Tom Cruise Spent Six Hours Becoming Digger

Tom Cruise started his transformation into Digger Rockwell with six hours in the makeup chair.

Cruise plays Rockwell, a wealthy oil tycoon, in Digger, his dark comedy for Warner Bros. directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu. He described the physical change on Travis and Jason Kelce's New Heights podcast, according to Variety.

The first application took a full six hours. Cruise wanted it faster. He brought a chalkboard and a stopwatch into the process and timed each prosthetic piece, working with the makeup team to cut minutes wherever they could.

It worked. The routine eventually came down to under an hour.

The look went beyond face prosthetics. Cruise also wore a fat suit to play Rockwell, and said long takes under all the layers left him sweating heavily. The team used cooling machines to bring his temperature down between setups.

Digger opens on 2 October, only in theatres. Tickets go on sale on 22 September. The cast also includes Riz Ahmed, John Goodman and Sandra Hüller, and the script was co-written by Iñárritu with Sabina Berman and Alexander Dinelaris Jr., according to Variety.

Cruise has said he worked with Iñárritu on the film for seven years. Earlier this year he pitched the project to theatre owners as a “wild” dark comedy and said it took four decades of acting to be ready to play the eccentric tycoon, according to Reuters.

For fans, this means a very different Cruise on screen. No sprint. No cockpit. Just prosthetics, padding and an oilman’s drawl.

Next on his calendar is a return to familiar ground. Cruise is preparing a sequel to his 1990 racing film Days of Thunder, with Anne Hathaway set to co-star.