Tom Cruise

Tom Cruise

Born Thomas Cruise Mapother IV

July 3, 1962 (age 49)

Syracuse, New York, U.S.

Occupation Actor, producer, writer, director

Years active 1981–present

Spouse Mimi Rogers (1987–1990)

Nicole Kidman (1990–2001)

Katie Holmes (2006–present)

Children Isabella, Connor Cruise and Suri Cruise

Website

TomCruise.com

Thomas Cruise Mapother IV ( /ˈtɒməs ˈkruːz ˈmeɪpɒθər/; born July 3, 1962), better known asTom Cruise, is an American film actor and producer. He has been nominated for three Academy Awards and he has won three Golden Globe Awards.

Cruise's first appearance in a major film was in 1981's Taps. His first leading role was in the filmRisky Business,[1] which was released in August 1983. After playing the role of a heroic naval pilot in the popular and financially successful 1986 film Top Gun, Cruise continued in this vein, playing a secret agent in a series of Mission: Impossible action films in the 1990s, 2000s and 2010s. In addition to these heroic roles, he has starred in a variety of other successful films such as Rain Man (1988), Days of Thunder (1990), A Few Good Men (1992), Jerry Maguire (1996),Magnolia (1999), Vanilla Sky (2001), Minority Report (2002), The Last Samurai (2003), Collateral(2004) and War of the Worlds (2005).

Since 2005, Cruise and Paula Wagner have been in charge of the United Artists film studio,[2]with Cruise as producer and star and Wagner as the chief executive. Cruise is also known for his support of and adherence to the Church of Scientology.[3]

Early life

Cruise was born in Syracuse, New York,[4] the son of Mary Lee (née Pfeiffer), a special education teacher, and Thomas Cruise Mapother III (died 1984),[5] an electrical engineer.[6] Cruise's surname originates from his great-grandfather, Thomas Cruise O'Mara, who was adopted by aWelsh immigrant and renamed "Thomas Cruise Mapother".[7][8][9] Cruise is of German, Irish, and English ancestry.[10] He grew up in near poverty, in a Catholic family dominated by an abusive father whom Cruise has described as "a merchant of chaos".[11] He was beaten by his father, whom Cruise has said was a bully and coward.

He 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.'[11]

Cruise's family spent part of his childhood in Canada, and Cruise attended Robert Hopkins Public School in Ottawa, Ontario, for grades three, four, and five. The Mapother family then moved to the suburb of Beacon Hill, so Cruise's father could take a position as a defense consultant with the Canadian Armed Forces. There, Cruise completed grade six at Henry Munro Middle School, part of the Carleton Board of Education,[12] where he was active in athletics, playing floor hockey almost every night, showing himself to be a ruthless player, and eventually chipping his front tooth. In the game British bulldogs, he then lost his newly capped tooth and hurt his knee.[13] Henry Munro was also where Cruise became involved in drama, under the tutelage of George Steinburg.[14] The first play he participated in was called IT, in which Cruise won the co-lead with Michael de Waal, one playing "Evil", the other playing "Good". The play met much acclaim, and toured with five other classmates to various schools around the Ottawa area, even being filmed at the local Ottawa TV station.[15] Cruise was bullied regularly in the 15 different schools he attended in 12 years.[11] When Cruise was twelve, his mother left his father, taking Cruise and his sister Lee Anne with her.[11]

He briefly attended a Franciscan seminary in Cincinnati (on a church scholarship) and aspired to become a Catholic priest.[16] In his senior year, he played football for the varsity team as a linebacker, but he was cut from the squad after getting caught drinking beer before a game.[17]

Career

Acting

1980s

Cruise first appeared in supporting roles the 1981 films Endless Love and Taps, the latter in which he played a crazed military school student. His first starring role was in the 1983 comedy Losin' It. That same year he appeared in All the Right Moves and Risky Business, which has been described as "A Generation-X classic, and a career-maker for Tom Cruise",[18] and which along with 1986's Top Gun, cemented his status as a star.

Cruise followed up Top Gun with The Color of Money, which came out the same year, and which paired him with Academy Award-winner Paul Newman. 1988 saw him star in Cocktail, which earned him a nomination for the Razzie Award for Worst Actor. Later that year he starred with Academy Award-winner Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, which won the Academy Award for Best Film and Cruise the Kansas City Film Critics Circle Award for Best Supporting Actor. Cruise finished the decade by portraying real-life paralyzedVietnam War veteran Ron Kovic in 1989's Born on the Fourth of July, which earned him a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor - Motion Picture Drama, the Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Actor, the People's Choice Award for Favorite Motion Picture Actor, a nomination for BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, and Cruise's first Best Actor Academy Award nomination.

1990s

In 1994, Cruise starred along with Brad Pitt, Antonio Banderas and Christian Slater in Neil Jordan's Interview with the Vampire, a gothic drama/horror film that was based on Anne Rice's best-selling novel. The film was well received, although Rice was initially quite outspoken in her criticism of Cruise having been cast in the film, as Julian Sands was her first choice. Upon seeing the film however, she paid $7,740 for a two-page ad in Daily Variety praising his performance and apologizing for her previous doubts about him.[19]

In 1996, Cruise appeared as superspy Ethan Hunt in the reboot of Mission: Impossible, which he produced. In 1996, he took on the title role in Jerry Maguire, for which he earned a Golden Globe and his second nomination for an Academy

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