acters in the comparatively anything-goes 1980’s be-
came harder in the 1990’s.
Interview with the Vampire(1994) offered Cruise
one of the most controversial roles of his career be-
cause Anne Rice strongly opposed his casting in this
adaptation of her popular 1976 novel but came to
praise his work. The vampire Lestat was his first true
villain, who seduces a Louisiana plantation owner
(Brad Pitt) into a perpetual life of sin. Cruise’s star
power helped turnMission: Impossible(1996) into
more than just another callous version of a popular
television series. While not making great demands
on Cruise as an actor, the role allowed the star to
showcase his physical skills as he performed most of
his own stunts.
Jerr y Maguire(1996) was Cruise’s most popular
film with reviewers and audiences. The title charac-
ter is a sports agent fired because of a crisis of con-
science over the long-term needs of his clients. Left
with a single client (Oscar winner Cuba Gooding,
Jr.) and a one-person staff (Renée Zellweger),
Maguire sets about changing his life. Writer-director
Cameron Crowe’s romantic comedy brought Cruise
his second Academy Award nomination.
Cruise ended the 1990’s by tackling two more se-
rious roles. InEyes Wide Shut(1999), the final film by
legendary director Stanley Kubrick, Cruise played a
Manhattan physician obsessed by sexual fantasies.
Cruise then earned his third Oscar nomination, as
Best Supporting Actor, for Paul Thomas Anderson’s
Magnolia(1999). As a cynical self-help expert teach-
ing male sexual prowess, Cruise’s Frank Mackey is es-
tranged from his dying father (Jason Robards, Jr.)
before finding some reconciliation.
Impact A Few Good Men,The Firm,Interview with the
Vampire,Mission: Impossible, andJerr y Maguirewere
worldwide hits, as Cruise solidified his position as a
superstar. In addition, many of Cruise’s characters
reflected the decade’s concern with shedding the
materialistic values of the 1980’s.
Further Reading
Crowe, Cameron. “Conversations with Cruise.”Va n -
ity Fair, June, 2000, 218-233.
Morton, Andrew.Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biogra-
phy. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2008.
Studlar, Gaylyn. “Cruise-ing into the Millennium:
Performative Masculinity, Stardom, and the All-
American Boy’s Body.” InLadies and Gentlemen,
Boys and Girls: Gender in Film at the End of the Twenti-
eth Centur y, edited by Murray Pomerance. Albany:
State University of New York Press, 2001.
Michael AdamsSee also Academy Awards; Film in the United
States; Pitt, Brad; Rice, Anne. Culture wars
Definition Sociopolitical conflicts, generally with
liberals against conservatives
Usually nonviolent, the American culture wars of the 1990’s
showed a chasm in worldviews between intense believers on
different sides of issues centering on religion and race.
Even if many Americans did not have strong opin-
ions about all the particular issues in the culture
wars, partisans on the two sides of each of those is-
sues certainly did, and the sides tended to be liberal,234 Culture wars The Nineties in America
Tom Cruise attends a press conference in Germany to promote his
movieMission: Impossible.(AP/Wide World Photos)