Tom Cruise Missing Tooth: Actor Shows Off A Busted Smile On Set Of His New Movie

Tom Cruise is missing a tooth, but fans of the normally well-groomed actor shouldn’t worry.

The actor flashed his toothless grin to photographers on the set of his new movie, Mena, in which he plays pilot-turned-gun-runner Barry Seals.

As the Mail Online reported, Tom Cruise’s missing tooth is really part of the portrayal.

“The 52-year-old star looked like he’d suffered some in the chops too while shooting scenes for the movie in a suburb of Atlanta, Georgia on Tuesday.

Tom sported a ‘missing’ tooth and bruises on his left cheek courtesy, of course, of make-up magic, but looked real enough to spectators watching the action from afar.”

The facial changes aren’t too big a surprise to anyone following the development of Mena. Closer Weekly reported back in February that Tom was planning a big transformation for the role.

The report noted that the 52-year-old actor is planning a significant weight gain to play the hefty Barry Seals.

This isn’t the first time that Tom Cruise has changed his appearance for a movie role. In 2008, he donned a fat suit and bald cap to play the ruthless studio executive, Les Grossman, in the movie Tropic Thunder. The overhaul was so complete that the film’s producers kept Tom’s name out of the promotional materials, only letting audiences find out when the credits rolled at the end of the movie.

The secret eventually got out, but Cruise’s portrayal is still ranked among the top movie transformations of all time.

While Tom Cruise is busy filming Mena and showing off his missing tooth, another one of his movie franchises is about to grow. He is poised to bring back the Jack Reacher character for a sequel to his 2012 action movie, which made $218.3 million worldwide.

Jack Reacher 2 is close to landing the The Last Samurai team of Ed Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz to rewrite Richard Wenk’s script.

“Paramount and Skydance signaled they were moving ahead with a sequel as early as December, 2013, a year after the first one. It will be based on the Child book Never Go Back, which was published in fall 2013. In it, Reacher heads back to his old military base in Virginia to take a woman to dinner who is now the commanding officer. By the time he gets there, she has been arrested, and Reacher finds himself being charged with pummeling one guy and fathering a child with a woman. He can’t remember either transgression but gets to the bottom of it with cunning and sometimes brute force.”

Those who want to see Tom Cruise and his missing tooth will have to wait a little bit. Mena is set to hit theaters on January 6, 2017.

[Image via E! Online]