Tom Cruise Reveals His Sister Got Him “Rain Man” Role After She Forced Him to ‘Say Hello’ to Dustin Hoffman

• Tom Cruise’s sister Cass helped him get his role in 1988’s Rain Man by encouraging him to introduce himself to Dustin Hoffman

• Cruise said during an appearance at the British Film Institute on Sunday, May 11 that his sister “pestered me so much” to introduce himself to Hoffman at a restaurant in New York City in 1984

• “As I was leaving, he said, ‘I want to make a movie with you,’ ” he said of later seeing Hoffman on Broadway

Tom Cruise is sharing how his sister Cass inadvertently helped him get his role in 1988’s Rain Man.

During a sit-down interview at the British Film Institute on Sunday, May 11, ahead of receiving the BFI Fellowship, Cruise, 62, recounted that his younger sister helped him muster the confidence to introduce himself to his future Rain Man costar Dustin Hoffman in 1984

While filming 1985’s Legend with director Ridley Scott in the U.K., Cruise recalled returning to the U.S. to visit his sister Cass in New York City. “We were in a restaurant and I looked up and there he was with the hat. He was doing Death of a Salesman [on Broadway],” Cruise said of Hoffman, now 87. “He was ordering take out. My sister was like, ‘You go up and you say hello to him.’ She doesn’t do stuff like that. And I don’t walk up to people introduce myself. But she was so pushy. She literally said, ‘Look, if you don’t do it I’m going to go over there and tell him who you are.’ “

“I’m like ‘He’s not even going to know who I am. This is going to be so humiliating. I’m not doing it,’ ” Cruise remembered. “Finally she pestered me so much I said fine and walked over there. He had his hat on and was obviously ordering take out and I said ‘Mr Hoffman, I’m sorry,’ And he looked at me and said ‘Cruise!’ “

During the conversation, Cruise cited Hoffman’s 1967 classic The Graduate as a major influence on his own 1983 movie Risky Business. As he recalled, Hoffman invited Cruise and his sister to see Death of a Salesman and said the actor “was so gracious” with his time.

“So we were there, and as I was leaving, he said, ‘I want to make a movie with you.’ I was like, ‘That’d be nice,’ ” Cruise added. “I was very Southern: Yes, sir, no, sir, yes, ma’am, no ma’am. . . And basically a year later he sent me Rain Man.”

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Cruise and Hoffman worked with director Barry Levinson on Rain Man, in which the pair portrayed long-lost brothers who meet after the death of their estranged father. Hoffman, who portrayed a man with autism in the movie, won his second career Oscar for Best Actor at the 61st Academy Awards. During the conversation at the BFI event, Cruise recalled that his character was originally “57 years old” before he joined the movie’s cast and said the experience “was a tremendous journey” for him early in his career.

Cruise also shared this story with Sight and Sound magazine recently; he said that Hoffman told him “everything he did on” 1979’s Kramer vs. Kramer, the other movie Hoffman has won an Oscar for. “Dustin told me how he structured the scenes based on the talent of his son in the movie and how to film it so that that actor really was what you needed,” he told that outlet, per Entertainment Weekly.

After Cruise receives the BFI Fellowship on May 12, the actor will premiere Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning at the Cannes Film Festival on Wednesday, May 14. The movie hits theaters everywhere May 23.

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