Diane Lane recalls Tom Cruise’s extreme move on The Outsiders set, and what he sacrificed for his character is wild

Diane Lane recently talked about her time working with Tom Cruise on The Outsiders over 40 years ago. The movie came out in 1983 and was directed by Francis Ford Coppola. Lane worked with many young actors who would later become big stars. The group included Cruise, Rob Lowe, Emilio Estevez, Ralph Macchio, C. Thomas Howell, Patrick Swayze, and Matt Dillon.

The movie was based on a book from 1967 by S.E. Hinton. It followed a teenager named Ponyboy Curtis and his friends who were part of a group called the Greasers. They lived in Oklahoma in the 1960s and had problems with another group called the Socs. Cruise played a character named Steve Randle who was a tough guy with a crooked smile.

Lane is 60 now, and she shared what she remembers about how hard Cruise worked on his role. According to People, someone asked her if she knew back then that these actors would become famous. She brought up something Cruise did that really stuck with her.

Tom Cruise really did make a sacrifice for his character

“I just remember that story of Tom Cruise making sure that it was evident that his tooth was knocked out in the rumble, and I thought, ‘That’s impressive. That’s commitment,'” Lane said.

People have told different stories over the years about what Cruise did to get that chipped tooth look. The director Francis Ford Coppola said he was really amazed by how far Cruise would go to make his character feel real.

“If the role called for a chipped tooth, he would willingly chip his tooth,” Coppola explained. This kind of extreme dedication became something Cruise was known for in his later Mission: Impossible movies.

Rob Lowe backed up this story when he talked on a podcast in 2023. The host asked him if it was true that Cruise took out his tooth on purpose. Lowe said “yes.” What happened was Cruise had a fake cap on one of his teeth and he took it off for the movie. Lowe also said that all the young actors were trying to outdo each other while they filmed.

Lane got to watch all of this happen because she was the main girl in the cast. “The night shoots were interesting and long. And being the girl in that environment is interesting because you could sit back and just observe the male… the way they’re working it out with each other,” she said and laughed.

She still thinks about whether the guys were acting like their characters or if they were just messing around to stay awake during those late night filming sessions.

Lane went on The Drew Barrymore Show recently and talked more about making the movie. She said working with all those young guys was exciting but also a lot to handle. “It was hot. It was great,” she told Drew Barrymore.

“It was kind of too much testosterone for one girl. So I kept to myself. But I was definitely pinching myself. I was definitely overwhelmed.” Cruise kept doing risky things for his movies, and people are still asking if Dead Reckoning will be his last Mission: Impossible film.

Right now Lane is in a new movie called Anniversary. It’s about a family that breaks apart because of politics. She plays a college teacher named Ellen Taylor whose son starts dating one of her old students. The girlfriend has some extreme political views that spread across the country and the family can’t stay together. You can see Anniversary in movie theaters now.