A title he didn't want

Called the 'last movie star' in a new GQ interview, Tom Cruise pushed back instead of accepting it. His counterexample was his old friend Brad Pitt.

The rare sit-down

The 64-year-old gave an extensive interview to GQ's Zach Baron, published Tuesday, and stripped off for the accompanying shoot. He talks to press like this maybe once a decade.

Baron's framing

Baron put the label on him directly: the last of a species of actor who can open a film on his name alone. Cruise heard it and immediately started listing other people.

“the 'last movie star'”

He named Pitt first

Asked to accept the crown, Cruise went straight to the 62-year-old star of F1 and called him the real thing on every axis he cares about.

“Brad Pitt is a great actor, great star, great charisma and there's many, many, many”

Stardom as a skill

Cruise's answer turned technical fast. He described filmmaking as a trade you pick up on set from people who already know it, not a quality you're born holding.

“you're learning it is a skill making films”

Learning since 1981

He pointed back to his earliest sets, where he was a kid watching craftsmen work. The point was that those craftsmen had learned from someone too.

“it's not just 1981 where they're there... it's generational”

Learn it, then own it

Cruise's version of the job: absorb what the previous generation knew, then bend it into something that's yours. A chain, not a last link.

“you're learning from other people, and then you're making it your own”

One film together

For all the mutual respect, Cruise and Pitt have shared the big screen exactly once, in 1994's Interview with the Vampire.

Lestat and Louis

Cruise played Lestat de Lioncourt, the French vampire dragging Louis into his misadventures. Pitt was Louis de Pointe du Lac, an 18th-century drunkard Lestat turned.

Thirty years of friendship

They orbited the same Hollywood for decades, photographed together with Nicole Kidman in 1998 and still showing up for each other.

The F1 red carpet

Cruise joined Pitt on the London red carpet for the F1 premiere in June 2025, a public show of support that got its own news cycle.

A harder thing in common

Both men are also fathers whose children have legally walked away from their surnames. That parallel runs through the rest of the story.

Suri became Suri Noelle

In July, Cruise and Katie Holmes's 20-year-old daughter legally dropped his last name, taking her mother's middle name instead.

The paper trail

She registered to vote in Pennsylvania as Suri Noelle in October 2024, and state law requires a legal name. Page Six reported it first.

Filed somewhere else

There was no name change request in Allegheny County, where she attends Carnegie Mellon, suggesting she filed in New York before leaving for college. New York seals those records.

Years of using Noelle

The name predates the paperwork. She used it at her June 2024 high school graduation and on the casting sheet for her senior play.

Estranged since 2013

Holmes married Cruise in 2006 and filed for divorce in 2012, cutting ties with Scientology. She has had custody since, and Suri reportedly has not had a relationship with her father since 2013.

Maddox drops Pitt

A Los Angeles judge signed off on Monday, making Pitt and Jolie's 25-year-old son Maddox Chivan Jolie. He attended remotely with his attorney.

“There are no objections, the petition for change of name is granted”

Five of six children

Shiloh, 20, filed on her birthday last year. Zahara, 21, has a hearing on September 28, and twins Vivienne and Knox, 18, have stopped using the name with plans to make it legal.

What's left of the name

Pitt married Jennifer Aniston in 2000, left for Jolie, and finalized that divorce in December 2024, eight years after the split. The family in these old airport photos no longer shares a surname.