Tom Cruise Sends Dakota Fanning ‘Really Nice Shoes’ on Her Birthday

Tom Cruise still sends Dakota Fanning a pair of shoes every year to mark her birthday.

Fanning, 31, told Andy Cohen as much during her Thursday, Nov. 6, appearance on Watch What Happens Live with Brittany Snow, as the latter actress promotes her new Peacock series All Her Fault. Cohen, 57, referenced Fanning’s previous statements that Cruise has given her shoes for her birthday in the past and asked if it was still a tradition for the A-list actor when Fanning’s birthday rolls around each February.

“Yes, he does,” Fanning, who worked with Cruise when she was a child actor in 2005’s War of the Worlds, responded. “Yes, he does.”

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“Really nice shoes, yes,” she added, when Cohen asked her to clarify “what kind of shoes” Cruise sends her.

“I have so many questions,” Snow, 39, told her fellow actress, and Fanning responded, “It’s really as simple as that. He’s just always given me shoes.” 

“But are they nice shoes, are they sneakers? Or are they like…?” Snow asked. “They’re nice shoes,” Fanning explained. When Snow asked whether Cruise knows if Fanning’s shoe size has changed over the years, she added, “It has changed over the years and he’s adapted. He’s adapted.” 

Cruise and Fanning famously played a father-daughter duo in Steven Spielberg’s 2005 movie War of the Worlds, adapted from H.G. Wells’ original novel of the same name and Orson Welles’ famous 1938 radio program that told the story.  The movie also featured performances by Miranda Otto, Tim Robbins and Lisa Ann Walter; it follows Cruise’s character’s efforts to keep his children safe as aliens initiate a violent conflict with the human population on Earth. 

Shoes are not the only gift Cruise has given Fanning over the years. In April 2024, Fanning said in an interview with Harper’s BAZAAR  that Cruise actually gave her her first cell phone — a Motorola Razr — for her 11th birthday. “I loved having it. I loved it. I felt so cool,” she said, noting that Cruise has always sent her gifts on her birthday each year since then.

All Her Fault is streaming on Peacock now. War of the Worlds is streaming on Paramount+.