Tom Cruise Undergoes Dramatic Transformation for Role as Aging Oil Tycoon

Tom Cruise has undergone a significant physical transformation for his role as Digger Rockwell in Alejandro González Iñárritu's upcoming film, tentatively titled "Digger." The actor appears unrecognizable in trailers, sporting thinning white hair, a prosthetic pot belly, and adopting a thick Southern accent.

Cruise's character is an oil tycoon and billionaire who accidentally triggers a global ecological crisis. To achieve the look, he wore a bodysuit to simulate weight gain and prosthetics to age him. Initially, the makeup and prosthetics process took six hours daily. Cruise, however, worked with the team to streamline the application, aiming to reduce it significantly to accommodate the demanding filming schedule. He described the process of optimizing the makeup application on Travis and Jason Kelce's "New Heights" podcast, explaining how he timed the application and practiced to make it more efficient.

"The first time we did the makeup, it took six hours," Cruise said. "I gotta sleep at least six. They keep saying I need more… but OK, that's 12. Now, we have 12-hour days filming. So now that's six hours on, two hours off with the makeup."

He added, "I had a guy there with a stopwatch and I'm like, 'OK, you see that time, six hours? By the time we're done, we're going to get it under an hour.' They were like, 'No, I'm not doing that, it will never happen.' So with each piece that was going on, it was timed and then we'd drill and practice."

Cruise also developed methods to cope with the heat generated by the prosthetics during filming, mentioning the use of cooling machines. The film, described with the tagline "a comedy of catastrophic proportions," sees Digger tasked by the U.S. President, played by John Goodman, to save the planet.

This transformation marks a departure from Cruise's typical action-hero roles and highlights the extent actors will go to for character portrayal. Other Hollywood figures have also undergone extensive makeovers for their roles. Jacob Elordi, for instance, had 42 separate prosthetic pieces applied for his role as Frankenstein's creature in Guillermo del Toro's upcoming remake, a process that took approximately ten hours daily. Christian Bale famously lost 62 pounds for his role in "The Machinist," subsisting on as little as 200 calories a day. Matthew McConaughey shed 40 pounds for "Dallas Buyers Club" and later gained 47 pounds for "Gold." Michael Fassbender lost nearly 40 pounds in ten weeks for "Hunger," and Chris Hemsworth underwent a significant weight loss for "In the Heart of the Sea."