He has starred in many successful films, including: The Color of Money (1986), Rain Man (1988), Days of Thunder (1990), A Few Good Men (1992), Vanilla Sky (2001), Minority Report (2002), The Last Samurai (2003), Collateral (2004), and War of the Worlds (2005). As of 2012 Cruise is Hollywood's highest-paid actor.
Since 2005, Cruise and Paula Wagner have been in charge of the United Artists film studio, 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
Early life
Cruise was born in Syracuse, New York, the son of Mary Lee (née Pfeiffer), a special education teacher, and Thomas Cruise Mapother III (died 1984), an electrical engineer. Cruise has three sisters, Lee Anne, Marian, and Cass. Cruise's surname originates from his great-grandfather, Thomas Cruise O'Mara, who was adopted by a Welsh immigrant and renamed "Thomas Cruise Mapother". Cruise is of German, Irish, and English ancestry. He grew up in near poverty, and had a Catholic upbringing. The family was dominated by his abusive father, whom Cruise has described as "a merchant of chaos". He was beaten by his father, who Cruise has said was a bully and coward.Cruise's family spent part of his childhood in Canada, and Cruise attended Robert Hopkins Public School in Ottawa, Ontario, from grades three to five. The Mapother family then moved to the suburb of Beacon Hill so that 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, 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. Henry Munro was also where Cruise became involved in drama, under the tutelage of George Steinburg. 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 Cruise toured with five other classmates to various schools around the Ottawa area, even being filmed at the local Ottawa TV station. Cruise was bullied regularly in the 15 different schools he attended in 12 years. When Cruise was twelve, his mother left his father, taking Cruise and his sisters with her.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.'
He briefly attended a Franciscan seminary in Cincinnati on a church scholarship and aspired to become a Catholic priest. 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.
Relationships and personal life
Cruise had a relationship with his Risky Business co-star Rebecca De Mornay with whom he lived in New York from 1983–85. Singer/actress Cher has stated on numerous occasions that she had a relationship with Cruise in the mid 1980s.
Cruise met his second wife, actress Nicole Kidman, on the set of their film Days of Thunder. The couple married on December 24, 1990. Cruise and Kidman adopted two children, Isabella Jane (born December 1992) and Connor Antony (born January 1995). In February 2001 Cruise filed for divorce from Kidman three days before the couple’s 10th wedding anniversary and while she was unknowingly pregnant. The pregnancy ended with a miscarriage. In 2007 Kidman clarified rumours 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. Kidman has spoken after the divorce of how much she still loves him, “He was huge; still is. To me, he was just Tom, but to everybody else, he is huge. But he was lovely to me. And I loved him. I still love him”.
In April 2005, Cruise began dating actress Katie Holmes. On 27 April that year Cruise and Holmes - dubbed "TomKat" by the media - made their first public appearance together in Rome. A month later, Cruise declared his love for Holmes on The Oprah Winfrey Show, famously jumping up and down on Winfrey's couch during the show. On October 6, 2005, Cruise and Holmes announced they were expecting a child, and their daughter, Suri, was born in April 2006. 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 the 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, it was announced that Holmes had filed for divorce from Cruise after five and a half years of marriage. On July 9, 2012, it was announced that the couple had signed a divorce settlement worked out by their lawyers. This was Cruise's third divorce. Because New York law requires that all divorce documents remain sealed, the exact terms of the settlement are not publicly available.
Career
Acting
1980s
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 paralyzed Vietnam 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.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 Award. In 1999, Cruise costarred with wife Nicole Kidman in the erotic Stanley Kubrick film Eyes Wide Shut, and played motivational speaker Frank T.J. Mackey in the ensemble film Magnolia, for which he received another Golden Globe and nomination for an Academy Award.
2000s
In 2000, Cruise returned as Ethan Hunt in the second installment of the Mission Impossible films, releasing Mission: Impossible II. The film was directed by Hong Kong director John Woo and branded with his gun fu style, and it continued the series' blockbuster success at the box office, taking in almost $547M in worldwide figures, like its predecessor, being the third highest grossing film of the year. Cruise received an MTV Movie Award as Best Male Performance for this film. His next five films were major critical and commercial successes. The following year Cruise starred in the romantic thriller Vanilla Sky (2001) with Cameron Diaz and Penélope Cruz. In 2002, Cruise starred in the dystopian science fiction thriller, Minority Report which was directed by Steven Spielberg and based on the science fiction short story by Philip K. Dick.In 2003, he starred in the Edward Zwick's historical drama The Last Samurai, for which he received a Golden Globe nomination as best actor. In 2005, Cruise worked again with Steven Spielberg in War of the Worlds, which became the fourth highest grossing film of the year with US$591.4 million worldwide. Also in 2005, he won the People's Choice Award for Favorite Male Movie Star, and the MTV Generation Award. Cruise was nominated for seven Saturn Awards between 2002 and 2009, winning once. Nine of the ten films he starred in during the decade made over $100 million at the box office.
2010s
In March 2010, Cruise completed filming the action-comedy Knight and Day, in which he re-teamed with former costar Cameron Diaz; the film was released on June 23, 2010.On February 9, 2010, Cruise confirmed that he would star in Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol, the fourth installment in the Mission:Impossible series. The film was released in December 2011 to high critical acclaim and box office success. It is also Cruise's biggest commercial success to date.On May 6, 2011, Cruise was awarded a humanitarian award from the Simon Wiesenthal Centre and Museum of Tolerance for his work as a dedicated philanthropist.
In mid-2011, Cruise started shooting the movie Rock of Ages, in which he played the character Stacee Jaxx. The film was released in June 2012
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