Thomas Cruz Maypotter IV was born on July 3, 1962 in Syracuse, New York. He is the third child in the family and has two sisters. Tom’s father was an electrician and his mother was an actress. In 1973, his parents divorced, and the children moved to Louisville, Kentucky, and soon to Glen Ridge, New Jersey. The whole Cruz family suffered from dyslexia (pathological inability to read), so it was very difficult to study at school.
Tom Cruise has achieved considerable success in the sporting environment, and he would have been a professional wrestler if not for the knee injury he received in Glen Ridge. At the age of 16, his teachers convinced Tom to take part in a production of the musical Guys and Dolls, which is probably when the young man’s dream of becoming an artist was born.
Tom set himself the goal of becoming a famous actor in 10 years. Soon he moved to New York, going through one casting call after another, and finally, in 1981, he got a role in the movie Endless Love, which also starred Brooke Shields. In the same year, he got a role in the movie Taps.
In 1983, Cruise starred in the movie The Outsiders alongside Emilio Estevez, Matt Dillon and Rob Lowe. The film did not receive proper publicity, but Tom managed to work with such a great master as Francis Ford Coppola. Cruise’s next film, Dangerous Business (1983), grossed $65 million at the box office, and numerous critics started talking about the young talented actor. In 1986, two projects with Tom’s participation were released – the high-budget film Legend and the action movie Top Gun (the highest-grossing film of 1986). After these projects, Tom Cruise’s name joined the elite list of actors.
In the late 80s, several more films with Tom’s participation were released – Rain Man (1988), The Color of Money (1986), Born on the 4th of July (1989). Cruise was nominated for an Academy Award and a Golden Globe for his work on the latter film.
In 1987, Tom married actress Mima Rogers, but after 3 years their marriage fell apart.
In 1990, fate brought Tom together with Australian actress Nicole Kidman on the set of the drama Days of Thunder. The film itself was generally considered unsuccessful by experts, but this did not discourage the young people, and on Christmas Day of the same year the couple was legally married.
In 1992, the movie A Few Good Men was released with Jack Nicholson and Demi Moore. Soon after, the very successful The Firm (1993) and Interview with the Vampire (1994) were released. However, the apotheosis of Cruise’s acting career was his participation in the filming of the blockbuster “Mission Impossible” (Cruise was also the producer of this film). Tom’s next work, Jerry McGuire (1996), brought the actor his second Oscar nomination and the second Golden Globe Award for Best Performance by an Actor in a Leading Role.
Kidman and Cruise spent most of the next two years in England, where they took part in the filming of Stanley Kubrick’s thriller Eyes Wide Shut. The premiere took place in 1999 (unfortunately, the director himself did not live to see this significant event in his life).
In 1999, Cruise receives another Golden Globe Award (this time for Best Supporting Actor for his role in Magnolia).
In 2000, the sequel to The Mission was released, directed this time by the master of the action genre John Woo. Two years later, two fantastic works by Cruise were released – Vanilla Sky by Cameron Crowe and A Single Minded Mind by Steven Spielberg. In 2003, The Last Samurai was released. Cruise and Kidman have long been considered one of the most prosperous celebrity couples in Hollywood. During their marriage, they adopted two children. Nevertheless, numerous tabloids were full of shameful publications. And as the saying goes, they were barking up the wrong tree. On February 5, 2001, the couple announced their divorce after 11 years of marriage. As stated in the official statement, the spouses were tired of being able to see each other for a maximum of a month a year, as both were constantly involved in various projects.
On the set of the movie Vanilla Sky, Tom Cruise and Penelope Cruz began a romance. In the spring of 2004, it was announced that the couple had broken up.
Already in November 2006, Tom Cruise married Katie Holmes, which was the actor’s third marriage. The wedding took place in Italy, and six months earlier, on April 18, 2006, the couple had a daughter, Suri.
Doubts were raised in the press about Cruise’s paternity. His biography, published in 2007 (Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography), claims that, according to members of the Sea Organization (a division of the Church of Scientology), Suri is not Cruise’s daughter, but was conceived with the help of specially stored sperm of the founder of Scientology, Ron Hubbard. Tom Cruise has denied this information.