Tom Cruise, one of filmdom's
brightest superstars, plays the fictional Stacee Jaxx, one of music’s biggest
stars, in New Line Cinema's epic musical “Rock of Ages.”
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| Tom Cruise as Stacee Jaxx |
In
the film, Stacee Jaxx is the rock god that every guy wants to be and that every
woman wants to bed. The lead singer of Arsenal, Stacee is at a turning point in
his career, and in his life. He’s about to go solo, and his final show with the
band is at The Bourbon Room. It’s a homecoming of sorts, as he played his first
gig there back in the day. But fame and fortune may have come too easily to the
front man who, after years of indulgence, has become boozed up and blasé to the
point of bored, and less than reliable when it comes to showing up for his own
shows.
The
casting of Stacee Jaxx turned out to be somewhat serendipitous. “I was thinking
to myself, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool if we got one of the biggest movie stars in the
world to play one of the biggest rock stars in the world?’” Shankman reflects.
“And, as luck would have it, I ran into Tom Cruise, told him I was directing
this movie, that it was a musical, and that I was going to offer him this part.
He said, ‘Are you serious?’ I said I was. Then I described Stacee to him and he
laughed really hard. The next thing I knew, he was in, and I was making a
musical with Tom Cruise.”
To
play the role, Cruise underwent a complete transformation, and Shankman admired
his diligence. “From the moment he signed on, Tom started training his voice
with an incredible vocal coach, Ron Anderson. I remember the first time we
heard him sing. He’s got this outrageous, four-octave range—turns out he has
opera singers in his ancestry, so he’s probably genetically predisposed to sing,
but no one’s ever asked him to before. I’m just the lucky recipient of this
revelation, I suppose,” he smiles.
“The joy at having discovered that he
can sing was a huge relief,” Shankman admits, recalling that both he and the
actor had long wanted to collaborate on a project when “Rock of Ages” came
along. “There was a moment when we were looking at each other and Tom said,
‘Well, what if I can’t sell this? Because I won’t do it if it’s not me
singing.’ With everything he does, from stunts to performing in front of an
audience, it has to be him doing it. He believes his audience has come to
expect that, and why bother doing it otherwise? But this is what he loves. He
loves making movies and he wants to be really good, so he works harder than
anybody at it.”
“Tom is a rock god because he brings
all of the star power that comes along with being Tom Cruise, and he’s found a
character that audiences have never seen before,” Shankman concludes. He
describes Stacee Jaxx as being “one of those man-children that no one ever says
‘no’ to. He’s not a bull in a China shop. He’s just a guy who doesn’t even know
what boundaries are. And his go-to has just become sex because that’s the only
thing he really knows anymore, but it’s not because he wants anything.”
“Rock of Ages” is distributed
worldwide by Warner Bros. Pictures, a Warner Bros. Entertainment Company.
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