Breakneck action

MANILA, Philippines - In the action-comedy Knight and Day, Tom Cruise is covert agent Roy Miller and Cameron Diaz is June Havens, a woman caught between him and those he claims set him up. As their globetrotting adventure erupts into a maze of double-crosses, close escapes, false identities and head-spinning romantic snafus, they come to realize that all they can count on is each other.

Without even time to catch her breath, June finds herself being pursued around the globe — dodging bullets in Boston, leaping rooftops in Austria, and running from bulls in Seville — all in the company of a potentially duplicitous, possibly unstable yet decidedly alluring secret agent at the center of a life-or-death adventure that will push them from opposite worlds to do the one thing they’ve long avoided: Trust.

“Knight and Day has everything I love in movies,” says Cruise. “It’s a perfect mix of action, comedy and fresh, identifiable characters with a love story that feels very organic. What interested me so much about the story of Roy and June is that everything that happens to them happens through the prism of action. The challenge and joy for Cameron and me was finding ways to reveal our characters in the middle of these manic moments of danger — showing how Roy and June start to bring out the best in each other, which is the ultimate romantic idea.”

Diaz, who was already attached to the project when Cruise came aboard, appreciated the characters’ interplay, their romance — and the chance to take the journey with her leading man. “I was drawn to Knight and Day not only for its high-level action, but because I saw it as an impassioned love story between two people who find each other from opposite worlds,” Diaz says. “Roy and June have that thing where they each bring out something interesting and unexpected in the other, and I thought that would be so much fun to explore on this thrilling ride with Tom.”

Knight and Day opens today in theaters from 20th Century Fox to be distributed by Warner Bros.