18/09/2026
Presenting GQ’s October cover star: Tom Cruise.
It’s been 20 years since Cruise last appeared on the cover of GQ, and, in some ways, he’s living like it’s 2006 again. In Alejandro G. Iñárritu’s Digger, Cruise is taking his riskiest creative swing since the aughts. And now he’s sitting down for his first cover shoot and longform interview with GQ in two decades.
Why now? He’s been busy, for one. The world knows him as the last real movie star, a cliff-jumping, building-scaling action-franchise hero who makes hits like Mission Impossible, Edge of Tomorrow, and Top Gun: Maverick.
But there has always been another Cruise, the mayor of Hollywood and the guardian of true cinema—with a body of work that spans Kubrick, Spielberg, PTA, Scorsese, and Coppola. is so weird and original in its auteurist ambition that Cruise calls his work in it “the culmination of all my skills.”
“When I look at Digger, and finally after 25 years to be able to work with Iñárritu,” Cruise says, “everything’s led to this.”
GQ’s sat down with for two rare conversations—first alongside Iñárritu, then one-on-one on camera. You can see it all at the link in bio, or in 20 GQ editions around the world — our biggest global cover ever.
Story by
Photographs by
Styling by
Skin by for QMS Medicosmetics
Hair by Jennifer Harling
Set design by
Tailoring by Susanna Badalyan
Produced by
