The 1983 film Risky Business launched Tom Cruise‘s career as a leading man — a status he has enjoyed for 40 years. While Cruise would have undoubtedly become a star in another breakout film, Risky Business gave his career much-needed success to help him become one of the most in-demand actors in Hollywood history. In a retrospective interview with Below the Line, casting director Nancy Klopper recalls finding Tom Cruise for the movie as well as other actors who helped the film become a box office hit.
Klopper recalls first meeting Cruise for the part and while he did not have the right look, she knew that they had found the right actor for the role. She remembers, “Tom had played a very small role in Endless Love. He was doing The Outsiders when we met him, and that was a big ensemble piece. So he came in; he had a gold tooth because the character in Outsiders had a gold tooth, and the hair was kind of greased back. And so, even though that look was not what we needed, when he walked into the room, he had major charisma. He had real star quality. He auditioned with the opening monologue that you hear in the movie. ‘The dream is always the same.’ That’s how it begins. He was great at it, and we looked at each other, and we sort of knew; it was like an enormous sense of relief. He then had to fly right back to his location; I think they were in New Mexico, and we were continuing our search for the female lead.”
For the female lead in the film, a call girl named Lana, Klopper cast Rebecca De Mornay. She managed to cast De Mornay after reaching out to an actor for a recommendation. She says:
“I called Harry Dean Stanton. He was a phenomenal actor, besides the fact that he was the kindest and most gentle human being. I said, ‘You’re always with these beautiful girls, Harry, whenever I see you. Do you know anyone who’s right for this?’ And they were together at the time. They had met on One from the Heart. She was an extra in it. So she was very much an unknown.
Rebecca came in, and I worked with her for a long time to prepare her for her audition. She was very, very raw, and then she came into the audition, and everybody thought, ‘Well, she’s a real possibility.’ So that weekend we flew Tom in again from New Mexico, and he arrived at 5:30 in the morning and went to Steve Tisch’s house in the Hollywood Hills. Rebecca came, and the screen test was a little handheld Sony cam.
They read a few scenes together, and we knew we had it, but it had to go to David Geffen. He was the executive producer of it at Warner Bros., and he said to us when we began, ‘You don’t have a green light until you have two stars.’ He looked at Tom and Rebecca and immediately said, ‘Go make your movie. You have it.’”
Also in the film in a very small role is future Will & Grace star Megan Mullally. Klopper recalls, “She played a tiny role in the movie. She played a call girl. We tested her because she was so good with comedy timing. She was gifted. She was living in Chicago, and we brought her to L.A. and tested her, and we loved her. So we cast her in a small role. I would imagine she got her SAG card.”
