Nothing can be pinned down as the Tom Cruise persona -- but that is not a sign of versatility (as it is with, say, Jeff Bridges or Gene Hackman, actors who disappear into their roles). When "Tom Cruise" comes to mind, you might, on a generous day, think hardworking, earnest, not particularly flashy. Words that could be applied to any diligent, nondescript person in almost any conceivable profession, and thus not the words we associate with being a movie star. What movie star could you compare Tom Cruise to? Every potential correlation falls short. Johnny Depp, because he was a teen idol who proved himself a serious actor? No, because Cruise has never had anything like Depp's wild-card streak, his dreamy ardor. Gary Cooper, because, like Cruise, he was an all-American straight arrow? No, because the young Cooper in a picture like "Morocco" was lithe and sexy -- before Frank Capra wrecked all that with "Mr. Deeds Goes to Town." (The comparison for Cooper would be Kevin Costner in "Bull Durham" -- and then in everything else.) Robert Redford? Well, Redford has been almost as dull as Cruise. But he has also managed a nice ironic streak; think of the pleased look on his face in "All the President's Men" when he gets a source to inadvertently reveal information over the phone; or the moment in "Barefoot in the Park" when, after an evening of unpalatable ethnic cuisine, he tentatively admits, "My teeth feel soft." That seems beyond Cruise -- and Cruise has never approached the self-examination Redford brought to his golden-boy persona in "The Way We Were."

The real comparison would be to manufactured idols like Troy Donahue, except that Donahue never commanded any respect (even though he managed to turn up in a couple of American classics, Douglas Sirk's "Imitation of Life" and Francis Ford Coppola's "The Godfather, Part 2").

So while there are precedents for separate bits of Tom Cruise's career, there's no precedent for the whole. And where is that career going now? After a while, it was easy to take Cruise for granted, not to expect much of him but to know that you were going to see him on-screen two or three times a year -- which translates usually to 10 major magazine covers and two dozen TV talk shows. He's become an inevitability, like the change of seasons or the garbage pickup.

But lately, it's been harder to take Cruise in stride, perhaps because he's decided, understandably, that the days of youthful roles are coming to a close and the time has come to demonstrate his authority. And this is a problem.

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