From 1988: How Tom Cruise learned to be a flashy bartender

Tom Cruise was already a bona fide movie star back in 1988.

He'd already been seen on the big screen in The Outsiders, Risky Business, Top Gun and The Color of Money.

Yet he was still putting in real work when researching a role — like when he was getting ready to film the movie Cocktail, which was partially shot in Toronto. (Shooting also took place in Jamaica and in New York.)

As Cruise told CBC's Midday back in August of 1988, he'd spent time visiting bars to learn about the world of bartending.

Broken bottles, fearful onlookers

"When I started out, I interviewed about 35 bartenders," said Cruise, explaining that he needed to be able to convincingly play a flashy, high-end bartender (which might be called a mixologist today).

Cruise said Cocktail needed to be able to convince the audience that his co-star Bryan Brown was "the best bartender they've ever seen" and that Cruise's own character could then develop into a "star bartender" in his own right.

The mega-star admitted to breaking five bottles when filming and to losing a bet in the process. Brown broke only four, which left Cruise a bottle short of victory.

"Well, that's not bad because that's hard to do," Midday co-host Valerie Pringle told him.

"I was surprised. I thought I was going to break many more than that," Cruise said. "The people that were in front of me, though, were a little nervous when we were flipping the bottles."