Reacher’s Alan Ritchson Has No Interest In Watching Tom Cruise’s Take On Jack
On screen, Tom Cruise may look larger than life, but if you could ever get him to stop running and measure his height, you might find that he’s one of those Napoleonic actors who’s shorter in person than he looks on celluloid. The movie magic of shoe lifts and low-angle shots enables Cruise to fill the screen the way Alan Ritchson, star of the current “Reacher” series on Prime Video, fills the room in real life.
Cruise’s action bona fides in the “Mission: Impossible” film series speak for themselves, but the actor is 5 foot 7, and this is part of the reason why loyal readers of the “Jack Reacher” book series — written by Jim Grant under the pen name Lee Child — were taken aback by his casting in the two “Jack Reacher” movies. Cruise’s version of Reacher comes across more as a guy who’s underestimated because of his size. Ritchson, by contrast, offers a more book-accurate portrayal of Reacher, the imposing, musclebound former military policeman.
Don’t ask Ritchson to compare himself to Cruise, though, because he’s never actually watched the “Jack Reacher” movies. In a 2022 interview with The Wrap, Ritchson explained that he deliberately avoided seeing “Jack Reacher” and its sequel, “Jack Reacher: Never Go Back,” for fearing of Cruise’s performance rubbing off on his own somehow:
Reacher’s Alan Ritchson Has No Interest In Watching Tom Cruise’s Take On Jack
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