I don’t subscribe to the cult of Tom Cruise – but Mickey Rourke’s dig fails to understand modern cinema

God bless the Hollywood bust-up. In an era when the edges seem to have been thoroughly sanded off every celebrity interaction, when “heartwarming moment” tweets and co-star bromance compilation videos go viral at the drop of a hat, there’s something refreshing about some good old-fashioned thespianic mud-slinging. There are exceptions, of course: performers who refuse to submit their offscreen personas to the stern marshalling of bubblewrap-gloved PR specialists. Every so often, you get someone like Sam Elliott calling the Best Picture frontrunner a “piece of s***”. Or Brian Cox branding Johnny Depp “overblown” and “overrated”.