Mickey Rourke Slams Tom Cruise: He’s ‘Irrelevant’ and Has Played the ‘Same Part for 35 Effing Years’

Tom Cruise is the movie star of the year thanks to the billion-dollar grossing success of “Top Gun: Maverick,” but at least one Oscar nominee is not impressed. Mickey Rourke recently appeared on “Piers Morgan Uncensored” and slammed Cruise as “irrelevant,” which is sure to strike many moviegoers as odd considering the “Top Gun” sequel is far and away the biggest movie of the year.

“That doesn’t mean shit to me,” Rourke said about the film’s success. “[Tom Cruise has] been doing the same part for 35 effing years. I got no respect for that. I don’t care about money or power. I care about…when I when I watch Al Pacino or Christopher Walken working, or De Niro’s early work and Richard Harris and Ray Winstone, that’s the kind of actor I want to be like. A lot of guys that tried to stretch as actors.”

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According to Rourke, Cruise has not stretched his acting muscles for the last three decades. When asked if Tom Cruise is a good actor, Rourke fired backed, “I think he’s irrelevant.”

With $1.18 billion at the worldwide box office and nearly $600 million in the U.S., “Top Gun: Maverick” is the highest-grossing movie of 2022 and the biggest film of Cruise’s career. At this rate, only fall tentpoles “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” and “Avatar: The Way of Water” are the contenders to outgross “Top Gun: Maverick.”

While Paramount has not announced any sequel to “Top Gun: Maverick,” co-star Miles Teller recently made headlines by saying he’s already had conversations with Cruise about the next film. Even without a sequel, Cruise has more blockbusters on the horizon as the two-part “Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning” arrives in 2023 and 2024. Those films guarantee Tom Cruise’s star power isn’t going out anytime soon.

Rourke, meanwhile, is starring in Roman Polanski’s new film “The Palace.”

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