‘What has Tom Cruise done to his face?’ is a question that seems to do the rounds on the internet every time the actor is seen in public. Most recently, interest in Cruise’s face was prompted by his advert during the Super Bowl where he discussed the ‘impossible mission’ of winning the NFL title.

Cruise was simply doing his job and reading his lines, but, sadly, as an A-list actor whose appearance has dared to change since he first became famous at the tender age of 20, that’s all it takes to spark a debate about whether he has had plastic surgery.

Reports swiftly followed that ‘fans were stunned by Cruise’s changing face’ and left ‘gobsmacked by the debut of his “stretched” face’. The headline of another trending story reads, ‘Inside Tom Cruise’s $15k cosmetic glow up gone wrong’, while another points to fans’ supposed ‘health concerns’.

On social media, the picture was an even grimmer one. ‘Tom Cruise looks like Tom Cruise is wearing a Tom Cruise skin suit,’ offers one mocking post. ‘Tom Cruise has had more work done than a Beverly Hills housewife,’ reads another. A third asked, ‘Why does Tom Cruises’ face look weird, like AI or something?’.

It’s a sorry state of affairs if celebrities over the age of 50 can’t even do an advert without having their appearance torn to shreds by strangers on the internet – or the media at large. Saying that, when the scrutiny is so extreme and the response is so intrusive, is it any wonder some celebrities do choose to have work done? In many ways, it’s one of their only forms of defence.

Cruise, for his part, has not publicly commented on the response, but that hasn’t stopped fans from speculating about whether he’s had Botox, fillers, a nose job and hair transplants.

In 2012 though, Cruise confirmed he hadn’t had cosmetic surgery and wouldn’t ever get it in the future. A source later told Touch Weekly that the Mission: Impossible actor was ‘terrified’ of going under the knife and ‘looking like a caricature of himself’. It’s as if he could already hear the internet trolls of the future in his ear.

Our societal perception of ageing is so warped that we spend our youthful years ‘terrified’ of what we might look like when we’re older, only to be mocked and scorned whether we choose to age naturally or not. There is no way to win. We are still incapable of accepting that people’s appearances change with time – and we do not have a right to know how, what or why just because we’re interested.

Last year, the Super Bowl advert gig fell to former Friends co-stars Jennifer Aniston and David Schwimmer, who unsurprisingly both faced a similar fate. While most people were excited to see Ross and Rachel share the same screen again after 20 years, plenty of voices on social media were quick to call the actors ‘unrecognisable’ and speculate about whether they’ve had cosmetic surgery.

Aniston has a particularly rough time of it – as all women in Hollywood do. For all the heat Cruise gets about his appearance, it doesn’t come close to that experienced by his female counterparts.

During a recent appearance on Jimmy Kimmel, Aniston was asked about the bogus rumour that she is secretly dating Barack Obama. Someone reshared the clip on X and wrote, ‘Let’s put aside Jennifer Aniston being with Barack Obama and ask ourselves what the hell happened to her face? Her timeless beauty has turned into a train wreck. Wow.’ Her trolls know no rest. And what exactly is ‘timeless’ beauty? Is it only beauty that defeats time?

Cruise’s ex-wife Nicole Kidman is also regularly mocked for her alleged ‘Botox face’, even if she’s glorified for it too. Not only is the discourse in all these instances intrusive, but it is in large part coming from a malicious place. Most people posting about Cruise’s face on social media or commenting on Kidman’s ‘Botox’ are not doing so out of genuine intrigue – they are hoping to go viral by tearing these celebrities down.

If people are hellbent on discussing Cruise at all, it would be more justified to discuss his ties with the Church of Scientology. He has been an advocate for the Church since the early noughties, which believes humans are immortal beings and that traumatic events can be removed through ‘auditing’ otherwise known as classes and teachings from Scientologists.

This alone is more ‘controversial’ than the fact Cruise has aged. Then there’s his return to cinema on 21 May in Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, the eighth and final film in the Mission: Impossible franchise. Not only is Cruise reprising one of his most iconic roles, but he has reportedly continued to do his own stunts. Apparently, there is one sequence in the final film that led Cruise to pass out on a number of occasions. Talk about defying age…

Unfortunately, when Cruise starts the press run for Mission: Impossible, it is hard to imagine that the discourse on social media will stick to the film itself – or even Cruise’s personal beliefs. Instead, people will mockingly ask the same tired questions, and the answers are none of our business.