Tom Cruise Reportedly Shut Down a Topless Scene His Costar Lea Thompson Didn’t Want to Do in All the Right Moves

Like Paul Newman, Tom Cruise has a history of looking out for his female costars.

Cruise’s former onscreen girlfriend Lea Thompson recently revealed that when the pair were filming 1983’s All the Right Moves, Cruise shut down one of the topless scenes Thompson was supposed to do. “[The producers] wanted me to show my breasts twice in the script,” she told Closer Weekly. “I didn’t even audition because I didn’t want to take my shirt off, but I got the part and was like, ‘Okay.’” One of those scenes never happened, though, thanks to Cruise. “Tom managed to talk them out of one of the [nude] scenes.”

What’s more is, when Thompson went topless for the other scene that didn’t get cut, Cruise offered to bare himself in solidarity. “In the second, he said, ‘Well, if she has to be naked, I’ll be naked, too,’” she said, adding, “That’s pretty badass! I’ve always been grateful to him for standing up to the producers.”

This isn’t the first time one of Cruise’s costars has spoken out about the actor’s respectful demeanor. After Cruise and Emily Blunt worked together in 2014’s Edge of Tomorrow, the actress talked about how the action movie set a new feminist bar, adding that it was in part due to Cruise, who was “very much behind having his butt kicked in a movie.” “He is very empowering to females in a huge way,” she told People, as The Telegraph pointed out. “He was someone who was very much about my character being a girl. It was refreshing.”

For Blunt, the experience was different from other projects she had done. “You have to fight your corner,” as she said. “It’s a point that needs reiterating time and time again: that women are compelling and interesting and worth watching. We need to refocus at the grassroots on female writers. Female writers write better roles for women.”

With the impending arrival of Cruise’s Top Gun: Maverick, it will be interesting to see how that figures into the film.