director Christopher McQuarrie has set the record straight on the media’s interest in Tom Cruise.

The filmmaker and Top Gun: Maverick producer, who has worked with Cruise on nine films, spoke candidly about the actor, who is one of Hollywood’s most bankable stars.

McQuarrie’s comments come after it was asked whether the rumour mill surrounding the next two Mission: Impossible films, which have been billed as the final instalments in the franchise, won’t actually be the end for Cruise’s character, Ethan Hunt.

“Let me tell you, I’ve been working with Tom Cruise for 15 years and I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve been standing next to the man, witnessed an event and then read about it in the trades the next day and none of what they describe is actually true,” he told Light the Fuse podcast.

To emphasise his point, McQuarrie decided to share the one story about the actor that was “100 per cent” accurate.

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“We were in Birmingham shooting a scene between Tom and Haley [Atwell],” he explained, adding; “The next day I read an article in the paper that said Tom and four other guests went out to dinner at an Indian restaurant.

“I read that Tom insisted on sitting at a table not in a private room but in the main restaurant with the other diners and that Tom ordered three orders of chicken masala because he liked it so much.”

McQuarrie continued: “I called Tom the next day and said, ‘There’s something weird about this article. It’s 100 per cent factually correct!’ That’s the first time I’ve read an article in which everything happened exactly as written.”

It seems the reason for the news’ accuracy was that the restaurant itself, Asha’s, revealed the detail on its official Twitter page, writing in August 2021: “It was an absolute pleasure to welcome Tom Cruise to Asha’s Birmingham yesterday evening. Tom ordered our famous Chicken Tikka Masala and enjoyed it so much that as soon as he had finished, he ordered it all over again – The greatest compliment.”

Tom Cruise

(AFP via Getty Images)

McQuarrie who oversaw Cruise’s Jack Reacher films, as well as Mission: Impossible instalments Rogue Nation and Fallout, criticised articles about Cruise featuring anonymous sources.

“When you read ‘anonymous sources’ or ‘sources close to the production say,’ that’s somebody putting it out there for a specific reason,” he said. “That’s someone wanting others to think that for a specific reason, and you can never know for sure what those reasons are. You learn to ignore it and laugh at it.”

Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning will be split into two parts, which will be released on 14 July, 2023 and 28 June, 2024.

Listen to the full podcast interview here.