Tom Cruise

• 1. Introduction

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  Tom Cruise attended fifteen schools in fourteen years. He was born Thomas Cruise Mapother IV on the 3rd of July 1962 in Syracuse, New York. Today he is an American actor and film producer, and his career has now run for forty-five years. A boy who rarely stayed in one classroom became one of the highest-paid actors in the world. How did that happen? Why did a major studio end its long partnership with him? And what did his public loyalties cost him, even as audiences kept buying tickets?

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• 2. A Restless Childhood

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  Cruise's father, the electrical engineer Thomas Cruise Mapother III, and his mother, the special education teacher Mary Lee, both came from Louisville, Kentucky. His father lived from 1934 to 1984, and his mother, born Mary Lee Pfeiffer, lived from 1936 to 2017. The family had English, German, and Irish ancestry. Young Tom had three sisters named Lee Anne, Marian, and Cass, and a cousin, William Mapother, who later became an actor and appeared with him in five films.

  Cruise grew up in near poverty with a Catholic upbringing. He later described his father as "a merchant of chaos", a "bully", and a "coward" who beat his children. The lesson he took from that home was to distrust anyone who lulls you into feeling safe. His father died of cancer in 1984.

  In late 1971, Cruise's father took a job as a defense consultant with the Canadian Armed Forces, and the family moved to Beacon Hill in Ottawa. Tom attended the new Robert Hopkins Public School for fourth and fifth grade. Under drama teacher George Steinburg, he and six other boys staged 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."

  During sixth grade at Henry Munro Middle School in Ottawa, Cruise's mother left his father and took her son and daughters back to the United States. In 1978 she married Jack South. Cruise briefly took a Catholic church scholarship to attend St. Francis Seminary in Cincinnati, hoping to become a Franciscan priest. He left after a year. Priests at the seminary say he chose to go when his family relocated again. A former classmate tells a different story, saying that the two of them were asked to leave after being caught taking liquor.

  In his senior year of high school, Cruise played linebacker on the varsity football team until he was cut for drinking beer before a game. He then starred in the school's production of Guys and Dolls. He graduated from Glen Ridge High School in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, in 1980.

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• 3. Breakthrough Decade

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  At age 18, with the blessing of his mother and stepfather, Cruise moved to New York City to pursue acting. He worked as a busboy there before heading to Los Angeles to try out for television roles. He signed with the talent agency CAA and began winning film work.

  His film debut was a bit part in Endless Love in 1981. Later that year he played a crazed military academy student in Taps. He had been meant as a background actor, but director Harold Becker was impressed, and the role grew.

  In 1983, Francis Ford Coppola cast him as Steve Randle in The Outsiders, adapted from the novel by S. E. Hinton. The ensemble included Matt Dillon, Emilio Estevez, Leif Garrett, C. Thomas Howell, Diane Lane, Rob Lowe, Ralph Macchio, and Patrick Swayze. That same year came All the Right Moves and Risky Business, which has been described as "A Generation X classic, and a career maker for Tom Cruise."

  Ridley Scott gave him the male lead in Legend in 1985. By the time of Top Gun in 1986, his status as a superstar was secure, and the film earned him a reputation as a sex symbol. That same year he made The Color of Money, directed by Martin Scorsese, opposite Paul Newman. The Washington Post wrote that "One of the subtle achievements of both Cruise's and Newman's performances is that you feel that both of them are genuinely top-notch pool hustlers."

  Cocktail, released in 1988, was a box office success that critics disliked, and it brought Cruise a Razzie Award nomination for Worst Actor. Later that year he starred opposite Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, directed by Barry Levinson, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture.

  In 1989, Oliver Stone cast Cruise as Ron Kovic, a real paralyzed Vietnam War veteran, in Born on the Fourth of July. Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote, "Nothing Cruise has done will prepare you for what he does in Born on the Fourth of July... His performance is so good that the movie lives through it." The role won Cruise a Golden Globe, a Chicago Film Critics Association Award, and a People's Choice Award, plus a BAFTA nomination. It also brought his first Best Actor Academy Award nomination, the first of four competitive Oscar nominations.

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• 4. Dramas and a Formula

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  Roger Ebert, reviewing Days of Thunder in 1990, noticed a pattern in Cruise's 1980s films and gave it a name, the Tom Cruise Picture. Cruise had helped write that film. Ebert listed nine ingredients, including the Cruise character himself, a mentor, a superior woman, and a craft the hero must hone. The list also featured an arena, a body of knowledge to learn, a journey, and two enemies, one early and one final.

  Days of Thunder and Far and Away, released in 1992, both paired Cruise with Nicole Kidman, who was then his wife. The same year he starred in A Few Good Men, a drama written by Aaron Sorkin. One commentator argued that Sorkin did the opposite of Top Gun. There, Cruise's Maverick Mitchell is a hot shot trying to outperform his late father and needs discipline. In A Few Good Men, Daniel Kaffee needs to let go.

  The legal thriller The Firm followed in 1993 and was both a critical and commercial success. In 1994, Neil Jordan directed Interview with the Vampire, with Brad Pitt, Antonio Banderas, and Christian Slater beside Cruise. The film was based on Anne Rice's best-selling novel. Rice had loudly objected to Cruise's casting, because her first choice was Julian Sands. After seeing the film, she paid for a two-page ad in Daily Variety praising his performance and apologizing for her doubts.

  In 1996, Brian De Palma directed the reboot of Mission: Impossible, with Cruise as the superspy Ethan Hunt. It was the first film Cruise produced, and it was a box office success. Stephen Holden of The New York Times wrote that Cruise had found "the perfect superhero character on which to graft his breathlessly gung-ho screen personality." That year Cameron Crowe also directed him in Jerry Maguire, as a sports agent in search of love. The film was a massive financial success and won Cruise a Golden Globe for Best Actor, along with a second Best Actor Oscar nomination.

  Stanley Kubrick directed Cruise and Kidman together in Eyes Wide Shut in 1999. Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian wrote that Cruise "lays himself open in that fiercely committed way that he tries everything as an actor." That same year Cruise took a rare supporting role as the motivational speaker Frank T.J. Mackey in Magnolia, directed by Paul Thomas Anderson. Peter Travers of Rolling Stone called Cruise "a revelation, fully deserving of the shower of superlatives coming his way." The role earned another Golden Globe and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.

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• 5. Spectacle and Stunts

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  John Woo, a director from Hong Kong, brought his gun fu style to Mission: Impossible 2 in 2000. The film was the highest-grossing movie of its year, although critics gave it a mixed reception. Cruise won an MTV Movie Award for Best Male Performance. He was by then known for science fiction and action films, often performing his own risky stunts.

  Vanilla Sky, a romantic thriller, arrived in 2001 with Cameron Diaz and Penelope Cruz. In 2002, Steven Spielberg directed him in Minority Report, based on a short story by Philip K. Dick, which has since appeared on lists of the greatest science fiction films. Edward Zwick's period action drama The Last Samurai followed in 2003 and earned Cruise a Golden Globe nomination.

  In 2004, Cruise played the villainous Vincent in Collateral, directed by Michael Mann, and won critical acclaim. In 2005 he reunited with Spielberg for War of the Worlds, a loose adaptation of the H. G. Wells novel, which became the fourth highest-grossing film of that year. Also in 2005, he won the MTV Generation Award. Between 2002 and 2009 he was nominated for seven Saturn Awards and won once.

  Mission: Impossible III, released in 2006, was better received by critics than the earlier films in the series. In 2007, Cruise took a supporting role for the second time in Lions for Lambs, a commercial disappointment. A year later he disappeared into the unrecognizable studio boss Les Grossman in Tropic Thunder, alongside Ben Stiller, Jack Black, and Robert Downey Jr. That performance brought a Golden Globe nomination.

  Knight and Day, a 2010 action comedy that reunited him with Cameron Diaz, was released on the 23rd of June 2010. Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol arrived in December 2011 to high critical acclaim. Its box office success was then the biggest of Cruise's career, before adjusting for ticket price inflation. In Rock of Ages in 2012, he played the fictional rock star Stacee Jaxx and the film was a rare box-office misstep. Variety's Justin Chang still praised how Cruise sent up his own movie-star image, in tattoos, furs, and heavy eyeshadow.

  He played Jack Reacher, from Lee Child's 2005 novel One Shot, in a film released on the 21st of December 2012. Joseph Kosinski's Oblivion, with Morgan Freeman and Olga Kurylenko, came in 2013 to mixed reviews. Edge of Tomorrow followed in 2014 with positive reviews. Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation in 2015 featured Simon Pegg as Benji and Jeremy Renner as William Brandt, with Christopher McQuarrie directing. The 2017 reboot of Boris Karloff's 1932 horror film The Mummy received negative reviews. Mission: Impossible - Fallout in 2018 then became his biggest commercial success to that date, before adjusting for inflation.

  In May 2020, it was reported that Cruise would star in and produce a film shot in outer space, with Doug Liman directing. Both men were to fly to the International Space Station on an Axiom Space mission aboard a SpaceX Dragon 2 spacecraft. In May 2021, Cruise protested against the Hollywood Foreign Press Association by returning all three of his Golden Globes. The group faced controversy over its lack of diversity, including having no black members, and over ethical questions about financial benefits to some members.

  In 2022, Cruise returned as Captain Pete "Maverick" Mitchell in Top Gun: Maverick, which he also produced. The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, where he received an Honorary Palme d'Or. Many reviewers judged it better than the original, and it became the highest-grossing film of his career. Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One opened on the 12th of July 2023 to critical acclaim. It was a box office disappointment because it opened the same day as Oppenheimer and Barbie, a phenomenon dubbed Barbenheimer.

  In 2024, Cruise appeared in the closing ceremony of the Paris Olympics to promote the Los Angeles 2028 Summer Games. He jumped from the roof of the Stade de France in Paris, then took the flag from Mayor Karen Bass and athlete Simone Biles. Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning arrived in May 2025, and Cruise declared it would be his last film as Ethan Hunt. He will next star in Digger, directed by Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, his first film at Warner Bros. Pictures in twelve years.

  Honors gathered around these later years. Cruise holds a Guinness World Record for consecutive high-grossing films, set with eleven releases between 2012 and 2025. In December 2024, the U.S. Navy gave him its highest civilian honor, the Distinguished Public Service Award, for "outstanding contributions" to the military through his screen roles. In March 2025, the British Film Institute named him a Fellow, its highest honor. On the 16th of November 2025, at the 16th Governors Awards in Los Angeles, he received an honorary Academy Award. He is also an aerobatic pilot with a certificate held since 1994, and he owns a P-51 Mustang.

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• 6. Power and Partnerships

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  In 1993, Cruise joined his former talent agent Paula Wagner to form Cruise/Wagner Productions. The first film the company co-produced was Mission: Impossible in 1996, which was also Cruise's first project as a producer. The company later produced films in which he did not appear, including The Others, Shattered Glass, Elizabethtown, Narc, Ask the Dust, and Without Limits.

  In 2005, the Hollywood economist Edward Jay Epstein described Cruise as one of the most powerful and richest forces in Hollywood. Epstein argued that only a few producers are trusted to guarantee a billion-dollar franchise: George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, Jerry Bruckheimer, and Cruise. He also contended that public obsession with Cruise's tabloid controversies hides his exceptional commercial skill. In 2006, Premiere ranked Cruise number 13 on its Power List, the highest of any actor. Forbes called him the world's most powerful celebrity that same year. The founder of CinemaScore said in 2016 that Cruise and Leonardo DiCaprio could lift a film's box office however bad it was. Japan declared the 10th of October 2006 "Tom Cruise Day" because of his love for and close association with that country.

  On the 22nd of August 2006, Paramount Pictures announced it was ending its relationship with Cruise. In The Wall Street Journal, Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone, whose company owned Paramount, cited damage to Cruise's value from his controversial public behavior and views. Cruise/Wagner Productions answered that the announcement was a face-saving move, since it had found alternative financing from private equity firms. Epstein suggested the real reason was Paramount's annoyance at the production company's exceptionally large share of DVD sales from the Mission: Impossible franchise.

  In November 2006, Cruise and Wagner announced they had taken over the film studio United Artists. Cruise produced and starred in its films, while Wagner served as chief executive. The studio's first film was Lions for Lambs, directed by Robert Redford and starring Redford, Meryl Streep, and Cruise. The second to be greenlighted was Valkyrie, a thriller about the assassination attempt against Adolf Hitler on the 20th of July 1944. United Artists acquired the project in March 2007, and on the 21st of March 2007 Cruise signed to play Claus von Stauffenberg. The film was released on the 25th of December 2008 and did well at the box office. Wagner stepped down in August 2008 but kept her stake. Combined with Cruise's share, it amounted to 30 percent of the studio.

  Cruise began working with Paramount again as producer and star with Ghost Protocol, this time without Wagner. The two collaborated for the last time on the Jack Reacher series, which was modestly successful. In January 2024, his production company announced a strategic partnership with Warner Bros. Discovery to develop and produce original and franchise films.

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• 7. Marriages and Lawsuits

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  Before he married, Cruise had relationships in the early-to-mid-1980s with Melissa Gilbert, Rebecca De Mornay, Patti Scialfa, and Cher. On the 9th of May 1987 he married the actress Mimi Rogers, and they divorced on the 4th of February 1990. Rogers had grown up in Scientology and worked as one of its auditors. They met when Cruise became her client, and she converted him to Scientology in 1986. In a 1993 Playboy interview, Rogers said he had considered becoming a monk, which affected their intimacy. She later retracted the comments. A friend of Rogers said she was told her career would be over unless she put things right.

  Cruise met Nicole Kidman on the set of Days of Thunder, and they married on Christmas Eve 1990. They adopted two children, Isabella Jane in 1992 and Connor Antony in 1995. On the 5th of February 2001, the couple's spokesperson announced their separation. Cruise filed for divorce two days later, citing irreconcilable differences. Kidman said she "was a child" who "needed to grow up." Mike Rinder, a former church spokesperson, claimed that Scientology used various means to push the couple apart.

  Penelope Cruz, his co-star in Vanilla Sky, was linked with Cruise for three years until 2004. An October 2012 Vanity Fair article said sources claimed Scientology leaders then launched a secret project to find him a girlfriend. It said this produced a short-lived relationship with the actress Nazanin Boniadi, who later left Scientology. Scientology and Cruise's lawyers issued strong denials and threatened to sue.

  Cruise began dating the actress Katie Holmes in April 2005, and their first public appearance together, in Rome, came on the 27th of April. A month later he declared his love on The Oprah Winfrey Show by jumping on Winfrey's yellow couch. Their daughter Suri Noelle was born in April 2006. They married on the 18th of November 2006 at Castello Orsini-Odescalchi, a 15th-century castle in Bracciano, Italy, in a Scientologist ceremony. David Miscavige, the head of Scientology, was Cruise's best man. Holmes filed for divorce on the 29th of June 2012, and a settlement was signed on the 9th of July. The terms remain sealed under New York law.

  Cruise also fought tabloids in court. In 1998 he successfully sued the British tabloid Daily Express, which had alleged that his marriage to Kidman was a sham designed to cover up his sexuality. In May 2001 he sued the performer Chad Slater, who had told the magazine Actustar that the two had an affair. Slater admitted his claims were false, and a Los Angeles judge ruled against him in January 2003. Cruise also sued Bold Magazine publisher Michael Davis, who claimed to hold proof on video. The suit was dropped after Davis publicly stated that the video was not of Cruise.

  In 2006 he sued Jeff Burgar, a cybersquatter, over the TomCruise.com domain name. The World Intellectual Property Organization ordered it turned over to Cruise on the 5th of July 2006. In 2009, the editor Michael Davis Sapir sued, charging that his phone was wiretapped at Cruise's behest. A Los Angeles judge dismissed the case because the statute of limitations had expired. In October 2012, Cruise sued In Touch and Life & Style magazines for defamation after they claimed he had abandoned his six-year-old daughter. In a deposition he admitted he had not seen her for 110 days, and the suit was settled the following year.

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• 8. Faith and Controversy

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  In 1990, the tabloid Star leaked Cruise's involvement in Scientology. He publicly confirmed in a 1992 interview with Barbara Walters that he followed it. He has said that Scientology's teaching method, Study Technology, helped him overcome his dyslexia. He has been a close friend of Scientology leader David Miscavige since the 1980s.

  Janet Reitman's 2011 book Inside Scientology reports that church leaders promised to share secrets with Cruise, including information about the extraterrestrial ruler Xenu. According to the book, Cruise "freaked out" and stepped back from the church to work on Eyes Wide Shut. In 1999, Miscavige sent Marty Rathbun to convince Cruise to return and continue his studies. Through the 2000s he sparked controversy with his efforts to promote Scientology. In 2005, the Council of Paris revealed that he had lobbied French Interior Minister Nicolas Sarkozy and Senate President Jean-Claude Gaudin. They called him a militant spokesman for Scientology and barred any further dealings with him.

  After the September 11 attacks, Cruise co-founded and raised donations for Downtown Medical, which offered New York rescue workers detoxification therapy. Medical professionals and firefighters criticized it. In late 2004, Miscavige created the Scientology Freedom Medal of Valor and awarded it to Cruise for this work. On the 6th of May 2011, the Simon Wiesenthal Center and its Museum of Tolerance gave him a humanitarian award for his philanthropy.

  In January 2004, Cruise said, "I think psychiatry should be outlawed." In 2005 he criticized the actress Brooke Shields for using the antidepressant Paxil for postpartum depression. Shields replied that he should "stick to saving the world from aliens" and called his comments "a disservice to mothers everywhere." In June 2005 he repeated his views on NBC's Today, in a heated exchange with Matt Lauer. Cruise apologized to Shields in person in August 2006. The Lancet said he might be right that psychotropic drugs are overused, but that he was wrong, as a celebrity, to add to the stigma that keeps people from seeking treatment. Steven Spielberg was reportedly angered when Scientologists picketed the office of a doctor friend he had named in Cruise's presence.

  On the 15th of January 2008, the group Project Chanology posted on YouTube a Scientology video of Cruise discussing what being a Scientologist means to him. The church said the video was pirated and edited, and YouTube removed it under threat of litigation. It was later reinstated and by June 2020 had more than 15 million views. Since 2008, Cruise has barred interviewers from asking him about Scientology.

  His publicity team changed as well. In March 2004, his publicist of fourteen years, Pat Kingsley, resigned. His sister Lee Anne DeVette took over until November 2005, followed by Paul Bloch of Rogers and Cowan. The change was seen as an attempt to curb publicity about his views and his relationship with Katie Holmes. Lawrence Wright's 2013 book Going Clear and Alex Gibney's 2015 documentary adaptation spotlighted his role in Scientology. Both state that the church groomed romantic partners for Cruise and that he used Sea Org and Rehabilitation Project Force workers as free labor.

  Politically, Cruise donated to Hillary Clinton's 2000 Senate campaign in New York and spoke at a birthday fundraiser for her in October 2000. While promoting Valkyrie in January 2009, he said Barack Obama's election brought "hope, absolute hope" to the country. In 2025, Cruise declined an offer from President Donald Trump to be honored by the Kennedy Center. It was later reported that he avoided asking Trump for help with the outer space film that involved NASA, and that this led to the project's cancellation.

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