Character: Laurel Boyd
Sister

Release Date: 12/13/96
Total Gross: $153,952,592
Opening weekend: $17,084,296
Director: Cameron Crowe

Quotes:

Laurel: Don't cry at the beginning of a date. Cry at the end, like I do.

Laurel: You fuck this up, I'll kill you!
Jerry: I'm glad we had this talk.

Laurel: I'm incapable of small talk

[Dorothy enters kitchen, catching Laurel eavesdropping.]
Laurel: I heard.
Dorothy: No kidding. I looked over and saw the shadow of two curious shoes under the kitchen door.
Laurel: Dorothy, this guy would go home with a gardening tool if it showed interest.

Laurel: Men are just different people when they’re holding onto the bottom rung.

Bonnie on deing inspired to direct by Cameron Crowe:
Cameron Crown kinda pushed me out the door you know. He said " Go do it." When we were doing Jerry Maguire he was like, "You really want to do this?" because I would say "oh maybe Tom should do this." He was so funny though. He was great. He was an inspiration because he wrote and directed that. It’s nice to be a writer/director because you have seen the story all the way through and you can change it on the set and rewrite it as you are going along. If you see an actor going a certain direction that you might think is better for the character it’s a luxury. You don’t have to call the writers to get it approved.
A&E interview April 2000

Bonnie on Tom Cruise:
Bonnie: Yeah -- but I'm here to tell you he is the world's greatest kisser, ever.
Rosie: Now, wait a minute. I saw the film, I don't recall you kiss...
Bonnie: Well, not in the movie! No, we don't kiss in the movie. But there's so much down time, you know, during rehearsal -- and we're actors, there's not much to say. So we just made out......Don't I wish!

Bonnie: There's a scene where he comes into the front door and he hugs me, and we had to do it like ten times, 'cause I kept turning so red. Because, you know, in my mind I'm the character, because you know I was really serious about my work, but in my head, I'm like, "IT'S TOM CRUISE HUGGING ME!!"
Rosie O Donnell Show 1996

Bonnie: Actually, I'm the A.D. on the film. I'm the assistant director.....My hair is so long in the movie! It's like gigantic! It's, it's..I mean, they had to recut the trailer because they thought Tom Cruise was starring in a fable.
David Letterman

There's one scene that they cut where Tom actually climbs my hair to get into the apartment. They had to cut it though, because it was too unrealistic.

From the official site:
The estimable Bonnie Hunt, who plays Dorothy's cynical but loving sister Laurel, had previously enjoyed an on-screen encounter with Tom Cruise when she portrayed a waitress in Rain Man, her very first movie. "It was the first time I was ever in front of a camera," she recollects, "and even though I had only four lines, I was a nervous wreck. Tom was so nice to me, he treated me like a big movie star." Hunt had read the Jerry Maguire script two years before it actually went into production, and was "thrilled" to get the part of Laurel, "because she's this down-to-earth, audience point-of-view character. Laurel never secretly gives advice. She just calls it the way she sees it." For Crowe, working with Hunt presented an opportunity to help create a fully dimensional supporting character who is also at the swirling center of one of the film's comic highlights, the divorced woman's group that Laurel Boyd hosts in weekly sessions. "There are so many talented comediennes that you see on television every week," explains Crowe, "and I wondered what it would be like to get a bunch of them into a room and let them act together. So I got Larina Adamson, Winnie Holzman, Diana Jordan, Susan Norfleet, Susan Pingleton, Cha Cha Sandoval and Hynden Walch, together with Bonnie, and just watched them explode. They were on fire the minute they got together in the room to audition. And Bonnie was at the center of it. In our conversations before the start of shooting, Bonnie and I knew that we wanted Laurel not to be a bitter stereotypical divorced woman. There's much more going on with her character, and that's just Bonnie, acting and being free."

The official Jerry Maguire Site:
The site also has Jerry Maguire's mission statement: THE THINGS WE THINK AND DO NOT SAY written by the director Cameron Crowe. Only parts of it are heard in the film
http://www.spe.sony.com/movies/jerrymaguire

Jerry Maguire’s Script: http://www.godamongdirectors.com/scripts/jerrymaguire.txt