Cruise asked for Rock Of Ages role

Tom Cruise specially requested a musical role, filmmaker Adam Shankman has revealed.

The Hollywood actor gets to sing and swagger on stage as glam rocker Stacee Jaxx in Adam's Rock Of Ages - a far cry from his previous roles in Mission: Impossible, The Last Samurai and Top Gun.

"He told me he wanted to make a musical. I think, between his wife and his daughter, and now his son Conor is a DJ, there's a lot of music and dance in his life," said the film's director.

"I think he is just drenched in music all the time. He would tell me that he has seen Hairspray like 100 times just because of Suri, and he really loved it."

Adam - who also directed Hairspray - didn't say yes immediately.

"I couldn't imagine what I was going to do with him - Tom Cruise in a remake of South Pacific? It wasn't going to be that. I thought if I can get the world's biggest movie star to play the world's biggest rock star, I'm golden," he explained.

"But we didn't say yes until we knew he could sing. We went to Axl Rose's vocal coach Ron Anderson - after one session, he came out saying, 'I can sing!'"

He added: "His audition was Tropic Thunder, because not only did he commit to that insane character and really take the p*** out of himself, but he then danced in character at the MTV Movie Awards."

:: Rock Of Ages is in cinemas now.