Tom Cruise offers a "war cry" to Timothée Chalamet

“After I met Tom Cruise, right after finishing the first Dune, he sent me the most wonderfully inspiring email,” Chalamet told GQ, adding that Cruise included a list of experts who could help him with stunt training. “He basically said, in Old Hollywood, you would be getting dance training and fight training, and nobody is going to hold you to that standard today. So it’s up to you. The email was really like a war cry.”

As it happens, Chalamet did get some dance training for his big movie musical Wonka. Tony-winning choreographer Christopher Gattelli sang the star’s praises for his dedication to learning tap, noting that his mother and grandmother are trained Broadway dancers. “He would joke about it—like ‘It’s in my blood!’ And I was like: It is. It literally is,” Gattelli said.

The process was “a throwback to LaGuardia,” the performing arts high school Chalamet attended in New York. “We’re telling a story here. This isn’t, like, athletic naturalism,” Chalamet explained. “It’s a shot of earnestness and sincerity, without the cynicism or dread or all the stuff we’re exhausted by.”

Tom Cruise would be proud—and surely very pleased, because on top of Chalamet’s training in the craft, he’s also a huge Top Gun: Maverick fan. “Top Gun was just hugely inspiring to me last summer when we were making Dune,” he gushed to the outlet. He saw the film eight times, one of which he rented a theater and brought the whole Dune team. “Some of the crew were kind of scoffing at going, but I just thought it was one of the greatest films I’ve ever seen.”