NEWSBronson Pinchot Stands By Denzel Washington, Tom Cruise Insults
Oct. 23 2009, Published 2:22 p.m. ET
Bronson Pinchot (aka Balki Bartokomous from Perfect Strangers) has laid into Denzel Washington — calling him "abusive" and "ungenerous" — and Tom Cruise, who he dismisses as a "bore" and "homophobic."
In an unguarded interview with The Onion's A.V Club, Bronson Pinchot disses Denzel, his co-star in 1996's Courage Under Fire.
"He was really abusive to me and everybody on that movie, and his official explanation was that his character didn’t like me, but it was a dreadful experience."
Meanwhile, Bronson describes Tom, 47, (his co-star in 1984's Risky Business) as "the biggest bore on the face of the Earth," adding that he made "constant homophobic comments."
Tom's rep rebuffs this, saying, "obviously this is so far removed from who Tom Cruise is as a person, this must have been said in jest."
Although the Wall Street Journal approached Bronson, 50, about his comments, the character actor refuses to back down.
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"I regret my choice of words there," he writes in an email to the WSJ of his assessment of Denzel, 54, "and would like to amend my statement by saying I found his willingness to be ungenerous, unkind, knowingly hurtful both mentally and physically to myself and the crew to be the saddest misuse of stardom I have ever experienced or hope to experience."
What about his comments about Tom? "The context of the question was, 'how did he strike me as a person' at a point in his career when he was a virtual unknown," he writes.
"And my answer was that, coming straight out of the world of theater, as essentially all the supporting male actors did, where homophobic language was not heard, I remember thinking his use of it was remarkable and excessive.
"However, it is also true to say, in hindsight, that for a 20 year-old with no background in theater, such language is actually unremarkable. Which I did not know at 23."
