The Christmas Gift From Tom Cruise That Kirsten Dunst Never Forgot
Tom Cruise’s gentlemanly streak was on full display on the 1993 Interview with the Vampire set, surprising first-time co-star Kirsten Dunst by arranging a beautiful tree—a sweet gesture that set the tone for his reputation.
Add this to the long file of Tom Cruise doing unexpectedly thoughtful stuff: when Kirsten Dunst was 11 and shooting Interview with the Vampire with him back in 1993, he quietly turned her dressing room at London’s Pinewood Studios into a tiny holiday escape. Yes, on a vampire movie set, at Christmas, while everyone was still working.
Christmas on a blood-soaked set
Dunst told The Telegraph that one morning during the shoot, she walked into her dressing room and found that Cruise had snuck in a full-on Christmas tree covered in ornaments. It’s the kind of gesture that hits harder when you’re a kid working through the holidays far from home.
"One morning, around Christmas, I remember going into my dressing room at Pinewood, and he’d set up a beautiful tree in there for me, covered in ornaments."
Context check: Dunst was 11, playing Claudia, the child vampire who becomes the ward of Lestat (Cruise, 31 at the time) and Louis (Brad Pitt, 30). It was her breakout role, and the set was a very grown-up place to be spending December.
The Cruise cake is real, and she still gets it
Because one holiday surprise apparently wasn’t enough, Dunst also ended up on Cruise’s extremely famous Christmas cake list — the white chocolate coconut bundt from Doan’s Bakery in Woodland Hills, California. She talked about it on The Graham Norton Show in 2016 and did not undersell it:
"He gives me a cake every Christmas. We call it the Cruise cake at my house. It’s the best coconut cake I’ve ever had in my life."
This didn’t fade after a few years, either. Three decades later, the cake still arrives. Dunst told Entertainment Tonight last year:
"Still getting that cake. Jesse gets the cakes, so we double up on our cakes."
Yes, that’s a two-cake household. Not a bad holiday perk for doing a movie together in ’93.
The audition story that’s oddly specific (and kind of sweet)
Dunst says she auditioned for Claudia “many, many times,” and when it came down to a screen test with Cruise, she realized he was pulling for her. The test involved him physically picking up each of the finalists — apparently to see who looked the most childlike next to him — and Dunst was the tallest of the bunch. His note to help her land it was as practical as it was funny:
"Tuck your legs under"
Both actors are from New Jersey, and Dunst remembers feeling like he wanted to see the Jersey kid win the job. She did, and the movie is better for it.
How the movie landed, and where to watch
- Interview with the Vampire (1994): IMDb 7.5/10, Rotten Tomatoes 66% (critics) and 86% (audience)
- Budget: $50 million; Worldwide box office: $223.6 million
- Currently streaming on Netflix
Bottom line: Cruise set up a Christmas tree for his 11-year-old co-star, helped her inch over the finish line in a brutal audition process, and has been shipping her an A-list coconut cake every December for 30 years. As industry traditions go, that’s one I fully support.