Tom Cruise stepped into one of the most unusual roles of his career on Tuesday night as his new film Digger received a star-studded royal premiere in London, bringing Hollywood glamour, royal guests and a highly secretive new story to Leicester Square.
Cruise described his character, Digger Rockwell, as “totally outrageous” and unlike anything he had previously encountered during his long acting career. Speaking at the world premiere, the actor said he had never read a character or a film quite like this one.
The premiere was attended by Prince William and Catherine, Princess of Wales, who joined Cruise, director Alejandro González Iñárritu and the film’s cast for the Royal Film Performance. Reuters images from the event showed Cruise and Iñárritu speaking with the royal couple on the red carpet.
At the center of Digger is Cruise’s eccentric oil tycoon, a character whose appearance is almost as striking as his personality. Cruise was transformed with grey hair, facial prosthetics and a padded suit to create the character, but he said the physical transformation was not the biggest challenge of the production.
Instead, he pointed to a roughly 10-minute monologue filmed in a single take. The sequence became one of the most demanding elements of the performance, requiring Cruise to sustain the scene without the safety of multiple edits.
The film, directed by Oscar-winning filmmaker Alejandro González Iñárritu, has been surrounded by secrecy, with filmmakers revealing relatively little about its plot. What is known is that Digger Rockwell inadvertently triggers an ecological catastrophe and then embarks on a desperate effort to save the world from the consequences.
The unusual premise has generated considerable curiosity ahead of the film’s release, particularly because of the combination of Iñárritu’s filmmaking style and Cruise’s radically different screen persona.
Cruise has described the story as an exploration of power, greed, responsibility and irresponsibility. Rather than presenting the character as a conventional hero, Digger places a powerful and deeply eccentric figure at the center of a crisis created by his own actions.
The film’s supporting cast includes Sandra Hüller, John Goodman, Michael Stuhlbarg, Riz Ahmed, Jesse Plemons, Sophie Wilde and Emma D’Arcy, adding another layer of international star power to the project.
Hüller praised Cruise’s performance, saying the role appeared to bring together lessons and experience from his decades in cinema. Other members of the cast have also spoken about the unusual creative process under Iñárritu, describing a production in which scenes and dialogue could evolve during filming.
For Iñárritu, the film’s construction was highly detailed, with rhythm and visual composition playing an important role. Cast members have compared the experience of working with the director to performing as part of an orchestra, with every element carefully coordinated while still leaving room for unexpected moments.
The secrecy surrounding Digger has also fueled speculation about exactly what audiences will see when the film reaches cinemas. Cruise has previously pushed back against theories that the movie is a musical, while acknowledging the importance of rhythm and performance within the film.
The London premiere offered audiences their first major glimpse of the film as the cast and filmmakers gathered alongside members of the British royal family. For Cruise, it also represented another major chapter in a career that has repeatedly been defined by physically demanding performances and ambitious cinematic projects.
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