Thomas Cruise Mapother IV (born July 3, 1962, Syracuse, New York, U.S.) is an American actor who emerged in the 1980s as one of Hollywood’s most popular leading men, known for his clean-cut good looks and versatility.
Tom Cruise, who took up acting in high school, made his film debut in Endless Love (1981).
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Tom Cruise
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Tom Cruise at the 2019 San Diego Comic-Con
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Thomas Cruise Mapother IV
July 3, 1962 Syracuse, New York, U.S.
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| Years active | 1980–present |
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| Children | 3 |
| Relatives | William Mapother (cousin) |
| Website | tomcruise |
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He had supporting roles in such movies as Taps (1981) and The Outsiders (1983) before starring as a high-school senior who turns his parents’ home into a brothel in Risky Business (1983).
The movie was a major success, earning Cruise widespread recognition.
His star status was cemented with Top Gun (1986), the highest-grossing film of that year, in which he played a navy jet pilot.
In 1986 Cruise appeared opposite Paul Newman in The Color of Money,
which was directed by Martin Scorsese, and two years later starred as an autistic man’s selfish brother in Rain Man.
For his portrayal of a Vietnam War veteran turned activist in Born on the Fourth of July (1989), Cruise received his first Academy Award nomination.
Cruise went on to exhibit a broad depth and range of characters in his films during the 1990s, playing such diverse roles as a navy lawyer in A Few Good Men (1992),
A vampire in Interview with the Vampire (1994), and a secret agent in Mission: Impossible (1996); the immense popularity of the latter film led to sequels in 2000, 2006, 2011, 2015, 2018, and 2023.
His performance as a sports agent in Jerry Maguire (1996) earned Cruise a second Oscar nomination.
In 1999 he starred with his then-wife, Nicole Kidman, in the highly anticipated final film of director Stanley Kubrick, Eyes Wide Shut (1999), an examination of marital fidelity that drew mixed reviews.
That year Cruise also earned acclaim as a misogynistic self-help guru in Magnolia, for which he received an Academy Award nomination for best supporting actor.
Cruise starred in a number of action films in the 2000s, including the science-fiction thriller Minority Report (2002), directed by Steven Spielberg;
The Last Samurai (2003), in which he played a disaffected U.S. soldier who aligns himself with a samurai community;
And the gritty Los Angeles-set Collateral (2004), in which he took on the role of an obdurate contract killer.
He re teamed with Spielberg on War of the Worlds (2005), a visually impressive adaptation of the H.G. Wells novel of the same name.
In 2008 Cruise earned laughs as an abrasive movie executive in the comedy Tropic Thunder,
And he portrayed the historical figure Col. Claus von Stauffenberg, a German army officer who organized an attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler, in Valkyrie.
Cruise subsequently starred in the action thrillers Knight and Day (2010) and Jack Reacher (2012).
In the latter he played a former army investigator, a role he reprised in Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (2016).
After appearing as a 1980s rock idol in the musical Rock of Ages (2012), he was cast as an apocalypse survivor in the sci-fi adventure Oblivion (2013).
He then portrayed a glib military public relations officer who is repeatedly killed and resurrected in the comic alien-invasion romp Edge of Tomorrow (2014).
In 2017 Cruise starred in the action-horror film The Mummy and the antic drama American Made. For Top Gun: Maverick (2022), he reprised his role from the 1986 blockbuster.
Cruise’s personal life often attracted as much attention as his acting. His marriage to Kidman was followed closely by the Hollywood media, as was their divorce in 2001.
Over the next few years, his outspoken support of Scientology proved controversial,
Especially his 2005 public denouncement of psychiatry as an illegitimate science (a view held by Scientologists).
Cruise continued to find attention in tabloids and entertainment media through his public relationship with actress Katie Holmes, to whom he was married from 2006 to 2012.
Early life and education
Tom Cruise was born on July 3, 1962, in Syracuse, New York to electrical engineer Thomas Cruise Mapother III (1934–1984) and special education teacher Mary Lee (née Pfeiffer; 1936–2017).
His parents were both from Louisville, Kentucky, and had English, German, and Irish ancestry. Cruise has three sisters named Lee Anne, Marian, and Cass.
One of his cousins, William Mapother, is also an actor who has appeared alongside Cruise in five films. Cruise grew up in near poverty and had a Catholic upbringing.
He later described his father as “a merchant of chaos”, a “bully”, and a “coward” who beat his children.
He elaborated, “[My father] was the kind of person where, if something goes wrong, they kick you.
It was a great lesson in my life—how he’d lull you in, make you feel safe and then, bang! For me, it was like, ‘There’s something wrong with this guy.
Don’t trust him. Be careful around him.'” Cruise’s biological father died of cancer in 1984.
In total, Cruise attended 15 schools in 14 years. Cruise spent part of his childhood in Canada;
When his father took a job as a defense consultant with the Canadian Armed Forces, his family moved in late 1971 to Beacon Hill, Ottawa.
He attended the new Robert Hopkins Public School for his fourth and fifth grade education. He first became involved in drama in fourth grade, under drama teacher George Steinburg.
He and six other boys put on an improvised play to music called IT at the Carleton Elementary School drama festival.
Drama organizer Val Wright was in the audience and later said that “the movement and improvisation were excellent … a classic ensemble piece.”
In sixth grade, Cruise went to Henry Munro Middle School in Ottawa. That year, his mother left his father, taking Cruise and his sisters back to the United States.
In 1978, she married Jack South. Cruise briefly took a Catholic church scholarship and attended the St. Francis Seminary in Cincinnati; he aspired to become a Franciscan priest before leaving after a year.
Priests at the seminary have said Cruise chose to leave the school when his family relocated again; however, a former classmate said that they were both asked to leave after getting caught taking liquor.
In his senior year of high school, he played football for the varsity team as a linebacker, but was cut from the squad after getting caught drinking beer before a game.
He went on to star in the school’s production of Guys and Dolls. In 1980, he graduated from Glen Ridge High School in Glen Ridge, New Jersey.
Personal life
Marriages and relationships
Tom Cruise splits his time between homes in Beverly Hills, California;
Clearwater, Florida; and the South of England, where Cruise has lived in various places such as Central London, Dulwich, East Grinstead and Biggin Hill.
In the early-to-mid-1980s, Cruise had relationships with Melissa Gilbert, Rebecca De Mornay, Patti Scialfa and Cher.
Cruise married actress Mimi Rogers on May 9, 1987. They divorced on February 4, 1990. Rogers had grown up in Scientology and was one of its ‘auditors’; they met when Cruise became one of her clients.
In a 1993 Playboy interview, Rogers discussed her split from Cruise and said that he had been considering becoming a monk, which affected their intimacy.
Rogers later retracted the comments and claimed she had been misinterpreted. Rogers received a $4 million divorce settlement.
Cruise met his second wife, actress Nicole Kidman, on the set of their film Days of Thunder (1990). The couple married on December 24, 1990.
They adopted two children: Isabella Jane (born 1992) and Connor Antony (born 1995). On February 5, 2001, the couple’s spokesperson announced their separation.
Cruise filed for divorce two days later, and their marriage was dissolved later that year, with Cruise citing irreconcilable differences.
In a 2007 interview with Marie Claire, Kidman noted the incorrect reporting of a miscarriage early in her marriage: “It was wrongly reported as miscarriage by everyone who picked up the story.
So it’s huge news, and it didn’t happen. I had a miscarriage at the end of my marriage, but I had an ectopic pregnancy at the beginning of my marriage.”
Cruise was next romantically linked with Penélope Cruz, his co-star in Vanilla Sky (2001). Their three-year relationship ended in 2004.
An article in the October 2012 issue of Vanity Fair stated that several sources have said that after the breakup with Cruz,
Scientologist leaders launched a secret project to find Cruise a new girlfriend.
According to those sources, a series of “auditions” of Scientologist actresses resulted in a short-lived relationship with Iranian-British actress Nazanin Boniadi,who subsequently left Scientology.
Scientology and Cruise’s lawyers issued strongly worded denials and threatened to sue, accusing Vanity Fair of “shoddy journalism” and “religious bigotry”.
Journalist Roger Friedman later reported that he received an email from director and ex-Scientologist Paul Haggis confirming the story.
In April 2005, Cruise began dating actress Katie Holmes. On April 27 that year, Cruise and Holmes—dubbed TomKat by the media—made their first public appearance together in Rome.
A month later, Cruise publicly declared his love for Holmes on The Oprah Winfrey Show; he jumped on Winfrey’s yellow couch and stood there to make the announcement.
On October 6, 2005, Cruise and Holmes announced they were expecting a child. In April 2006, their daughter Suri was born.
On November 18, Holmes and Cruise were married at the 15th-century Odescalchi Castle in Bracciano, in a Scientologist ceremony attended by many Hollywood stars.
Their publicists said the couple had “officialized” their marriage in Los Angeles the day before the Italian ceremony.
There has been widespread speculation that their marriage was arranged by the Church of Scientology. David Miscavige, the head of Scientology, served as Cruise’s best man.
On June 29, 2012, Holmes filed for divorce from Cruise. On July 9, the couple signed a divorce settlement worked out by their lawyers.
New York law requires all divorce documents remain sealed, so the exact terms of the settlement are not publicly available.
Cruise stated that ex-wife Katie Holmes divorced him in part to protect the couple’s daughter Suri from Scientology and that Suri is no longer a practicing member of the organization.
Litigation
In 1998, Tom Cruise successfully sued the Daily Express, a British tabloid which alleged that his marriage to Kidman was a sham designed to cover up his homosexuality.
In May 2001, Cruise filed a lawsuit against gay porn actor Chad Slater. Slater had told the celebrity magazine Actustar that he had been involved in an affair with Cruise.
This claim was strongly denied by Cruise, and Slater was ordered to pay $10 million to Cruise in damages after Slater declared he could not afford to defend himself against the suit and would therefore default.
Cruise requested a default judgment, and in January 2003, a Los Angeles judge decided against Slater after he admitted that his claims were false.
Cruise also sued Bold Magazine publisher Michael Davis for $100 million, because Davis had alleged that he had a video that would prove Cruise was gay.
The suit was dropped in exchange for a public statement by Davis that the video was not of Cruise, and that Cruise was heterosexual.
In 2006, Cruise sued cybersquatter Jeff Burgar to obtain control of the TomCruise.com domain name.
When owned by Burgar, the domain redirected to information about Cruise on Celebrity1000.com.
The decision to turn TomCruise.com over to Cruise was handed down by the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) on July 5, 2006.
In 2009, magazine editor Michael Davis Sapir filed a suit charging that his phone had been wiretapped at Cruise’s behest.
That suit was dismissed by a Central Civil West court judge in Los Angeles on the grounds that the statute of limitations had expired on Sapir’s claim.
In October 2012, Cruise filed a lawsuit against In Touch and Life & Style magazines for defamation after they claimed Cruise had “abandoned” his six-year-old daughter.
During deposition, Cruise admitted that “he didn’t see his daughter for 110 days”. The suit was settled the following year.
Scientology advocacy
Tom Cruise was converted to Scientology by his first wife, Mimi Rogers, in 1986 and became an outspoken advocate for the Church of Scientology in the 2000s.
His involvement in the organization was leaked by the tabloid Star in 1990, and he publicly announced he followed Scientology in a 1992 interview with Barbara Walters.
Cruise has said that Scientology, and Study Tech in particular, helped him overcome his dyslexia. Cruise has been a close friend of Scientology leader David Miscavige since the 1980s.
Several years after Cruise started studying Scientology, the organization’s leaders promised to share some Scientology secrets with him,
including information about the prophet Xenu. According to Janet Reitman’s book Inside Scientology:
The Story of America’s Most Secretive Religion, Cruise “freaked out” and took a step back from the Church to work on the film Eyes Wide Shut.
In 1999, Marty Rathbun was sent by David Miscavige to convince Cruise to return to the Church and continue his studies.
Cruise later sparked controversy in the 2000s with his efforts to promote Scientology.
In the aftermath of 9/11, Cruise co-founded and raised donations for Downtown Medical to offer New York City rescue workers “detoxification therapy”, drawing criticism from medical professionals and firefighters.
In late 2004, David Miscavige created the Scientology Freedom Medal of Valor and awarded it to Cruise for this work.
Former Scientologist Paul Haggis has claimed that Cruise attempted to convert several celebrities to Scientology,
Including James Packer, Victoria and David Beckham, Jada Pinkett, Will Smith, and Steven Spielberg.
Since 2008, Cruise has restricted interviewers from asking him about Scientology.
Political lobbying
As well as promoting various programs to introduce people to Scientology, Tom Cruise campaigned for Scientology to be recognized as a religion in Europe.
In 2005, the Council of Paris revealed that Cruise had lobbied French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy and Senate President Jean-Claude Gaudin;
They described Cruise as a militant spokesman for Scientology and barred any further dealings with him.
Controversies
Criticism of psychiatry
In January 2004, Tom Cruise said, “I think psychiatry should be outlawed.”
In 2005, he criticized actress Brooke Shields for using the drug Paxil (paroxetine), an antidepressant which she used to recover from postpartum depression after the birth of her first daughter in 2003.
Cruise asserted that there is no such thing as a chemical imbalance and that psychiatry is a form of pseudoscience.
In response, Shields argued that Cruise “should stick to saving the world from aliens and let women who are experiencing postpartum depression decide what treatment options are best for them.”
This led to a heated argument between Cruise and Matt Lauer on NBC’s Today on June 24, 2005.
Medical authorities view Cruise’s comments as furthering the social stigma of mental illness.
From The Lancet, “He may be right that psychotropic drugs are overused, sometimes misused; and that lifestyle changes (and exercise for depression) can be helpful.
But he is wrong, as a celebrity, to add to the burden of those with a mental illness,
Who often fear seeking or continuing treatment because of the stigma still attached to their condition.”
Shields called Cruise’s comments “a disservice to mothers everywhere”. In late August 2006, Cruise apologized in person to Shields for his comments.
Scientology is well known for its opposition to mainstream psychiatry and psychoactive drugs that are routinely prescribed for treatment.
It was reported that Cruise’s anti-psychiatry actions led to a rift with director Steven Spielberg.
Spielberg had reportedly mentioned in Cruise’s presence the name of a doctor friend who prescribed psychiatric medication.
Shortly thereafter, the doctor’s office was picketed by Scientologists, reportedly angering Spielberg.
YouTube video removal
On January 15, 2008, a video produced by the Church of Scientology featuring an interview with Cruise was posted on YouTube by the Anonymous-linked group Project Chanology,
showing Cruise discussing what being a Scientologist means to him.
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The Church of Scientology said the video had been “pirated and edited”, and was taken from a three-hour video produced for members of Scientology.
YouTube removed the Cruise video from their site under threat of litigation. It was subsequently reinstated on the site, and as of June 2020, the video has achieved over 15 million views.
Purported influence
In March 2004, his publicist of 14 years, Pat Kingsley, resigned. Cruise’s next publicist was Lee Anne DeVette, his sister, who was herself a Scientologist.
She served in that role until November 2005. DeVette was replaced with Paul Bloch from the publicity firm Rogers and Cowan.
Such restructuring was seen as a move to curtail publicity of his views on Scientology, as well as the controversy surrounding his relationship with Katie Holmes.
Lawrence Wright‘s 2013 book Going Clear:
Scientology and the Prison of Belief and Alex Gibney’s 2015 television documentary adaptation of the same name cast a spotlight on Cruise’s role in Scientology.
The book and the film both allege that the Scientology organization groomed romantic partners for Cruise and that Cruise used Sea Org and Rehabilitation Project Force workers as a source of free labor.
In the film, Cruise’s former auditor Marty Rathbun claims that wife Nicole Kidman was wiretapped on Cruise’s suggestion, which Cruise’s lawyer denies.
Cruise’s ex-girlfriend Nazanin Boniadi later compared the Scientology organization’s auditioning of women to date Cruise and experiences with him to “white slavery”.
