in some way. And human beings have this need to tell stories. Our lives are stories. We thrive on narrative, and we want to see stories that involve other people and other situations. And the essence of art feeds our soul. And we have to have that. It makes us more human. It helps us to evolve in more positive ways. So I\u2019m a deep believer in the support of the arts. And besides being a producer, film producer, theater producer, et cetera, my passion has always been education and working with students, which is what I do now.\u201c<\/p>\n

\n\tBut that\u2019s not all. Wagner reveals that she\u2019s working on two pieces of work for the stage that will involve her working on them for the West End in London.<\/p>\n

\n\tOne is a stage version of the Fred Zinnemann\u00a0classic High Noon,\u00a0with its screenplay by Carl Foreman. It was adapted from a story by John W. Cunningham.The Oscar-winning screenwriter Eric Roth (Dune: Part One, Forest Gump,Munich) is reassessing the various source materials for the boards. <\/p>\n

\n\tThe other show is still in very early development.<\/p>\n

\n\tPlus, Wagner\u2019s working on another project, with\u00a0husband\u00a0\u00a0Rick Nicita\u00a0and her stepson Jesse Nicita. \u201cIt\u2019s like a family thing,\u201c she adds. \u201cMy other son, Zachary, is a film composer, and I\u2019m working with an amazing writer named Danny Strong.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWe are working on a film about John Fogerty<\/a>, his story and Creedence\u00a0Clearwater Revival.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tFogerty\u2019s music is groundbreaking rock. \u201cIt\u2019s some of the most well-known music in the world, but his story is really interesting. \u2026 This is a man that didn\u2019t\u00a0play, would not play Creedence music for years.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWagner\u2019s\u00a0interests away from the entertainment arena are instructive. I remember, at a performance of musical\u00a0Pretty Woman, which she was producing, introducing her to my wife, and the two of them chatted away about the feminist roots of the piece, each of them citing scholarly feminist texts.<\/p>\n

\n\tBut as we chat over Zoom and as I recall past conversations, and I just love this course in disruption that she\u2019s teaching, I think of politics and diplomacy.<\/p>\n

\n\tHowever, we\u2019re running out of time, so I switch to the age-old question of women and men in the entertainment business, particularly thespians, and why it\u2019s fine for Tom Cruise, for instance, to still be at the front of the field\u00a0at 62 \u2014 and if he wants, he can still get the girl \u2014 but female actors generally get shown show at a much younger age.<\/p>\n

\n\tThere are exceptions, of course. I mention Meryl Streep.\u00a0\u00a0\u201cAbsolutely,\u201d Wagner nods.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWell, I think in the last 40 or so years, it\u2019s been more difficult. Ironically, as women were making more strides in terms of political\u00a0and sociological strides, I think it actually became more difficult for women in film, television, theater to sustain the sustainability. And look at the films this year that really were about women coming to terms with their own youthfulness or age; look\u00a0at Demi Moore, who did an amazing performance in\u00a0The Substance. I was one of her agents over the years, and I\u2019m very proud of her, still going and doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tHowever, Wagner believes \u201cwe\u2019ve stereotyped women. When I first got to New York as an actress, it was so frustrating. I co-wrote a play called\u00a0Out of Our Father\u2019s House based on a book called Growing Up Female in America, which was really a feminist play because women were either the ingenue or the streetwalker or whatever. I mean, it was so stereotypical.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tWarming to the theme, she continues: \u201cI think that was hard for women to get out from under that. It\u2019s almost as we became more liberated as human beings, the roles didn\u2019t follow suit necessarily. Also, a lot of the business is based on data and algorithms, and somehow the data and the algorithms said a movie starring a woman doesn\u2019t do as well at the box office. I mean, there are a few women throughout history that have changed that. So I think it is something to deal with. We\u2019re all acutely aware of it that there need to be more films directed by women. There need to be more leading roles, more films led by women, more starring roles. I don\u2019t have the absolute answer, but I think it\u2019s changing slowly.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"EXCLUSIVE: Paula Wagner, the onetime budding actress-turned-superagent-turned studio owner in partnership with Tom Cruise, who\u00a0helped produce the first…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":102401,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3940],"tags":[45327,5839,4080,47317,77,47318,42516,25206,47319,15763,16,15,47320],"class_list":{"0":"post-102400","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-celebrities","8":"tag-breaking-baz","9":"tag-cannes","10":"tag-celebrities","11":"tag-creedence-clearwater-revival","12":"tag-entertainment","13":"tag-john-fogerty","14":"tag-mission-impossible","15":"tag-mission-impossible-the-final-reckoning","16":"tag-paula-wagner","17":"tag-tom-cruise","18":"tag-uk","19":"tag-united-kingdom","20":"tag-vanessa-redgrave"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114509568196387028","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102400","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102400"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102400\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102401"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102400"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102400"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102400"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}