Tom Cruise starred opposite Rebecca De Mornay in Risky Business (Picture: Warner Bros)

Rebecca De Mornay has unpacked her whirlwind romance with Tom Cruise after they lit up the screen together in the 80s.

The former co-stars became close while filming Risky Business in 1982 – the coming-of-age movie followed the Top Gun icon, 62, as a high school student who hires a prostitute, and scrambles to afford their night together.

The pair became a couple during production and dated for around three years, before going their separate ways in 1985.

Looking back on their time together four decades later, the Hand That Rocks The Cradle star, 65, said in a new interview: ‘We were so in love, and the movie was a big smash, and I remember just feeling – wow, it’s just going to go on like this!

‘Not the case! Not at all.’

While audiences couldn’t get enough of Risky Business, which still commands a critics score of 93% on Rotten Tomatoes, it wasn’t the same for her follow-up movie, The Slugger’s Wife.

The couple became a couple during filming (Picture: Getty)

They eventually split in 1985 and have both moved on (Picture: WireImage)

‘I came to realize how much of it was out of my control,’ she conceded to the Independent. ‘The reviews I got for Risky Business were phenomenal, and then the reviews I got for Slugger’s Wife were really vicious.

‘But none of it was actually true. I’m not as good as they were saying. And I’m not as horrible as they were saying, either.

‘I had no real plan for what to do next. I knew I didn’t want to be typecast as “the sexy woman”, but it was all so difficult to navigate. Then, three years after Risky Business, my mother died. I was suddenly kind of orphaned, and everything after that just felt like I was flying by the seat of my pants.’

Rebecca previously unpacked their wild romance (Picture: WireImage)

Rebecca has previously spoken publicly about their relationship and how ‘jarring’ she found the attention after Risky Business hit the big screen in the early 80s.

‘I thought it was going to be a big hit,’ she told the Wrap last year. ‘It was personally jarring, and thrilling and discombobulating to have become famous so quickly.

‘Tom and I were together when the movie came out and we had photographers jumping out of bushes, the pre-paparazzi days.’

After their split, the actress moved on with Bruce Wagner and they walked down the aisle in 1986 – but they divorced in 1990.

Tom shot to superstardom after the film (Picture: Getty)

She then got engaged to singer Leonard Cohen before welcoming two daughters with fellow actor Patrick O’Neal.

Meanwhile, Tom enjoyed a three-year marriage to Mimi Rogers before tying the knot with Nicole Kidman.

Following their divorce in 2001 – 11 years after their nuptials – he dated Penelope Cruz and later married Katie Holmes in 2006, months after she welcomed their daughter, Suri Cruise.

It wasn’t to last and they called time on their romance in June, 2012, and signed a divorce settlement days later.