Bryce Dallas Howard Reveals Scary Tom Cruise Fan Encounter

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Fans have done a lot for their favorite celebrities — waiting hours outside hotels, naming their kids after them, and even getting full-on tattoos of their faces. But pulling them into a crowd? That’s next level.

On Sunday, February 9, Bryce Dallas Howard recalled a “very, very vivid memory” of watching Tom Cruise vanish into a sea of fans in 1992. Sitting beside her dad, Oscar-winning director Ron Howard, at MegaCon in Orlando, the 43-year-old Jurassic World star shared how, at just 11 years old, she traveled to Tokyo with her father for the Far and Away premiere — where she saw the chaos unfold firsthand.

“Tom Cruise is — I’m sure you all know this — is extraordinary when it comes to press and fan engagement and all of that, just you know, absolutely tireless,” she told a panel during a Q&A. “He was walking in front of me, kind of like, 10 feet in front of me on this red carpet. And, you know, all the fans were excited, and he was waving, and he got a little too close and his arm got sucked in and then his entire body got sucked into the crowd.”

For a split second, Bryce thought the Top Gun icon was gone for good. “At that point, I just knew Tom as the guy who works with my dad,” she explained. “He would do backflips on set to entertain us… And seeing him get sucked in there and then everyone kind of diving in after him, I was like, ‘Is he dead?'”

Luckily, Cruise, now 62, was pulled out and, in true action-star fashion, kept things moving. “He sort of shook it off and kept going,” the Village actress shared. “And I was like, ‘Is this because people love him?’ Like it was a really kind of weird moment, but not a bad moment, you know, cause Tom was totally right back at it.”

The experience left a lasting impression. While some celebrity kids grow up chasing the spotlight, Bryce was more drawn to life behind the scenes. “I was never asking to go to the parties or, you know, any of those things,” she admitted.

Her dad backed her up. “She loved going to set,” Ron, 70, added. “Yeah, I was insatiable,” Bryce agreed.

This isn’t the first time Bryce has talked about her experiences with Cruise. In 2017, she revealed on Watch What Happens Live that the Mission: Impossible actor would babysit her as a kid — and keep her entertained with cartwheels and backflips. “He’s an acrobat,” she joked at the time.