Los Angeles, Nov 9 (IANS) Hollywood royalty Tom Cruise once revealed how he got ‘Rain Man’. A recently resurfaced clip shows the Hollywood megastar recollecting meeting Dustin Hoffman when he was nearly arm-twisted by his sister Cass to walk up, and say hello to Dustin Hoffman.

He said, “My little sister who’s here, Cass, we were at a restaurant, you know, I was eating at a table, and she goes, ‘There’s Dustin Hoffman’. I looked up, and there he was with a hat, and he was doing ‘Death of a Salesman’, and he was ordering takeout. She goes, ‘You go over and you say hello to him’. I said, ‘What? I’m not going to go say hello to him’. She goes, ‘You love him, and you know his career, you can go over and say hello’. She doesn’t do stuff like that, and I don’t walk up to people and introduce myself”.

He went on, “But she was so pushy, and she literally said, ‘If you don’t do it, I’m going to just go over, and I’m going to tell him who you are, and that you’re over there’. I was like, ‘He’s not even going to know who I am. This is like, really, really humiliating. I’m not doing it’. So finally, she pestered me so much, I said, okay, ‘I’ll go over and say hello’, and I went up”.

He further mentioned, “And then he was, obviously, had his hat on, and he was ordering takeout, and I just stood next to him, and I said, ‘Excuse me, Mr. Hoffman, I’m sorry’, and he looked at me, went, ‘Cruise’. That’s how I met him. I think it was the last week of ‘Death of a Salesman’. He said, ‘Well, come to see it’, and I said, ‘Well, can I bring my sister?’ And he was so gracious, and he had me there and brought me backstage, and we were taking photos”.

“I met the whole cast, and we were there, and as I was leaving, he said, ‘I want to make a movie with you’, and I was like, that’d be nice. Thank you very much, sir’. A year later, he sent ‘Rain Man’ to me. And the script was not the script. You know, Rain Man, my character, was like 57 years old, you know, real old guy”, he added.

–IANS

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