Aussie actor Bryan Brown is one of the country’s biggest stars, known for films including Along Came Polly and Gorillas in the Mist.
And now Brown, 76, has revealed what it was like working with megastar Tom Cruise on the 1988 film, Cocktail, and reflected on his incredible career.
Speaking exclusively to 9Honey Celebrity recently, ahead of the release of his new novel, Brown says his former co-star was “hard-working” and “respectful” and “always down to push the envelope a bit more”.
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Brown recalled how Cruise, now 61, came up with the idea to “throw bottles around” in the film, as bartenders, despite it not being scripted.
The drama film centered on a young New York City bartender who finds a mentor and moves to Jamaica to open up his own bar, before falling in love. It grossed $171 million worldwide.
“Tom was a 25-year-old bloke at that stage right and he had just done Top Gun and got a lot of attention but Tom is an incredibly hard-working bloke, he’s a very easy going bloke to be around, very respectful to be around him,” Brown says.
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“But the biggest thing, he’s always down to push the envelope a bit more, in the script, we were behind the bar, but nothing was written about us throwing the bottles around,” he says.
“And one day he came into rehearsals and said, ‘I went to this bar and the bartender was hurling the bottles around, so why don’t we do that?’
“So we learned how to throw bottles… we got very good at it and it changed bartending and every bar you went into started doing all that.”
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Brown says Cruise was always eager to come up with ideas and added: “I take my hat off to him about that.”
Brown, who is also known for films including Australia and the show The Thorn Birds, says acting has always been a ”form of expression” for him.
“I needed to be somewhere I could express myself and that’s what I found and acting gave me that opportunity and it’s given me wonderful opportunities to see the world,” he says.
But he says his passion is for telling Australian stories.
Brown, who recently celebrated 40 years of marriage with his actress wife Rachel Ward, who he jokes “puts up with him,” is also a book author.
In 2021, he published the book Sweet Jimmy – a collection of seven short stories.
And now, he is celebrating the release of his novel The Drowning, which was released on October 31.
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Describing his second book in his own words, Brown says: “There’s dark things happening we don’t know about and one of them involves the death of a young boy that opens a can of worms.”
“I’ve been telling stories since I started to talk,” Brown says.
He adds: “I’ve been in the game of storytelling for more than 50 years. I’ve been acting and producing… when I wrote this book it was a different platform to tell stories on.”