NEED TO KNOW
- Tom Cruise and Cuba Gooding Jr. reunited on the red carpet at the Cannes Film Festival in France
- The two actors previously appeared in Jerry Maguire and A Few Good Men together
- Both seemed pleasantly surprised to see each other
Tom Cruise and Cuba Gooding Jr. are back together again.
On Thursday, May 15, the two movie stars reunited on the red carpet in France for the Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning Cannes Film Festival premiere.
Their run-in comes nearly 30 years after Cruise, 62, and Gooding Jr., 57, costarred in the 1996 romantic comedy Jerry Maguire.
Photos from Thursday showed the pair looking pleasantly surprised to see each other at the event. They each flashed huge smiles initially as they saw one another. Cruise and Gooding Jr. seemed to also have a bit of a heart-to-heart, appearing more serious in demeanor as they embraced each other.
In Jerry Maguire, Cruise starred as the titular character, a sports agent at the top of his game who feels “something just isn’t right.”
After having a moral epiphany and sending a company-wide email, he’s fired, leading him to start his own independent agency. He takes his best client, NFL star Rod Tidwell (Gooding Jr.), and his coworker and love interest Dorothy Boyd (Renée Zellweger) along for the ride. The movie earned Gooding Jr. an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor and Cruise a Best Actor Oscar nomination.
Zellweger, 56, also seems fond of Cruise.
When the actress won a SAG Award for outstanding performance by a female actor in a leading role in a motion picture for Judy in January 2020, she thanked “Tom Cruise, for your example of professionalism on set and striving for excellence and generosity and unconditional kindness.”
As for Gooding Jr., he and Cruise also starred in the 1992 legal drama A Few Good Men.
Never miss a story — sign up for PEOPLE’s free daily newsletter to stay up-to-date on the best of what PEOPLE has to offer, from celebrity news to compelling human interest stories.
Jack Nicholson, Demi Moore and Kevin Bacon were among the other A-listers who appeared in the film, which sees military lawyer Lt. Daniel Kaffee (Cruise) work to prove that two U.S. Marines charged with murdering a fellow Marine only did so because they were following the orders of their base commander.
In recent years, Gooding Jr. has faced multiple claims of sexual misconduct. In 2022, he avoided jail time for one charge of forcibly touching a woman in 2018, after pleading guilty and meeting the conditions of a plea agreement. In June 2023, the actor settled a rape allegation lawsuit minutes before the trial was set to begin.
While promoting his 2024 movie The Firing Squad, Gooding Jr. told Extra his faith was helping him through tough times.
“It’s one of those things where I know that I’m here for a reason,” he told the outlet. “And I know that and as long as I do what I do and I’m good at what I do and I’m passionate about what I do, God’s will will be done.”
Read the full article here