In his memoir My Wild Summer With Tom Cruise: Women, Sean Penn and the Making of Risky Business, Curtis Armstrong recalls his time on and off the set of the 1983 film Risky Business with a then relatively unknown co-star named Tom Cruise. The Hollywood Reporter shared an exclusive chapter from the book where Armstrong reflects on the summer of 1982. Upon meeting Cruise for the first time at a production office in Chicago, the word that popped into the head of the 63-year-old actor was "clean."
But Cruise also came across as focused and serious about his craft. "Tom wasn't f—ing around," Armstrong wrote. "Actually, I take that back. He was." Aside from engaging in what Armstrong calls an "intense affair" with the film's female lead Rebecca De Mornay, the self-identified born-again Christian was getting himself into some even riskier business away from the set.
Armstrong remembers Cruise declining an offer to grab drinks at a bar, and listing off a number of tasks he still needed to accomplish before heading off to bed, which included reading the Bible. But late one night, Armstrong recalls finding "three or four young girls—late teens, I suspect," lined up in the hallway outside of Tom's room. Assuming these women were there to bother Cruise, he approached them to see if they needed help with anything.
That's when Cruise's door opened with another girl emerging from his room, fixing her hair and taking off down the hall. As one female left, and another went inside the room, Armstrong came away impressed with his co-star's ability to "successfully juggle Bible study and blow jobs." Wait, why does a hair adjustment while stepping out off an up-and-coming actor's room explicitly mean that something sexual was going on? Maybe Cruise was tapping into his religious side. OK, get your head out of the gutter.
