Gooding: Money Changes Everything

Four years after wowing audiences as exuberant athlete Rod Tidwell in Jerry Maguire, Cuba Gooding Jr. is still having trouble distancing himself from his Oscar-winning role. Gooding couldn't even escape Tidwell on the set of Jerry Bruckheimer's upcoming WW II epic, Pearl Harbor.

"I was acting my heart out in an intense combat scene in the middle of the harbor," Gooding tells TV Guide Online. "I was surrounded by about 1,200 men, 700 of them playing dead. There were explosions, so much smoke you could barely see, and we were being dive-bombed by Japanese fighter planes. At one point, there was a little lull in the action, and a voice from somewhere cut through all the noise yelling, 'Show me the money!' All the dead and dying extras totally broke up. I'm like, 'Kill that guy!'"

It was just one more reminder to Gooding that those words he uttered in the 1996 hit film, and repeated in his Oscar acceptance speech, will haunt him forever. "Other actors get recognized and people shout their names," he says, "like 'Hey Eddie' or 'What's up Wesley?' But wherever I go, people take one look at me and scream, 'Show me the money.'"

The busy Gooding — whose latest film, Men of Honor, hits theaters on Friday — is now working on the comedy Rat Race with co-stars Whoopi Goldberg, John Cleese, Kathy Najimy and Jon Lovitz. "It's been an interesting shoot," he says of the Jerry Zucker comedy. "You never know what's coming from Jerry. In my most memorable scene, I'm being chased down a highway by 40 Lucille Ball impersonators, full sprint. And I thought diving for Men of Honor was physical!"

Speaking of which, Gooding explains that he was apprehensive about taking the plunge in the Navy-themed pic, which also stars Robert De Niro. "I remember the first time I had to dive during Navy camp before shooting the film," he explains. "I had to spend the first few weeks doing research on diving, and so when I was finally ready to go down, all I kept thinking about was all I learned: 'If you breathe the wrong way, you die. If you go up too fast, you die.' So I was a little scared.

"When they dropped me down, they advised me to sing," he continues. "They had me on an intercom to monitor my progress. When I came up, they were laughing, because as I got closer to the bottom, my singing became so erratic. I couldn't get over how excited I was that I was at the bottom seeing fish!"