'Risky Business' Star Calls Tom Cruise 'Biggest Bore on the Face of the Earth'

Filed under: Movie News, Celebrity Scandal

Bronson Pinchot is most famous for his portrayal of goofy foreigner Balki Bartokomous on 'Perfect Strangers,' but the actor made his film debut in 'Risky Business.' In a candid interview with The A.V. Club, Pinchot admits the experience gave him a less-than-favorable impression of co-star Tom Cruise. In fact, Pinchot says, the superstar was "was the biggest bore on the face of the Earth" at the age of 20.
He explains: "Tom had picked up this knack of calling everyone by their character names ... I think that acting is acting, and the rest of the time, you should be you, but he called us all by our character names."

"He made constant, constant unrelated homophobic comments, like, 'You want some ice cream, in case there are no gay people there?' ... There was no basis for it. It was like, "It's a nice day, I'm glad there are no gay people standing here." Very, very strange. Years and years later when people started to torment him with that, I used to think 'God, that's really fitting, because he tormented a lot of people as a 20-year-old.'"

Pinchot adds, "If someone's 20 years old and every third line out of their mouth is anti-something specific, then draw your own conclusion."

The actor has a similarly damning opinion of Denzel Washington, calling him "one of the most unpleasant human beings I've ever met in my life," but he calls one actor "the antidote": Tom Hanks. The two met when Pinchot performed in a play with Hanks' wife Rita Wilson, and he still considers Hanks "a wonderful and genuine and lovely and down-to-earth person ... so it's not really true that big stars need to be driven and repulsive, because he's anything but."

Cruise's publicist, Cheryl Maisel, responds to Pinchot's accusations in a statement printed by TV Guide. "Obviously this is so far removed from who Tom Cruise is as a person, this must have been said in jest," Maisel writes.