I felt it in my gut. I knew I wanted to make it 
Tom Cruise. You may have heard of him. The most consistently successful star of the last 20 years, he's chasing Oscar in Ed Zwick's action epic The Last Samurai. The Cruiser tells ÃÛÑ¿´«Ã½i FILMS about Bushido, "humanity" and learning another lingo.
It's not often we see a major Hollywood star speaking another language on screen but there you are, speaking Japanese...
I enjoyed that. I learned it phonetically but I knew what I was saying. Hiro Sanada [Ujio] actually worked with me on my accent but it was me... My voice, my words.
This was a physically challenging role - was that the hardest part of your performance?
The physical and the character went hand in hand. I basically assembled a small library - the history of the civil war, the American Indian, the Meiji period. I studied the Samurai culture of Bushido, and then there was the physical transformation. It was a great challenge. I didn't know whether I'd be able to accomplish that. I didn't know whether I would get there and realise my ambition for the character, for Algren. It took time. It took a lot of time to get that flexibility and mobility and strength to be able to do that.
The growing relationship between Algren and Ken Watanabe's character Katsumoto comes across very well on screen. Did you become more attuned to Japanese culture as filming went on?
I was so excited when the actors came. I couldn't wait. I'd seen them on videotape and I'd spent time with [director] Ed Zwick and [co-writer] Marshall Herskovitz, talking about all the different actors. Then, when they finally came, I was so excited. For me, as an actor, I knew when I saw them that this was going to be wonderful. Then when we got there and there was that chemistry between us and the connection, I felt their generosity of spirit and why they were there.
It's a different role for you isn't it - the sweeping historical epic?
You know, I've always wanted to make a film like that. I've always wanted to do a film like that.
So why did you decide this was the right one to do?
It was just at the right time. It was something I connected with. It was Ed Zwick and where he wanted to go with it, and then you look at John Logan's screenplay and it just happened. I felt it in my gut. I knew I wanted to make it. You don't know how something is going to turn out. You give your best efforts and dedication. I take great pride in my work and you don't know what's going to happen, but I saw in Ed Zwick his great dedication. I knew it was just going to come together. I knew it was going to be a hell of a ride! As an actor and as an artist working on it, I knew it was going to be a great challenge.
What is the film trying to say to us?
The message is Bushido really. Honour, integrity, loyalty, friendship. And also when you look at the Tony Goldwyn character [US Colonel Bagley], he very much represents that time period [the 1870s] where people thought other civilisations were uncivilised. [That's always down to a] breakdown in communication and people not having enough reality of another's culture. Therefore, there isn't that respect for or even interest in other people's culture. Then you look at Algren. Algren is a man who wants to die and he finds life in this culture. It's that kind of humanity that Ed Zwick has in his pictures. That's something I identify very strongly with in this picture.
