Tom Cruise’s stern telling off to a prankster on the red carpet continues to divide viewers almost two decades on.

Back in 2005, the star was talking to media at the London premiere for Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds.

However, a Channel 4 prankster posing as a reporter got Cruise a little wet in the face.

The actor thought he was doing a legit interview on the red carpet when the microphone surprisingly squirted a stream of water into his face.

Asking ‘why would you do that’, Cruise quickly batted away the trick item and pulled the prankster forward.

The Top Gun actor certainly was not happy to have fell victim to the prank in front of so many people – and went in on the guy.

“What’s so funny about that?” Cruise asked the joker as he told staff to let him stay while he spoke to him. “It’s ridiculous.”

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The joker seemed to apologise and try to defend himself as the actor didn’t seem to see the funny side as intended.

“You like doing mean things to people?” The Mission Impossible star continued as his face was wiped with a towel. And as the pranker tried to walk away, Cruise said: “Hey, hey, no, no, don’t run away.

“Don’t run away, it’s incredibly rude. I’m here giving you an interview and answering your questions and you do something really nasty.

“You’re a jerk. You’re a jerk. You know what, you’re a jerk.”

Cruise’s harsh response divided people at the time, and still does 18 years later as many think he was in the right, while others think he was well out of order.

Twitter users say he said ‘nothing wrong’ in his response to the prank, is ‘absolutely right’ and that: “Childish behaviour calls for being spoken to like a child.”

One also wrote: “I don’t even like Tom Cruise but he’s spot on here.”

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However, others put: “The moment it happened, I felt scared. Tom Cruise seems very nice a lot of the time, but you just would not f**k with him.”

Another put: “He’s honestly terrifying.”

And one said: “He’s not wrong at all but I mean it’s a bit of water, it’s not that deep.”

Channel 4 actually released an apology to Cruise after the incident saying it was just meant to be ‘light-hearted’ for some comedy.

"The stunt was intended to be light-hearted rather than malicious and we would apologise to Mr Cruise for any offence that was caused," Channel 4 said in a statement.

"The incident that took place on Sunday evening involving Tom Cruise was for a new Channel 4 entertainment show, part of which involves playing light-hearted comedy pranks on celebrities and members of the public."