Best Tom Cruise Movies, Ranked: From Top Gun to Mission: Impossible

How we ranked them

We weighed critical reputation, how well each film has aged, and what it shows about Cruise as a performer, so the list mixes his action films with the dramas that earned his Oscar nominations. Award details and reception figures were checked against published sources in October 2026.

The ten best, ranked

1. Mission: Impossible, Fallout (2018)

Christopher McQuarrie's second Mission film, with Henry Cavill, Rebecca Ferguson, Simon Pegg and Ving Rhames. A plutonium plot strings together the series' best set pieces: a real HALO skydive, a bathroom brawl, and a helicopter chase Cruise flew himself. He broke his ankle on a rooftop jump in London and finished the take; it's in the film. The best action movie of his career.

2. Jerry Maguire (1996)

Cameron Crowe's comedy-drama about a sports agent who grows a conscience, gets fired and starts again with one client, Cuba Gooding Jr.'s Rod Tidwell. Cruise plays a confident man coming apart, and it earned him a Best Actor nomination; Gooding won Best Supporting Actor. "Show me the money" and "You had me at hello" both come from here.

3. Top Gun: Maverick (2022)

Joseph Kosinski's sequel, 36 years after the original, has Maverick training young pilots, including Goose's son Rooster (Miles Teller), for a near-impossible mission. The actors flew in real F/A-18s, and it's a better film than the first: funnier, sadder and tighter. It grossed about $1.5 billion and was nominated for Best Picture.

4. Magnolia (1999)

In Paul Thomas Anderson's ensemble drama, Cruise plays Frank T.J. Mackey, a vile self-help guru for men, whose act collapses at his dying father's bedside. His most daring performance. It won him a Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

5. Rain Man (1988)

Cruise plays Charlie Babbitt, a selfish car dealer who discovers he has an autistic older brother, Raymond (Dustin Hoffman), who inherited their father's fortune. Hoffman has the showier role, but the film is Charlie's slow change on a cross-country drive. It won four Oscars, including Best Picture.

6. Edge of Tomorrow (2014)

Doug Liman's time-loop war film: Cruise plays a cowardly PR officer forced into battle against aliens, who dies and relives the same day until Emily Blunt's soldier helps him get good. It's very funny about Cruise dying over and over. It underperformed in cinemas but is now one of his most loved films.

7. Collateral (2004)

Michael Mann casts Cruise as Vincent, a grey-haired hitman who forces a Los Angeles cab driver (Jamie Foxx, Oscar-nominated) to drive him between killings over one night. His best villain, and Mann's digital night photography still looks striking.

8. Mission: Impossible (1996)

Brian De Palma's original: Ethan Hunt, framed for betraying his team, breaks into a vault at CIA headquarters in a near-silent heist that has been copied ever since. The series that followed, eight films through The Final Reckoning (2025), is unusual for getting better as it went, with Ghost Protocol, Rogue Nation and Fallout the high points.

9. A Few Good Men (1992)

Rob Reiner directs Aaron Sorkin's courtroom drama. Cruise is a Navy lawyer who would rather plea-bargain, defending two Marines in a hazing death, until he takes on Jack Nicholson's Colonel Jessup. "You can't handle the truth!" is Nicholson's line, but Cruise has to earn it.

10. Minority Report (2002)

Steven Spielberg's adaptation of a Philip K. Dick story: in 2054 Washington, police arrest murderers before they kill, until the unit's chief (Cruise) is predicted to commit one. A smart chase thriller whose vision of targeted ads and gesture screens now looks prophetic.

Honourable mentions

• Risky Business (1983): the breakthrough, and the underwear dance to "Old Time Rock and Roll."
• Top Gun (1986): dated, but the film that made him a global star.
• Born on the Fourth of July (1989): Oliver Stone's Vietnam drama and his first Oscar nomination.
• Eyes Wide Shut (1999): Stanley Kubrick's last film, with Nicole Kidman.
• Tropic Thunder (2008): his unrecognisable, foul-mouthed studio boss Les Grossman.
• American Made (2017): a breezy true story about a pilot turned drug smuggler.

Where Digger fits

Digger, directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu, opened in the US and UK on October 2, 2026, after a London premiere on September 22. Cruise, in heavy prosthetics, plays oil magnate Digger Rockwell in a satire about a catastrophe of the tycoon's own making, alongside Sandra Hüller, Riz Ahmed, John Goodman and Jesse Plemons. Reviews split sharply: it sits around 52% on Rotten Tomatoes, his first "rotten" film in almost a decade, though even negative reviews praised his performance. Iñárritu also presented Cruise's honorary Oscar in November 2025. Too new and too divisive to rank, but it's his boldest choice since Magnolia.

Our verdict

If you're new to Cruise, watch Fallout and Jerry Maguire back to back: they show the two sides of him better than anything else. Then Magnolia, to see how far he'll go.

Frequently asked questions

Has Tom Cruise won an Oscar? Not a competitive one. He has four nominations: Best Actor for Born on the Fourth of July and Jerry Maguire, Best Supporting Actor for Magnolia, and Best Picture as a producer of Top Gun: Maverick. He received an honorary Oscar at the Governors Awards on November 16, 2025.

Does Tom Cruise really do his own stunts? Yes, famously. He climbed the Burj Khalifa for Ghost Protocol, did a HALO skydive and flew a helicopter for Fallout, and broke his ankle jumping between rooftops while filming it.

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