In Rain Man (1988), Tom Cruise played Charlie Babbitt, a self-centred car dealer who discovers he has an autistic older brother, Raymond, played by Dustin Hoffman, and that their late father has left most of his fortune to Raymond. Directed by Barry Levinson, the film follows Charlie as he takes Raymond on a cross-country journey, at first for money, then out of growing affection.
Cruise gave Charlie a restless, impatient energy that made his slow change believable. Opposite Hoffman, who won the Academy Award for Best Actor for the role, Cruise held the film’s emotional centre, and the film itself won the Academy Award for Best Picture.
Rain Man remains a signature Cruise role because it showed he could play a flawed man learning to care, and because it paired him with one of the great screen performances of the decade.