Risky Business (1983) Revisited: The Tom Cruise Movie That Started It All

Here at JoBlo, we’re pretty massive Tom Cruise fans. With Top Gun: Maverick officially the biggest hit of his career, the superstar is once again at the top of the Hollywood heap, being celebrated as perhaps the greatest movie star of all time. But where did it begin for Cruise? We’re going to dig into his early days, and the movie that made him a star in this episode of Tom Cruise Revisited examining Risky Business.

This 1983 sex comedy is far more sophisticated than people remember. The brainchild of writer-director Paul Brickman, who would only direct one more movie (Men Don’t Leave in 1990), the film starred Cruise as a suburban high-schooler who runs amuck when his parents go out of town for the weekend. Needing to pay for repairs to his father’s Porsche, he becomes an unlikely pimp to his friends thanks to some help from a gorgeous sex worker (Rebecca De Mornay) he’s hooked up with and promptly fallen for.

While the premise sounds lewd and crude, the film is anything but. Surprisingly honest and directed with class and style, it was the perfect launching pad for Cruise and co-star Rebecca De Mornay, who became a major sex symbol of the eighties and nineties following this. In this episode of Tom Cruise Revisited, we examine the film’s popularity, its stacked supporting cast (early roles for Joe Pantoliano, Bronson Pinchot, Curtis Armstrong and more) and where it stacks up in the Cruise filmography.

This episode of Tom Cruise Revisited is edited by Jeremy Hamley, and written and narrated by Chris Bumbray.