The Guy Behind Deep Fake Tom Cruise on Turning a Setback into Stardom

Hanging out with Paris Hilton, belting out a Dave Matthews Band song and marveling at a lollipop. These are things that millions have watched Tom Cruise — or Deep Fake Tom Cruise at least — do. The internet version of the actor is actually Miles Fisher, a viral TikToker who made a name for himself by digitally wearing Tom Cruise's face while getting into various shenanigans. In a recent interview, the deep fake darling talked about his unlikely journey to fame.

Who is the guy behind Deep Fake Tom Cruise?

Fisher is a Harvard grad and bit-part actor, appearing in projects like Final Destination 5 and Mad Men. He felt his facial similarity to Cruise was getting in the way of his own acting career. "I have had studios heads to my face, call me 'discount Tom Cruise,'" he said in an interview on the "Colin and Samir" podcast.

"I got down to me and the other guy to test for the leads of shows, maybe 20 times — not an exaggeration," he said. "What I found out was the ultimate decision makers [were saying] do we want the interesting, slightly off-kilter artistic take, or do we want the Tom Cruise guy?"

Soon Fisher says he realized "there's just no shaking this."

Fisher said that as he approached age 30, he realized he had to "find something else" to do with his life. He started a coffee company with a friend called Bixby. As the company started to take off, Fisher started making videos to sell it. "We got millions of views, and when that happens, you get tens of thousands of comments. One out of three comments was 'Woah, when did Tom Cruise start a coffee company?'" Fisher said. "It really ticked me off."

But then Fisher noticed something — people weren't commenting negatively, they were liking the Tom Cruise thing. They were posting laughing emojis and sharing with their friends. "People don't know that I had an acting career and I feel sometimes like a failed artist. It just brings them joy. This whole Tom Cruise thing brings them joy."

Fisher eventually surrendered to what audiences were responding to: "When I was able to own my own insecurities about this Tom Cruise thing, I thought, 'You know what would be kind of funny?'"

How Deep Fake Tom Cruise was born

In the midst of the last Presidential election, Fisher had an idea for a Presidential ad. "What if Tom Cruise actually entered the race? In real-life, what would his campaign video look like?" The viral #RunTomRun ad was born, playing off the actor's impressive onscreen sprinting. Added Fisher: "It was a lot of fun. It got millions of views."

Months later, someone sent Fisher a clip of the ad — this time, with Tom Cruise's face on his. "It was a really bizarre thing to experience. Wait a minute, that's my video, I know that's my body, that's my everything, but it's Tom Cruise."

Fisher tracked down the guy who made it, VFX and AI artist Chris Ume, and they developed a friendship. In 48 hours, he had the first @deeptomcruise video. A couple days later, he checked TikTok and saw the video had 6 million views. He felt a bit blindsided by all the attention and took the video down at first.

But later he said he thought, "Let's make another one."

"In the first year, hundreds of millions of people spent over a billion minutes absorbing it," Fisher said. "Since then it's only grown," he said of the phenomenon his TikTok has become. Hilton has done several videos with the TikTok star as Deep Fake Tom Cruise.

The co-founders of Metaphysic, a pop-culture AI company, which includes Chris Ume, the creator of the software that started @deepfakeTomCruise with Fisher, told Forbes that bringing Hilton into the deep fake Tom Cruise universe just made sense: "The videos are based on the fantastical make-believe idea of a younger Tom Cruise. When you think about it, Paris has a larger than life, magical realism lifestyle. That’s what it is, magical realism."

Ultimately, Fisher said his work comes out of admiration for Cruise. "I wanted to [represent Cruise] in a way that if I ever met him in real life, he'd be like, 'Hey, you're a good kid.'" he said.

"There's no cheap shots on him in any way. I grew up loving the guy."