There are few things seared as deeply into the pop culture consciousness as Tom Cruise bouncing around like a man possessed on Oprah Winfrey’s couch, with the A-list action hero showing complete and utter disregard for the upholstery.

It made him a meme before memes had even taken off in popularity, and the evidence is there that it did noticeable damage to his career. Cruise had fine-tuned and precision-engineered his public persona over a number of years, and propelling himself in the air to profess his love for then-partner Katie Holmes made him a laughing stock.

Coupled with another appearance opposite Matt Lauer the very same year where he celebrated the merits of Scientology while simultaneously taking shots at both Brooke Shields and the profession of psychiatry, the summer of 2005 is arguably remembered better for Cruise’s off-screen antics than the fact he headlined his biggest-ever hit at the time in Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds.

Paramount boss Sumner Redstone even decided against renewing his contract with the studio to bring an end to a near-unbroken association that stretched for almost a decade and a half after voicing his belief that the actor’s personal life and talk show antics were a serious impediment to his commercial viability.

These days, Cruise remains more guarded than ever, to the point that questions about his personal life are strictly off-limits anytime he makes public or promotional appearances. Not long after his initial furniture-hopping spree, he reconvened with Oprah to reflect on the moment that made a million headlines.

“It was a moment,” Cruise admitted in the understatement of his professional existence before being asked if he expected it to take on a life of its own and become a worldwide talking point. “No, I didn’t. That was a moment, and it was real. It was something that I just felt that way. And it’s something, you know, that’s just how I felt.”

Disappointingly, Cruise remained firmly seated during his follow-up conversation with Oprah, in what was pretty much the only instance of the Top Gun and Mission: Impossible figurehead ever confronting the furore surrounding his bizarre histrionics head-on.

Of course, a star of his magnitude wasn’t going to be derailed overnight by the mere act of propelling himself across sofas with reckless abandon, but there was a noticeable dip in his measurable success immediately afterwards. Mission: Impossible III remains the lowest-grossing entry in the entire franchise, and a rare foray into drama didn’t go to plan when he bombed opposite Robert Redford and Meryl Streep in Lions for Lambs.

It would be safe to say he’s recovered since then, but the couch incident remains one of the most iconic moments of Cruise’s entire career, and not for the reasons he’d want it to be remembered.