Word: guns
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...want to learn. I can't sit back. I like a challenge, so I create a lot of challenges for myself." For the actor, many of his films provide the perk of being able to test himself, master a new skill. He flew in Navy jets before making Top Gun. He played serious pool for eight weeks before The Color of Money. For Cocktail he tended bar in Manhattan. He plays a race-car driver in his next movie, Days of Thunder, a spin-off from Cruise's latest perilous hobby. But for Born on the Fourth of July...
...bred frustration and a poor school record. "I didn't have any tools to study with," he says. "I didn't know what studying was." A grind for perfection, Cruise today often carries a dictionary so he can look up unfamiliar words. "He comes into my office," says Top Gun co-producer Don Simpson, "and goes over my stack of books, taking notes. Last night he used the word plethora. Two years ago, he didn't know the word...
...both. In Taps (1981), where he was up against Timothy Hutton and Sean Penn, he played a military-school cadet who goes picturesquely bonkers and is killed by the National Guard. "It's beautiful, man! Beautiful!" he shouts as he sprays the quad with an orgasm of machine-gun fire. In his first significant film of the '80s, as in his last, Cruise was the gung-ho soldier boy, his body destroyed in the fantasy of combat...
...concocted another scheme. Four weeks ago they released Fredy and then waited. Just as they anticipated, Fredy eventually headed for his father -- not knowing that the police were tailing him. The confrontation finally came last Friday southwest of Cartagena. Fredy and two bodyguards were killed by .50-cal. machine-gun fire. Rodriguez Gacha and three others died as they attempted to escape into the jungle. Whether the drug lord blew himself up with a grenade or died in a hail of bullets was unclear...
...danced like a dynamo in Risky Business, swaggered through the sky in Top Gun and held his own against Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man. Cruise is Hollywood's biggest attraction, and he is about to be acclaimed one of its best actors. In Born on the Fourth of July, he displays rage and range as Viet Nam veteran Ron Kovic. For the engaging, intense young star, life has never been sweeter...