Tom Cruise Excited to Show his Singing & Dancing Skills in ROCK OF AGES

As he does with all roles, Cruise has put in months and months of preparation for this role. He also has high praise for director Adam Shankman's previous musical adaptation, Hairspray.

Tom Cruise is looking to expand on his repertoire with this musical. He prepped for the role for six months and credits all of his stunt training in helping to learn choreography. "I was working on it when I was finishing 'Mission' and I was singing five hours a day and I was dancing five hours a day," he said. In an interview with the Los Angeles Times Cruise also credits his wife for pushing him into the role.

"I had started dancing because I was inspired by my wife. She kept saying, 'You've got to do a musical sometime,' " Cruise said. "Kate's a dancer, so she would say, 'Let's go to dance class,' and she would take us and that's how I kind of came up with the idea of Les Grossman [Tropic Thunder] doing hip-hop. And then to take it to this level with this? It was really fun."

Cruise has long been widely known for his action movies and high-powered dramas but has always shown an affinity to branch out into different and unexpected roles such as Collateral, Tropic Thunder and Magnolia. He is really excited to be working with director/choreographer Adam Shankman.

"He's on fire," Cruise said. "What he accomplished with 'Hairspray' was amazing. My daughter has seen it 15 times and our whole family has watched it over and over and it's just enormously entertaining. To be able to hold that tone throughout is really something."

Rock of Ages is set in the late 1980s, where an aspiring rocker, Drew, works as a busboy in the trademark Hollywood bar/club The Bourbon Room. He falls instantly for a cute girl, Sherrie, who arrives from Kansas hoping to make it big in acting. After being hired by the bar, Sherrie accepts Drew's invitation to have a picnic at a place overlooking Los Angeles. There, he mistakenly suggests that the two are just friends. Later, at the Bourbon Room, ladies' man and lead singer for his band Arsenal, Stacee Jaxx, will be playing that night and instantly hits it off with Sherrie and the two have sex in the bar's bathroom. Subsequently, Drew proves his musical ability in the club and is chosen to open for Stacee. A record producer in the club offers Drew a contract, which he accepts.

Rock of Ages is directed by Adam Shankman with a script from songbook scribe Chris D’Arienzo and Little Miss Sunshine writer Michael Arndt. It stars Tom Cruise, Julianne Hough, Mary J. Blige, Russell Brand, Malin Ackerman, Paul Giamatti, Alec Baldwin, Bryan Cranston and Catherine Zeta-Jones. The upcoming rock opera tribute to the 80s is scheduled for release next year.