Tom Cruise

Cruise plays Brian Flanagan in the romantic drama Cocktail, based on the book of the same name by Heywood Gould. Flanagan leaves the Army to move to New York. When he realizes he has no experience for his dream job, he pursues a business degree. For work, he picks up bartending. His boss Douglas Coughlin (Bryan Brown) teaches him the secrets of the bar trade such as performing bartending tricks, like spinning, twirling and juggling bottle, and they become the most famous bartenders in town, which leads him to travel to Jamaica and fall in love. Co-starring Elizabeth Shue. Bar Olympics champion John Bandy:

Tom was a regular guy and we got along really well. He’s ambidextrous, which made him a quick learner. I remember Tom and Bryan had a bet to see who would break more things as we practiced. But it was hard to score because one of them would drop something and it would bounce down the bar and smash a lot of stuff.

Cruise plays Lieutenant and fighter pilot Pete “Maverick” Mitchell in this drama, directed by Jerry Bruckheimer, about a team of Navy pilots at the Miramar training facility. Maverick is continually battling for supremacy among the other Top Gun pilots and reprimanded for his recklessness. He also begins and affair with one of the instructors, played by Kelly McGillis. After an accident kills Goose, his co-pilot, Maverick has to reassess his attitudes.  Co-starring Anthony Edwards, Tom Skerritt, Val Kilmer and and Meg Ryan. Bruckheimer:

We sent him down to El Centro, and he jumped in the back of that jet and just had the ride of his life.  At the time, he had shoulder-length hair, and [the Navy pilots] said, ‘We’re going to take this hippie for a real ride,’ and they just blasted him through the air and did rolls and did all kinds of crazy stuff with him.  He got on the ground and walked over to a phone booth – we didn’t have cell phones in those days. He calls me up, he says, ‘I’m doing it.’ [Laughs] That was it.

Cruise plays Joel Goodson, a privileged suburban teen whose parents go out of town and leave him in charge of the house and his meeting with an interviewer from Princeton.  When he calls a prostitute, played by Rebecca DeMornay,  Joel get far more trouble than he bargained for, but also finds the self confidence to deal with the interview.

Oh my God.  Rebecca had already been cast. They wanted to see the two of us together. I tested, and to make a short story long, we didn’t test that well. Paul just believed in me. I told him exactly what I was going to do. We talked about it for a long time and he trusted me.