When Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt first worked together in Interview With the Vampire

In 1994, two of the biggest movie stars in the world were Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise. In 2025, two of the biggest movie stars in the world are Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise.

It may seem like the more things change, the more they stay the same, but there are two reasons why Pitt and Cruise, both in their 60s, are still top of the celebrity charts. One, they both have that it factor. They can flash those pearly whites in the direction of any camera and just own it.

Two, the entertainment and fame business has changed dramatically since the turn of the century, where franchises and intellectual property became bigger than the stars themselves, which makes it harder to mount new generations of A-listers to supplant the veterans.

Cruise has just released the eighth Mission: Impossible movie, where he cemented his status as still a bona fide action hero, and Pitt is on the promo trail for the F1 movie, which is due for release later this month.

It’s on one of those pit stops (apologies), Pitt said he would be open to teaming up with Cruise in a movie as long as he’s “not gonna hang my arse off airplanes, sh-t like that, so when he does something again that’s on the ground”.

The prospect of Pitt and Cruise sharing a screen again is an enticing prospect for many moviegoers around the world, just as it was in the early 1990s when the two, then Hot Young Things, were cast in the anticipated screen adaptation of Interview With the Vampire.

Anne Rice had published her gothic novel in 1976, and it pulsed with sexual magnetism, especially in the tempestuous relationship between Louis and the demon who turned him, Lestat.

Set across 200 years, the two vamps haunt each other as the morally racked Louis tries to contend with his changed nature and his attraction to the ruthless Lestat.

The rights to the book were bought almost immediately, but it stalled in development for years until The Crying Game filmmaker Neil Jordan was brought on in the early 1990s, with David Geffen attached as producer.

The budget was to be $US70 million, high for a vampire flick, and Cruise and Pitt were announced as the leads.

The problem was, it seemed as if no one wanted to see Cruise as Lestat, including Rice, who had originally envisioned French actor Alain Delon in the role. Rice was also keen on Daniel Day-Lewis, who had been offered the role but had turned it down.

She couldn’t wrap her head around Cruise. It might be Louis’ story, the titular vampire in the title, but Lestat was the character that seduced readers.

While promoting his memoirs last year, Jordan told The Telegraph, “Half of America, it seemed, had read Anne Rice’s books and wanted a say in the casting of Lestat. Anne herself took to the airwaves, saying that it was as if I had cast Edward G. Robinson as Rhett Butler.

“But she was wrong and was later big enough to admit it.”

Jordan also recalled to The Guardian that it must have been difficult for Cruise when the whole world told him he was “miscast”. He added, “He’s a great actor. If he says he can do something, he will do it in a way that people will be shocked by. Tom has become the last remaining film star. It’s kind of strange.”

Rice would indeed backtrack on her initial reservations. A month after the film’s release, she published a long public essay that detailed how she had no involvement in the screen production, and didn’t watch it until Geffen sent her a VHS tape after its completion.

She said she approached it with “a deep fear of being hurt, crushed, disappointed, destroyed by the finished work” but instead found she actually loved it for being “so eccentric, so extreme, so weird”.

Moreover, she also loved Cruise.

“From the moment he appeared, Tom was Lestat for me. He has the immense physical and moral presence, he was defiant and yet never without conscience, he was beautiful beyond description yet compelled to do cruel things.

“The sheer beauty of Tom was dazzling, but the polish of his acting, his flawless plunge into the Lestat persona, his ability to speak rather boldly poetic lines, and speak them with seeming ease and conviction were exhilarating and uplifting. The guy is great.”

Cruise certainly looked like he had a great time playing Lestat, making a meal out of a character that jumped off the screen.

Perhaps Pitt would be more reluctant to revisit the dynamic. He famously had a difficult filming process.

In 2011, Pitt told EW he was “miserable” making Interview With the Vampire. Part of it was that the character was too passive compared to the soul-searching Louis in Rice’s book, and he only got the script two weeks before filming.

He acknowledged the film became the Lestat show, but “no discredit to Tom, man.

“He had pressure on him. There were all the fanboys of the book. He had all this pressure to make it work, and he made it work - and good on him.”

The other part was that much of the shoot was in London in the dead of winter. He said, “We’re shooting in Pinewood, which is an old institution – all the James Bond films. There’s no windows in there. It hasn’t been refabbed in decades.

“You leave for work in the dark, you go into this cauldron, this mausoleum, and you then you come out and it’s dark. I’m telling you, one day, it broke me.”

He called Geffen and asked how much it would cost to buy himself out of his contract. Geffen’s reply was $40 million.

So, maybe Pitt is down for another team-up with Cruise, but it’s not going to involve vampires or hanging off planes.