Photograph and words by GREG WILLIAMS

Greg Williams takes pause to consider the bigger picture on images seen small on his social media. This issue: Tom Cruise at the 78th Cannes Film Festival in May.

I arrived to shoot Tom Cruise in his hotel room just before he premiered Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning at the Palais as part of the festival. I was looking for something in the room to light a fuse and there was a chair I thought we could do something with. Tom immediately stood on it and put his foot on the back of it, tipping it very slightly – about an inch. I said, ‘It’d be great if you could do just that, but lift it a tiny bit more.’ Being Tom Cruise, he doesn’t do things by halves. Instead of balancing on the chair so it lifted just an inch and a half, he tipped it to the maximum he could, balancing for a moment at the tipping point before it clattered to the ground and he jumped away. He did four takes. It ended up being a picture that in its simplicity gave a taste of the incredibly complex stunts he does and collaborative spirit in which he undertakes them. 

I had turned all the lights off in the room so this was only lit by the late afternoon light coming from the window and reflecting off the walls. I exposed for my shadows so the background windows are entirely blown out – there’s no information there whatsoever. When I posted this picture, a few photographers complained about this exposure and this reminded me of how my ethos differs from a lot of other photographers. How a photograph makes you feel is far more important than its technicalities. This picture tells you about the physicality, passion and fun Tom Cruise puts into his films.

Leica Q3, 1/500 sec, f/5.6, 1600 ISO, 28mm