Tom Cruise Built a 6-Hour Film School for Friends—Urges Actors to Master Tech

Tom Cruise is urging the next generation of actors to look beyond acting classes and learn the full craft of filmmaking. While accepting a British Film Institute Fellowship, Cruise criticized film schools for failing to teach practical tools like lighting, lenses, and editing to aspiring performers.

“There is tech,” Cruise said. “It’s like understanding the stage, but a lot of artists are never taught how to understand the lens, what it can do, and how eye movement affects a scene.”

Cruise believes mastering filmmaking tools is essential to becoming a complete actor. He encourages young artists to spend time in editing rooms, study old films, and learn the purpose behind camera angles and lighting choices. “Brando absolutely understood lighting,” he said. “All the greats did.”

To help others, Cruise even created a six-hour film school video for close friends. His Top Gun: Maverick co-star Glen Powell watched it in a theater alone, calling it part film school and part flight school. “He explained what a plane is, how air pressure works… It was like a crash course in everything,” Powell said.

Cruise also shared his formula for global box office success: “Movies have to telegraph universal emotions and speak to shared anxieties.”

Cruise’s next major film, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, hits U.S. theaters on May 23.