Bronson Pinchot Recalls Homophobic Cruise in 'Risky Business'

The actor most famous for his ‘80s sitcom role on Perfect Strangers has given an unusually candid interview to AVClub.com. Over the course of discussing his numerous "random roles" in about a dozen films over the last 20-plus years, Bronson Pinchot made some particularly poignant comments about working with a young Tom Cruise on the film that would launch Cruise to super stardom, Risky Business.

Pinchot recalled, "We didn’t know it was going to be a big hit. We thought Tom [Cruise] was the biggest bore on the face of the Earth. He had spent some formative time with Sean Penn — we were all very young at the time, Tom was 20, I was 23."

"Tom had picked up this knack of calling everyone by their character names... He was tense and made constant, constant unrelated homophobic comments, like, ‘You want some ice cream, in case there are no gay people there?’ I mean, his lingo was larded with the most… There was no basis for it.

“It was like, ‘It’s a nice day, I’m glad there are no gay people standing here,’” Pinchot continued. "Very, very strange.

"Years and years later, when people started to torment him with that," Pinchot went on, "I used to think, God, that’s really fitting, because he tormented a lot of people as a 20-year-old.... Because there are certain people in showbiz who make it an agenda, every third sentence has to have something knocking that life choice."

The surprisingly frank Pinchot also remembered how Cruise "always talked about himself like he was a mega-superstar; that was weird too." When the interviewer noted that it must take enormous ambition to achieve superstar status, Pinchot agreed, adding, "I think Denzel Washington has it—he’s one of the most unpleasant human beings I’ve ever met in my life, but he’s this mega-superstar."

Pinchot even conceded that it was his particularly unpleasant working experience with Washington on Courage Under Fire that changed his approach to work forever. "Denzel Washington cured me forever of thinking that there is any amount of money or anything that could ever, ever make it OK to be abused," he disclosed. "The script supervisor on that movie said it’s like watching somebody kick a puppy. He was so vile. And after that, I just would never endure it again."

To read the full interview, in which Pinchot also recalls a particularly devilish diva who verbally abused the director during the filming of The First Wives Club, surf over to AVClub.com.
 

Tell us: What do you think is up with Tom Cruise? Are there any Hollywood stars you've heard of or witnessed behaving badly?

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