This Cruise Is Meant For Walkin’

It was all hands on deck last night in Leicester Square as a veritable horde of screaming fans descended on the capital, anxiously clutching their Cruise photos for Tom to sign, and checking that their mums were still on speed-dial, should the Cruiser be available for personal calls. And that was just the journalists. The fans stretched as far as the eye could see and the ear could hear, and boy, were there a lot of them behind the specially reinforced barriers. Anxious to reclaim the crown of "King of the Red Carpet" from Will "let's do the show right here!" Smith and his pop stylings, Tom Cruise arrived in a red-and-yellow LA City cab (as seen in the movie) at 17.50GMT by Empire's watch. He proceeded to shake hands, sign autographs, pose for pictures and chat up people at the other end of the phone until 20.40 GMT. By our reckoning, that's an impressive two hours and fifty minutes, beating his Last Samurai marathon of two hours and twenty minutes hands down and setting a new benchmark for superstars at these events. "I had a great time," said the man behind the grin. "There's a lot of good wishes out there tonight." Not least, it seems, from his colleagues, who were big fans of Cruise. "I knew Tom Cruise from Jerry Maguire, where I read for Jerry Maguire with Tom in order for him to accept the movie," explained Jamie Foxx. "Then Cuba Gooding went on to win the Oscar so we already had a relationship. When we hit the ground we hit the ground running." Foxx plays cabbie Max in the film, and turns in a performance at least equal to that of his megawatt co-star. "Well, if you go through Oliver Stone's school, and you come to Michael Mann and go through his school in Ali, by the time we got to this I was in the graduate programme," he said. He's up next in Ray, the biopic of Ray Charles that is already gathering Oscar buzz. "The movie is in-credible! It's an incredible testimony to Ray Charles' life