Tom Cruise has reduced what used to be a six-hour prosthetics marathon down to well under an hour, and he did it by timing himself, working through a list of tasks and simply refusing to give up.
Cruise told Travis and Jason Kelce on their New Heights podcast that he found a way to compress the makeup process for his role in the upcoming film Digger, which has him looking almost entirely unrecognizable. He explained that the original procedure required six hours, which made sense given the schedule — a 12-hour shooting day ahead, leaving no room for such a long routine.
“I gotta sleep at least six [hours],” he said. “They keep saying I need more… but OK, that’s 12.”
With a 12-hour day on set, he added, “Now, we have 12-hour days filming. So now that’s six hours on, two hours off with the makeup.”
The Stopwatch Strategy
The approach Cruise adopted was simple: he hired someone with a stopwatch and had the hair and makeup teams time every single step of putting on the prosthetics.
His goal was to measure the entire process as it happened. He fixed a limit, wanting the change completed within sixty minutes.
Cruise pushed back against the doubts. The team was skeptical, telling him it would never happen. “OK, first of all, if you say no, you can’t do it; you will never get there. So can we agree that we’ll maybe make it a little less?”
Each individual part was timed and drilled separately, which helped tighten the overall process. Through practice and improvement, the team’s results reflected the gains made.
“They were like, ‘What?!’ And they didn’t even know it, and they didn’t even rush,” he recalled.
A Familiar Approach
Cruise said the experience reflected how he approaches his work in general. “I like going into a system, studying it and trying to figure out how I can do it better, more efficient,” he said. “The films that I make, I’m constantly going, how can I do it better? How do I prepare better?”
Cruise has previously taken on demanding physical transformations for the screen. For 2008’s Tropic Thunder, he underwent extensive prosthetic work to portray studio executive Les Grossman. Now, with Digger, he returns to that approach for his first such character role since that performance.
The oil magnate Digger Rockwell, portrayed by Tom Cruise, is an oddball with gray hair, wrinkles and a bigger build than the actor. He has caused an environmental catastrophe, and the U.S. president, played by John Goodman, demands he set things right.
The Numbers Behind the Change
| Step | Original Time | Target Time |
|---|---|---|
| Makeup application | 6 hours | Under 1 hour |
| Shooting day | 12 hours | 12 hours |
The goal was set with great ambition, and doubt rose among the members of the group. Yet the work became more focused and disciplined.
What This Says About Him
Efficiency is what drives Cruise’s method, not pride. He does not take a flawed system at face value; he questions it instead.
The team arrived at their objective without hurrying, which came as a surprise to everyone involved, because they had not noticed that they were outpacing the clock.
The lesson is simple: the measurement itself changed the outcome.
Digger opens in theaters Oct. 2.
See the video the story is built around at The Hollywood Reporter.
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