Vampires ate good in the ’90s. From Bram Stoker’s Dracula to Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Blade, and Interview with the Vampire, the decade loved the fang-tastic mythological monsters with a penchant for blood. In 1994, Neil Jordan’s Interview with the Vampire – based on Anne Rice’s 1976 novel – invited its way into cinemas. The star-studded cast featured Tom Cruise, Brad Pitt, Antonio Banderas, Christian Slater, Thandiwe Newton, and a young Kirsten Dunst. However, it was the casting of Cruise as the vampire Lestat de Lioncourt that drew puzzled questions from both fans and the movie industry.

At the time Cruise was known for films such as Top Gun, Risky Business, Rain Man, and A Few Good Men. He seesawed between action and drama as he confirmed himself as one of Hollywood’s most coveted leading men and a bona fide A-lister. But could he play a vampire from an Anne Rice novel? No one saw it, including the author herself. It seemed like the type of casting mandated by a studio to sell more tickets and attract more publicity for a film that cost $60 million – a bucket load for a vampire flick in the ’90s.

Anne Rice didn’t believe in Tom Cruise as Lestat de Lioncourt

Before Neil Jordan’s Interview with the Vampire, the book-to-film adaptation turned down many roads that led to several dead ends. As the author, Anne Rice provided input to anyone who asked her about who she would like to see bring her fabled story to life. Rice saw Ridley Scott as the right auteur and wanted his Blade Runner collaborator Rutger Hauer as Lestat. Hollywood sprinkled holy water all over this plan and when Jordan boarded the project, Hauer was seen as too old to portray Lestat.

Between Jordan and producer David Geffen, they decided on Tom Cruise, seeing him as young and attractive enough to convince as the immortal and charming vampire. Plus, it also helped that he had serious star power. Rice, though, didn’t see it working, telling Movieline in 1994 that Jeremy Irons, John Malkovich, Peter Weller, and even Brad Pitt would have all been better suited as Lestat than Cruise. She said:

“The Tom Cruise casting is so bizarre, it’s almost impossible to imagine how it’s going to work, and it’s really almost impossible to imagine how Neil and David and Tom could have come up with it. I have one question: Does Tom Cruise have any idea of what he’s getting into? I’m not sure he does. I’m not sure he’s read any of the books other than the first one, and his comments on TV that he wanted to do something scary and he loved ‘creature features’ as a kid, well, that didn’t make me feel any better.”

Rice didn’t have much faith in the film as a result; however, her tune changed after she watched Interview with the Vampire. She praised and endorsed the film, including Cruise’s performance. As per the Los Angeles Times, Geffen said: “[Anne] even phoned [Tom] up and told him she was wrong. It’s a great thing when someone who had been critical of a movie saw it, loved it and admitted she was wrong … a very classy thing to do.” Cruise confirmed the phone call, too.

Interview with the Vampire showed a different side of Tom Cruise

Anne Rice’s greatest fear was that Tom Cruise would treat Lestat as a straight-up evil villain – and not as the complex character he is. However, he proved her wrong with his understanding of the vampire and his intentions. At its core, the relationship between Lestat and Louis de Pointe du Lac is about codependency. While there’s infatuation and even traces of love between the characters, both of them can’t quit each other when it’s clear they are on a one-stop trip to destruction.

Due to the era in which the film was released and the backlash it would have faced in 1994, Interview with the Vampire doesn’t lean into the queer element of the story too much. The subtext remains that vampires view sexuality as fluid and Lestat and Louis form an obvious bond; however, Cruise and Brad Pitt capture this aspect of the story with a subtle but clear knowingness of who their characters are. Anyone who was familiar with the source material knew exactly what the nature of their relationship would have been.

Cruise layers his performance with a gamut of emotion and complexities. Lestat possesses the ability to be charming, dangerous, intelligent, kind, and irrational in equal measures, and there’s often an inner conflict within the vampire about his controversial actions. He wrestles with embracing the nature of the vampire and the soul of humanity. Cruise gets this, showcasing a character with power beyond anyone’s dreams but also longing for companionship and someone to share it with.

Throughout his career, Cruise built up a reputation of playing the unequivocal hero of the story, but Interview with the Vampire offered him the chance to portray the antihero. Lestat is a three-dimensional character capable of blurring the lines between good and bad, depending on the situation and cause. The performance informed the world that Cruise was no one-trick pony.

The film opened the door for the actor to spread his acting wings

If it wasn’t for Interview with the Vampire, it’s tough to imagine Tom Cruise securing the most interesting roles of his career later on. Lestat demonstrated how he can climb into the coffin and walk out someone different, enabling him to turn into the entertaining and Hollywood-satirical Les Grossman in Ben Stiller’s Tropic Thunder. His ability to teeter between good and bad also opened the door for him to play the morally ambiguous assassin Vincent in Michael Mann’s Collateral – arguably one of the most underrated performances of his career.

The role of Lestat was a gamble – because it could have had a detrimental effect on the actor’s career had the film flopped. For Cruise, though, he didn’t see any danger in saying yes to Interview with the Vampire. Instead, he saw it as “a challenge,” as he told Esquire in 1994. “He’s not a bad guy, he just has villainous aspects to him,” Cruise said. “From his point of view, he’s right. He’s really a terribly lonely character.” In retrospect, it’s a mystery why anyone doubted Cruise’s ability to bare both his teeth and soul as Lestat. As the vampire said: “One thing is true for us all, we grow stronger as we go along.”