Another fine messiah ... Tom Cruise. Photograph: PA
In the old days, if you were a Hollywood star like Nicole Kidman and you wanted to be honoured as some kind of messianic redeemer, the best you could hope for was UN Goodwill Ambassador. But now, according to reports, Tom Cruise has gone one up on his ex-wife by landing a real-life role as "the new Christ". Scientology leader David Miscavage reportedly "believes that in future, Cruise, 44, will be worshipped like Jesus for his work to raise awareness of the religion".
Prophets, of course, often have to do without honour, and this move is unlikely to do much for Cruise's public image. The latest PR blunder follows the actor's attack on Brooke Shields, his Oprah Winfrey Show sofa-jumping, and his donations towards the recruitment of 9/11 rescue workers to Scientology. Paramount chairman Sumner Redstone will no doubt be reassured that he made the right decision in severing ties with Cruise last August.
It's easy to forget that Cruise is actually - sometimes - a fine actor. He gave one of the greatest performances of the 90s as Frank TJ Mackey - "Respect the cock and tame the cunt!" - in Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia.
A role like that surely requires an unflinching understanding of macho egotism. Mackey is a secretive, self-obsessed entertainer whose cartoonish masculinity makes him look ridiculous to everyone except a few dedicated fans who are bewitched by his charisma. In other words, Mackey is exactly what Cruise is so often accused of being. But if Cruise understands all these foibles so well that he can build a brilliantly convincing character from them, how is it that he's unable to purge them from his public image? How can someone so perceptive about others be so blind about himself?
This may tell us something about the nature of acting. Those of us who haven't learned any lines since primary school might be tempted to over-intellectualise the craft - to assume that you put together a performance with meticulous, scholarly care. But perhaps it's more instinctive than that: perhaps Cruise is really no good at consciously dissecting characters and Mackey just swooped into his head fully-formed.
The celebrity cameos in Ricky Gervais's Extras showed us recently that at least some stars are brutally self-aware. It could be, however, that Cruise's lack of self-awareness is the real reason he is able to play such ludicrous roles, like Ethan Hunt in the Mission: Impossible trilogy, with such iron conviction. Maybe we should surprised, in fact, that even more action heroes aren't getting themselves proclaimed the new Christ. Vin Diesel, anyone?
