Networking

Case study : Tom Cruise

Here, we will follow the career of Tom Cruise, at a K-neihborhood of 2. We study his career from his first movie in 1980 until the last one, in 2010. In red, you can see the “bad” actors, in white the ones that are “normal” and in green the ones that are good actors. In 1980, the quality of the actor is only of 4,9/10, and has some neighbors that don’t have a very good quality either. This was his first cinema apparition, in the movie called “Endless love” He is, however, linked to some good actors, like Thomas Howell, who has a grade of 7,9. Tom Cruise score rises to 7,1 in 1983. This is in accordance to his nomination to the Golden globe of the best actor after playing in “Risky business”. Then, his score is decreasing a bit, until reaching 5,9 in 1988. At this moment, he plays with some very good rated actore again : Lucinda Jenney, Michael D. Roberts, which have both an 8 as a grade. After that, he rises to 7,2. This increase follows, again, a nomination to the Golden globe of the best actor, and an oscar for the best actor (for “Borned on the 4th of Jully”). Then, his score will rise until 7,9 in 1995. In 1994, the year before, he played for “Interview with a vampire”, with Brad Pitt, also a rising star, with, at this period, the same score as Tom Cruise : 7,5. After this peak, Tom Cruise’s career unfortunately decreases back until 7,6.

Below, you can see another way to visualize the career of Tom Cruise, and his neighborhood. Tom Cruise is the central dot, the one with the bigest dot. The size of the dot diminishes as the actors are further away from Tom Cruise. The colors indicate the relative distance to Tom Cruise’s score. On the x axis, we can see the repartition of the actors’ edges. On the y axis, we can see the repartition of the actors looking at their score.

What can be said about his career ?

Overall his career, Tom Cruise didn’t meet a lot of bad actors (we can almost not observe any red nodes throughout the whole network). Furthermore, the two times Tom Cruise had “bad” rates and encountered a well rated actor, he got a golden globe, and a price for his talent in being an actor. Is that because of his network ? Or because of his talent ? We cannot be sure…

Comparing to Brad Pitt

Comparing with Brad Pitt, we can see that Brad Pitt rised his score more than Tom Cruise, after having played in the same movie together (after “Interview with a vampire”), starting from the same grade. Thus, we can conclude that an actor’s neihborhood is not his/her principal asset.