Why was Tom Cruise cast as Jack Reacher? Lee Child's answer changed between the films and the series
Why Tom Cruise was cast as Jack Reacher, how author Lee Child defended the casting in 2012, and why he reversed course for Amazon's Reacher series with Alan Ritchson.
In Lee Child's novels, Jack Reacher is 6'5", roughly 250 pounds, with hands the size of dinner plates. Tom Cruise is 5'7" on a generous day. In 2011, Hollywood looked at those two data points and said: perfect, no notes. Readers spent the next decade saying many, many notes.
Phase one: Lee Child, defense attorney
When the casting backlash hit, Child did not hide. He argued there simply were no 6'5" giants available and delivered the quote that launched a thousand forum threads, telling the Wall Street Journal that with another actor you'd get the height but only 90 percent of Reacher, while with Cruise you'd get "100 per cent of Reacher with 90 per cent of the height." Math! It can do anything.
Cruise, at the 2012 premiere, ran the same play, describing Reacher's size as a "characteristic" rather than a "character," and saying he wouldn't have taken the part at all if Child had objected. Meanwhile, an actor who is literally 6'4" — Dwayne Johnson — revealed he'd gone after the role and lost it. To Tom Cruise. In a height-based part. The industry contains multitudes.
Phase two: Lee Child, hostile witness
Two movies later, the tune changed key. In 2018, announcing the streaming reboot, Child told BBC Radio that the readers were right all along, that Reacher's size is a big component of who he is, and that "Cruise, for all his talent, didn't have that physicality." He announced there would be no more movies with Cruise, and that the character would be rebooted for television with, quote, a completely new actor.
2012 Lee Child: size is just a characteristic. 2018 Lee Child: size is the whole point. Growth! (Literally.)
By the time Amazon 's Reacher arrived with 6'2"-ish slab of granite Alan Ritchson, Child was fully converted, telling Entertainment Weekly that when Reacher enters a bar, "the temperature in the room drops by a degree" — and that Ritchson finally delivered it. So, to answer the headline: Cruise was cast because he's Tom Cruise and the author blessed it. The blessing had an expiration date.