Tom Cruise is third on our list. Be sure to check out the others who made the grade in our 50 Greatest Movie Stars of All Time feature.

The setting is a dirty old cellar on the ugly side of an alien invasion—there are broken boards, crumbling bricks, puddles of water on the ground, and a blinding background light that casts shadows and reflects ominously on the walls. Cruise and Fanning are acting out a scene in which he has just committed a violent act—there’s blood dripping from his eyebrow—and Fanning’s character is coping with the trauma.

After several more takes, director Steven Spielberg yells, “That’s the one,” and Cruise smiles, emitting a rat-a-tat-tat laugh of emotional release that echoes off the farthest corners of the vast Soundstage 15, on the Fox lot in Los Angeles.

A half hour later, sitting on a leather couch in his trailer, Cruise tries to explain what Worlds means to him. “You have to understand.” He pauses to emphasize each word: “I . . . love . . . movies.” He slips off the couch, and crouches in a baseball catcher’s position, with fingers pressed together, practically willing his words into physical existence. “I love telling stories.”

Tom Cruise is intense. And he doesn’t keep it inside—he wears his intensity like a second skin. We’ve seen it onscreen time and again: whether it’s the adolescent joy he exudes dancing in his underwear in Risky Business, or the cocky determination he embodies in Top Gun, or the Shakespearean self-denial he wraps himself in, and then rips apart, in Magnolia. His characters are tightly wound, often on the brink, but they ultimately have perfectly calibrated clocks, and, unless they’re antiheroes, they are always able to solve the crime, save the world, get the girl, and strut off the screen smiling.

There’s a reason that Premiere’s editors believe 42-year-old Cruise is the greatest movie star working today. He may not have the lovable warmth of Hanks or the heroic dignity of Washington or the angelic looks of Pitt. But he’s definitely the most attractive. There’s a luminosity and fierceness to him. Think of a wolf. There is a feral quality to him, after all—strong bone structure, thick hair, big teeth, and expressive, urgent eyes—that makes him seem a little bit wild (something both women and men can appreciate for different reasons). And then there is his exuberant, cocksure smile, which radiates off the screen, wrapping audiences in its glow, signifying to all that there’s a movie star up there, and he’s loving the part.

“When you hear that someone has a strong presence, it can bring to mind military or business leaders, heads of state,” Spielberg says. “It’s that je ne sais quoi you experience in a crowded room, when one person who you have never seen before stands out. It’s like they’re plugged into a wall outlet while everyone else around them appears to be standing in the dark. Tom just happens to burn brighter than most, and that’s before you even factor in how talented an actor he is.”

Ask Cruise whether audiences see him as an actor or a movie star, and he says, after a long pause, in an almost inaudible whisper:

“It doesn’t really matter to me.”

Talking to Cruise about what a big movie star he is is a little unseemly. It’s stating the obvious. Tell him that audiences go to his movies not so much to see his characters, but to see him, and his eyes narrow.

“That’s a real honor,” he says. “Some people will hook into a character or story more. I don’t know. . . . But actor-movie star . . . I just do it.”

Tell him how much audiences adore seeing him propel down that wire in Mission: Impossible, and he resorts to a deafening laugh:

“HE HA HA HA HA HA HA. That’s funny. That’s funny.” (Cruise is that rare person who actually laughs literally as written—with clearly enunciated, hard “h” and elongated “ee” and “aa” sounds.)

Push him to uncomfortable limits on the subject, saying that you heard that on the set of Collateral, Jamie Foxx’s friends were riffing on how much they loved to see “the Tom Cruise run,” and he laughs again:“He he ha ha ha ha ha ha.”

And remind him of how iconic his smile is: “Ha ha ha ha ha.”

And that it’s been talked about how his bristling physicality lights people up, notably when his characters freak out, as in the bathroom in Jerry Maguire or on the road in Rain Man: “HA HA HA,” he bellows. Then, shifting in his seat, he says quietly, “That’s nice to hear.”

(But what’s he supposed to say? “That’s right, mortal. Bow before your god”?)