Tom Cruise

Thomas Cruise  (born Thomas Cruise Mapother IV; July 3, 1962) is an American actor and film producer. He has received several accolades for his work, including three Golden Globe Awards and nominations for three Academy Awards. Cruise is one of the best-paid actors in the world, and his films have grossed over $4 billion in North America and over $10.1 billion worldwide, making him one of the highest-grossing box-office stars of all time.

Cruise at the 2019 San Diego Comic-Con

Cruise began acting in the early 1980s and made his breakthrough with leading roles in the comedy Risky Business (1983) and the action drama Top Gun (1986). Critical acclaim came with his roles in the dramas The Color of Money (1986), Rain Man (1988), and Born on the Fourth of July (1989). For portraying Ron Kovic in the latter, he won a Golden Globe Award and received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor. As a leading Hollywood star in the 1990s, Cruise starred in several commercially successful films, including the drama A Few Good Men (1992), the thriller The Firm (1993), the horror film Interview with the Vampire (1994), and the romance Jerry Maguire (1996), for which he won another Golden Globe and received his second Oscar nomination. His performance as a motivational speaker in the 1999 drama Magnolia earned him a third Golden Globe and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor. As an action star, Cruise has played Ethan Hunt in six films of the Mission: Impossible film series from 1996 to 2018. He also continued to feature in several science fiction and action films, including Vanilla Sky (2001), Minority Report (2002), The Last Samurai (2003), Collateral (2004), War of the Worlds (2005), Knight and Day (2010), Jack Reacher (2012), Oblivion (2013), and Edge of Tomorrow (2014).

Cruise has been married to actresses Mimi Rogers, Nicole Kidman, and Katie Holmes. He has three children, two of whom were adopted during his marriage to Kidman and the other of whom is a biological daughter he had with Holmes. Cruise is an outspoken advocate for the Church of Scientology and its associated social programs, and credits it with helping him overcome dyslexia. In the 2000s, he sparked controversy with his Church-affiliated criticisms of psychiatry and anti-depressant drugs, his efforts to promote Scientology as a religion in Europe, and a leaked video interview of him promoting Scientology.

Early life

Cruise was born in Syracuse, New York, the son of Mary Lee (née Pfeiffer) (1936–2017), a special education teacher, and Thomas Cruise Mapother III (1934–1984), an electrical engineer, both originally from Louisville, Kentucky. He has three sisters: Lee Anne, Marian, and Cass. They are of English, German, and Irish ancestry. One of Cruise's ancestors, Patrick Russell Cruise, was born in north County Dublin in 1799; he married Teresa Johnson in County Meath, in 1825. They left Ireland for the United States that same year and settled in New York. They had a daughter, Mary Paulina Russell Cruise, whose son Thomas Cruise Mapother was Cruise's great-grandfather. A cousin, William Mapother, is also an actor; he and Cruise have appeared in five films together.

Cruise grew up in near poverty and had a Catholic upbringing. Cruise described his father as "a merchant of chaos", a "bully", and a "coward" who inflicted beatings upon him. Regarding his father, Cruise once said, "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.'"

Cruise spent part of his childhood in Canada. His family moved to Beacon Hill, Ottawa in late 1971 so that Cruise's father could take a position as a defense consultant with the Canadian Armed Forces.  There, Cruise attended the newly opened Robert Hopkins Public School for much of grade four and grade five. In grade four, Cruise first became involved in drama, under the tutelage of George Steinburg. Cruise and six other boys put on an improvised play to music called IT at the Carleton Elementary School drama festival. Drama organizer Val Wright, who was in the audience that night, reflected, "The movement and improvisation were excellent. It was a classic ensemble piece."

In sixth grade, Cruise went to Henry Munro Middle School in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. However, in the spring of that year, Cruise's mother left his father, taking Cruise and his sisters back to the United States; in 1978, she married Jack South. Cruise's father died of cancer in 1984. Cruise briefly attended a Franciscan seminary in Cincinnati, Ohio on a church scholarship and aspired to become a Catholic priest before he became interested in acting. ^:24–26 In total, Cruise attended 15 schools in 14 years. 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. ^:47 Also in his senior year, Cruise starred in his high school's production of Guys and Dolls. He graduated from Glen Ridge High School in Glen Ridge, New Jersey in 1980.

Personal life

Cruise has homes in Beverly Hills, California,  Telluride, Colorado, Clearwater, Florida,  Dulwich, London,  and East Grinstead, West Sussex. 

In the early to mid-1980s, Cruise had relationships with older women, including Rebecca De Mornay, three years his senior; Patti Scialfa, nine years his senior; and Cher, 16 years his senior. Cruise married actress Mimi Rogers on May 9, 1987. They divorced on February 4, 1990. Rogers introduced Cruise to the Church of Scientology. He met his second wife, actress Nicole Kidman, on the set of their film Days of Thunder (1990). The couple married on December 24, 1990. Cruise and Kidman adopted two children, Isabella Jane (born 1992) and Connor Antony (born 1995). In February 2001, Cruise filed for divorce from Kidman while she was unknowingly pregnant. The pregnancy ended in a miscarriage. In 2007, Kidman clarified rumors of a miscarriage early in her marriage to Cruise, saying in an interview, "It was wrongly reported," and explaining that she had actually had an ectopic pregnancy.

Cruise with then-wife Katie Holmes in May 2009

Cruise was next romantically linked with Penélope Cruz, his co-star in Vanilla Sky (2001). Their relationship ended in 2004. 

An article in the October 2012 issue of Vanity Fair states that several sources have said that after the breakup with Cruz, the Church of Scientology 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 British-Iranian actress Nazanin Boniadi, who subsequently left Scientology. The Church of 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, jumping up and down on Winfrey's couch during the show. On October 6, 2005, Cruise and Holmes announced they were expecting a child. In April 2006 their daughter Suri was born.

On November 18, 2006, Holmes and Cruise were married at the 15th-century Odescalchi Castle in Bracciano, Italy, in a Scientology ceremony attended by many Hollywood stars. The actors' publicist 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 the Church of Scientology, served as Cruise's best man.

On June 29, 2012, Holmes filed for divorce from Cruise after five and a half years of marriage. On July 9, 2012, the couple signed a divorce settlement worked out by their lawyers. Because New York law requires that all divorce documents remain sealed, the exact terms of the settlement are not publicly available.