Best Known As: Star of the Mission Impossible movie series
Name at birth: Thomas Cruise Mapother IV
Tom Cruise made a strong impression in the teen comedy Risky Business (1983) and then had his first box-office smash as the fighter jock Maverick in Top Gun (1986). Cruise and his cocky grin were propelled higher onto Hollywood's A-list thanks to a string of successful movies: Rain Man (1988, with Dustin Hoffman), The Color of Money (1986, with Paul Newman), A Few Good Men (1992, with Jack Nicholson) and Jerry Maguire (1996, with Cuba Gooding, Jr. saying "Show me the money!"). Cruise has remained one of Hollywood's busiest actors, taking on blockbuster franchises such as Mission: Impossible (Cruise played superspy Ethan Hunt in the original and two sequels in 1996, 2000 and 2006) as well as more diverse dramas such as Magnolia (1999), Vanilla Sky (2001) and the Steven Spielberg movies Minority Report (2002, co-starring Samantha Morton) and War of the Worlds (2005). Cruise began dating actress Katie Holmes in 2005. Dubbed "TomKat" by the tabloids, they had a daughter, Suri, on 18 April 2006, and were married in Italy on 18 November 2006.
Cruise is a prominent member of the Church of Scientology... Cruise proposed to Holmes at the Eiffel Tower after a highly-publicized whirlwind romance. He came in for a ribbing from pundits after he hopped up and down on the talk-show couch of Oprah Winfrey while proclaiming his love for Holmes... Cruise's marriage to Holmes is his third. He and actress Nicole Kidman were married in 1990, separated in 2000, and were divorced in 2001. They met while filming one of Cruise's few duds, Days of Thunder (1990), and appeared together in Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut (1999). They adopted two children: Isabella (in 1993) and Connor (in 1995). Cruise also was married to actress Mimi Rogers, a fellow Scientologist, from 1986-1990... Cruise dated actress Penelope Cruz, his co-star in Vanilla Sky, from 2001-2004... Most sources say Cruise's height is 5'7".
Career Highlights: Jerry Maguire, Rain Man, Risky Business
First Major Screen Credit: Taps (1981)
Biography
An actor whose name has become synonymous with all-American testosterone-driven entertainment, Tom Cruise spent the 1980s as one of Hollywood's brightest-shining golden boys. With black hair, blue eyes, and unabashed cockiness, Cruise rode high on such hits as Top Gun and Rain Man. Although his popularity dimmed slightly in the early '90s, he was able to bounce back with a string of hits that re-established him as both an action hero and, in the case of Jerry Maguire and Magnolia, a talented actor.
Born Thomas Cruise Mapother IV on July 3, 1962, in Syracuse, NY, Cruise led a peripatetic existence as a child, moving from town to town with his rootless family. A high-school wrestler, Cruise went into acting after being sidelined by a knee injury. This new activity served a dual purpose: performing satiated Cruise's need for attention, while the memorization aspect of acting helped him come to grips with his dyslexia.
Moving to New York in 1980, Cruise held down odd jobs until getting his first movie break in Endless Love (1981). His first big hit was Risky Business (1982), in which he entered movie-trivia infamy with the scene wherein he celebrates his parents' absence by dancing around the living room in his underwear. The Hollywood press corps began touting Cruise as one of the "Brat Pack," a group of twentysomething actors who seemed on the verge of taking over the movie industry in the early '80s. But Cruise chose not to play the sort of teen-angst roles that the other Brat Packers specialized in -- a wise decision, in that he has sustained his stardom while many of his contemporaries have fallen by the wayside or retreated into direct-to-video cheapies.
Top Gun (1985) established Cruise as an action star, but again he refused to be pigeonholed, and followed up Top Gun with a solid characterization of a fledgling pool shark in The Color of Money (1986), the film that earned co-star Paul Newman an Academy Award. In 1988, Cruise took on one of his most challenging assignments, as the brother of an autistic savant played by Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man. "Old" Hollywood chose to give all the credit for that film's success to Hoffman, but a closer look at Rain Man reveals that Cruise is the true central character in the film, the one who "grows" in humanity and maturity while Hoffman's character, though brilliantly portrayed, remains the same.
In 1989, Cruise was finally given an opportunity to carry a major dramatic film without an older established star in tow. As paraplegic Vietnam vet Ron Kovic in Born on the Fourth of July (1989), Cruise delivered perhaps his most outstanding performance. Cruise's bankability faltered a bit with the expensive disappointment Far and Away in 1990 (though it did give him a chance to co-star with his-then wife Nicole Kidman), but with A Few Good Men (1992), Cruise was back in form. In 1994, Cruise appeared as the vampire Lestat in the long-delayed film adaptation of the Anne Rice novel Interview with the Vampire. Although she was vehemently opposed to Cruise's casting, Rice reversed her decision upon seeing the actor's performance.
In 1996, Cruise scored financial success with the big-budget actioner Mission: Impossible, but it was with his multilayered, Oscar-nominated performance in Jerry Maguire (also 1996) that Cruise proved once again why he is considered a major Hollywood player. 1999 saw Cruise reunited onscreen with Kidman in a project of a very different sort, Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut. The film, which was the director's last, had been the subject of controversy, rumor, and speculation since it began filming. It opened to curious critics and audiences alike across the nation, and was met with a violently mixed response. However, it allowed Cruise to once again take part in film history, further solidifying his position as one of Hollywood's most well-placed movers and shakers.
Cruise's enviable position was again solidified later in 1999, when he earned a Best Supporting Actor nomination for his role as a loathsome "sexual prowess" guru in Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia. In 2000, he scored again when he reprised his role as international agent Ethan Hunt in John Woo's Mission: Impossible II, which proved to be one of the summer's first big moneymakers. His status as a full-blown star of impressive dramatic range now cemented in the eyes of both longtime fans and detractors, the popular actor next set his sights on reteaming with Jerry Maguire director Cameron Crowe for a remake of Spanish director Alejandro Amenábar's (The Others) Abre los Ojos titled Vanilla Sky. Though Vanilla Sky's sometimes surreal trappings found the film recieving a mixed reception at the box office, the same could not be said for the following year's massively successful sci-fi chase film Minority Report. Based on a short story by science fiction writer Philip K. Dick and directed by none other than Steven Spielberg, Minority Report scored a direct hit at the box office, and Cruise could next be seen gearing up for his role in Edward Zwick's The Last Samurai alongside Ken Watanabe, who was nominated for an Oscar for his performance.
For his next film, Cruise picked a role unlike any he'd ever played; starring as a sociopathic hitman in the Michael Mann psychological thriller Collateral. He received major praise for his departure from the good-guy characters he'd built his career on, and for doing so convincingly. By 2005, he teamed up with Steven Spielberg again for the second time in three years with an epic adaptation of the H.G. Wells alien invasion story War of the Worlds.
The summer blockbuster was regarded as a good popcorn film, but was in some ways overshadowed by the negative publicity that Cruise had been gathering. It began in 2005, when Cruise became suddenly vocal about his beliefs in the principles of Scientology, the religion created by science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard. Cruise publicly denounced actress Brooke Shields for taking medication in order to combat her postpartum depression, citing antidepressants and the psychological sciences as immoral and unnecessary, going so far as to call it a "Nazi science" in an Entertainment Weekly interview. On June 24, 2005, he was interviewed by Matt Lauer for The Today Show during which time he appeared to be distractingly excitable and argumentative in his insistence that psychiatry is a "pseudoscience," and in a Der Spiegel interview, he was quoted as saying that Scientology has the only successful drug rehabilitation program in the world.
This behavior caused a stirring of public opinion about Cruise, as did his relationship with 27-year-old actress Katie Holmes. The two announced their engagement in the spring of 2005, and Cruise's enthusiasm for his new romantic interest created more curiosity about his mental stability. He appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show on May 23, where he jumped up and down on the couch during his interview, professing his love for Holmes. He also ecstatically shook Winfrey's hands and at one point fell dramatically to one knee. The actor's newly outspoken attitude about Scientology linked intimately to the buzz surrounding his new relationship, as Holmes converted to the faith despite a lifelong adherence to Catholicism. The media was flooded with a rumor that the young actress had a "lost" period around this time, when for two weeks she was unreachable to her parents, friends, and extended family. Many suspected that Cruise's strange public behavior was nothing more than a failed publicity stunt to raise interest in War of the Worlds, a general attitude that continued through October 2005, when he and Holmes announced that she was pregnant.
Some audiences found Cruise's ultra-enthusiastic behavior refreshing, but for the most part, the actor's new public image hurt his fan base, as he alienated many of his viewers. As he geared up for the spring 2006 release of Mission: Impossible III, his ability to sell a film based almost purely on his own likability was in question for the first time in 20 years. Despite a cast that boasted such names as Philip Seymour Hoffman and Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, curiosity about the film's success seemed to hinge solely on Cruise's controversial personal life. The movie ended up performing essentially as expected, despite lining up almost conspicuously with the birth of he and Holmes' daughter Suri in spring of 2006.
The media frenzy that followed the pregnancy and birth were no less involved. There were whispers of dangerous or inadvisable methods of childcare and feeding, rumors that the Scientology endorsed method for birthing demands complete silence from everyone -- including the mother -- and questions about what kind of access to medical care and pain medicine Holmes would have in accordance with the practices of Scientology. Holmes said little publicly of her new relationship, religion, or role as a mother, but Cruise insisted in interviews that the process of the "silent birth" demands others in the room be quiet, but not the mother.
Even after the child was born, controversy surrounded the name that the couple chose for her, as Cruise's public statement claimed the name Suri was chosen because it means "princess" in Hebrew and "red rose" in Persian, while experts on both languages insisted that this was not accurate. Scholars and speakers of the languages in question said that in Persian (conventionally known as Farsi) the word denotes the color red but has no connection whatsoever to roses, while in Hebrew, the closest connection it bears to its claimed origin is that the Jews of Eastern Europe use it as a nickname for the name Sarah, and that in ancient Hebrew Sarah is the feminine form of the word Lord. After the birth, the couple finally set their wedding date, planning to hold the event in early July.
Cruise next made headlines on a business front, when -- in November 2006 -- he and corporate partner Paula Wagner (the twin forces behind the lucrative Cruise-Wagner Productions, est. 1993) officially "took over" the defunct United Artists studio. Originally founded by such giants as Douglas Fairbanks and Charles Chaplin in 1921, UA was run into extinction after the Heaven's Gate fiasco in the early '80s and its purchase by Transamerica's Kirk Kerkorian. The press announced that Cruise and Wagner would "revive" the studio, with Wagner serving as Chief Executive Officer and Cruise starring in and producing projects. MGM (UA's parent company) handed the team the rights to almost single-handedly develop United's production slate, and gave them an allotment of four films per year, a number expected to dramatically increase. Harry Sloan, the chairman of MGM, remarked in a press release, "Partnering with Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner, we have the ideal creative foundation from which to reintroduce the United Artists brand. United Artists is once again the haven for independent filmmakers and a vital resource in developing quality filmed entertainment consistent with MGM's modern studio model." ~ Hal Erickson, All Movie Guide
(born July 3, 1962, Syracuse, N.Y., U.S.) U.S. actor. He made his screen debut in 1981 and rose to stardom as the leading man in Risky Business (1983) and Top Gun (1986). He received acclaim for his dramatic roles in The Color of Money (1986), Rain Man (1988), Born on the Fourth of July (1989), and Magnolia (1999). His other films include A Few Good Men (1992), Mission: Impossible (1996), Jerry Maguire (1996), Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut (1999), and Steven Spielberg's Minority Report (2002).
Thomas Cruise Mapother IV (pronounced /ˈtɒməs ˈkruːz ˈmeɪpɒθɚ/; born July 3, 1962), more commonly known as Tom Cruise, is an Americanactor and film producer. Forbes magazine ranked him as the world's most powerful celebrity in 2006.[1] He has been nominated for three Academy Awards and won three Golden Globe Awards. October 10, 2006 was declared "Tom Cruise Day" in Japan; the Japan Memorial Day Association said that he was awarded with a special day because he has made more trips to Japan than any other Hollywood star.[2]
His first leading role was 1983's Risky Business.[3] After that, he starred in many top films and became a Hollywood celebrity, perhaps the most notable of these being the hugely successful 1986 film Top Gun.
Cruise was born in Syracuse, New York,[5] the son of Mary Lee (née Pfeiffer), a special education teacher, and Thomas Cruise Mapother III, an electrical engineer.[6] Cruise has German and Colonial English ancestry from his paternal great-grandparents, William Reibert and Charlotte Louise Voelker; and purportedly Welsh ancestry from his paternal great-great-grandfather, Dylan Henry Mapother, who emigrated from Flint, Wales to Louisville, Kentucky in 1850.[7][8]
Cruise attended Robert Hopkins Public school for grades 3, 4 & 5 and Henry Munro Middle School for grade 6 in Gloucester, now Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, part of the Carleton Board of Education.[9] The family lived in the Gloucester suburb of Beacon Hill. His family having moved from Kentucky so his father could take a position as a Defence consultant with the Canadian Army. Cruise became involved in drama at Robert Hopkins P.S. early on under the tutelage of teacher Mr. George Steinburg. [10] The first play he participated in was called "IT". Cruise won the co-lead with Michael de Waal. One playing "Evil", the other playing "Good". The play met much acclaim and toured with 5 other classmates to various schools around the Ottawa area and was filmed at the local Ottawa TV station..[11] The two were also singled out for a version of Jesus Christ Superstar and a Marcel Marceau type act. When there was concern by school Principal Jim Brown of the religious overtones of J.C. Superstar, Cruise's mother, Mrs. Mapother convinced the school that the play should proceed. Mrs. Mapother was one of the founders of the Gloucester Players. a theatrical troupe where Cruise and some of the boys in Mr. Steinburg's class acted. Cruise was also active in athletics, playing floor hockey almost every night; he was a ruthless player and ended up chipping his front tooth. In "British Bull Dog" he lost his newly capped tooth and hurt his knee.[12]
Cruise has said that he suffered from abuse as a child. This was partially due to him suffering from dyslexia. He stated that when something went wrong, his father came down hard on him. He told Parade Magazine that his father was "a bully" and "a merchant of chaos." Cruise said he learned early on that his father was – and, by extension, some people were – not to be trusted: "I knew from being around my father that not everyone means me well."[14] Having gone through fifteen schools in twelve years, Cruise, who dropped his father's name at age twelve, was also a victim of bullying at school.
Cruise started acting after being sidelined from his high school's wrestling team due to a knee injury. While injured, he successfully auditioned for a lead role in his high school's production of Guys and Dolls and decided to become an actor after his success in the role. His cousin William Mapother is also an actor most known for playing Ethan Rom on Lost.
Cruise's first film role came in 1981, when he had a small role in Endless Love, a drama/romance film starring Brooke Shields. Later that same year he had a more substantial role in the film Taps, appearing alongside George C. Scott, Timothy Hutton and Sean Penn. The film about military cadets was moderately successful. In 1983, he was one of many teenaged stars to appear in Francis Ford Coppola'sThe Outsiders. The cast for this film included Rob Lowe, Matt Dillon, Patrick Swayze, and Ralph Macchio, some of which were part of the Brat Pack. That same year Cruise appeared in the teen comedy Losin' It with Shelley Long. Also in 1983, Risky Business was released, widely thought to be the film that propelled Cruise to stardom. One sequence in the film, featuring Cruise lip-syncingBob Seger's "Old Time Rock and Roll" in his underwear, has become an iconic moment in film history. The film has been described as "A Generation-X classic, and a career-maker for Tom Cruise".[15] A fourth film that was released in 1983 was the high-school football drama, All the Right Moves.
Cruise's next film was the 1985 fantasy film Legend directed by Ridley Scott.
Cruise was then selected as the first choice by producers Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson for an upcoming American fighter pilot film. Cruise at first apparently turned down the project, but helped to alter the script he was given and developed the film. After being taken for a flight with the Blue Angels, Cruise changed his mind and signed on with the project. The project was titled Top Gun and opened in May 1986, becoming the highest grossing film of the year, taking in US$353,816,701 in worldwide figures.
In 1988, he starred in the light hearted drama Cocktail. The film received mixed reviews and Cruise was subsequently nominated for a Razzie award in 1989. Later that year, Rain Man was released, which also starred Dustin Hoffman and was directed by Barry Levinson. The film was praised by critics and was nominated for eight Academy Awards, and won four, including Best Picture and Best Actor.
Cruise was welcomed with similar success the following year when he received Academy Award nominations for Oliver Stone'sBorn on the Fourth of July, which was based on the best selling autobiography of parapalegic veteran and anti-war activist Ron Kovic. In 1990, Cruise starred as hot-shot race car driver "Cole Trickle" in Tony Scott'sDays of Thunder. While filming Days of Thunder Cruise first met Australian actress Nicole Kidman, who was his co-star. They married in December1990, but divorced after 11 years of marriage. In his spare time during the filming, Cruise also enjoyed played football with truck drivers at the speedway. He played receiver because he loved going deep to catch a pass.[16]
In 1994, Cruise starred along with Brad Pitt, Antonio Banderas and Christian Slater in Neil Jordan'sInterview with the Vampire, a gothic drama/horror film that was based on Anne Rice's best selling novel which was also very well received, although Rice was outspoken in her criticism of Cruise having been cast in the film. In 1996, Cruise starred in (as well as produced) Brian de Palma'sMission: Impossible. The film, a remake of the 1960s TV series, grossed US$456,494,803 worldwide, making it the third highest grossing film that year. That same year he played the title role in the comedy-drama Jerry Maguire. The film earned him an Academy Award Best Actor nomination as well as winning co-star Cuba Gooding, Jr. an Academy Award; the film was nominated for five Academy Awards in total. The film also included the line "Show Me the Money!" which became part of popular culture. In 1999 he starred in the erotic thriller Eyes Wide Shut which took two years to complete and was director Stanley Kubrick's last film. It was also the last film in which he starred alongside then spouse Nicole Kidman. But the film, which had a straightforward description of sex and a recondite story-telling style, raised great controversies. Cruise also played a misogynisticmale guru in Magnolia (1999), which netted him a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination. He was originally intended to play as Jericho Cane in the action horror film End of Days before Arnold Schwarzenegger assumed the lead role.
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, but it continued the series' blockbuster success at the box office, taking in almost US$546 M in worldwide figures, like its predecessor, being the third highest grossing film of the year. The following year Cruise starred in the remake of the 1997 film Abre Los Ojos, Vanilla Sky. In 2002, Cruise starred in the dystopianscience fiction thriller, Minority Report which was directed by Steven Spielberg and based on the science fiction short story by Philip K. Dick; and the following year, he was in Edward Zwick's historical drama The Last Samurai.
In the 2004 Michael Mann's crime-thriller film Collateral, Cruise took a turn against his generic "good guy" role by playing the role of a sociopathic hitman. In 2005, Cruise worked again with Steven Spielberg in War of the Worlds, which became the fourth highest grossing movie of the year with US$591.4 M worldwide. The film also earned three Razzie nominations including one for Cruise.
In 2006, he reprised his role as Ethan Hunt in the third installment of the Mission Impossible film series, Mission: Impossible III, which was also a box office success and was more positively received by critics than its predecessor. He appeared in the 2007 drama Lions for Lambs and will star in the 2009 thriller Valkyrie.
Producing career
Cruise partnered with his former talent agentPaula Wagner to form Cruise/Wagner Productions in 1993,[17] and the company has since co-produced several of Cruise's films,[18] the first being Mission: Impossible in 1996 which was also Cruise's first project as a producer. He won a Nova Award (shared with Paula Wagner) for Most Promising Producer in Theatrical Motion Pictures at the PGA Golden Laurel Awards in 1997 for his work as a producer for the film Mission: Impossible.
His next project as a producer was the 1998 film Without Limits about famous American runner Steve Prefontaine. Cruise returned to work as a producer in 2000, continuing work on the Mission Impossible sequel. He then served as an executive producer for The Others which starred Nicole Kidman, also that year, he again worked as actor/producer in Vanilla Sky. He subsequently worked on (but did not star in) Narc, Hitting It Hard and Shattered Glass. His next project, which he also starred in, was The Last Samurai, he was jointly nominated for the Motion Picture Producer of the Year Award at the 2004 PGA Golden Laurel Awards. He then worked on Suspect Zero, Elizabethtown and Ask the Dust.
Cruise is noted as having negotiated some of the most lucrative movie deals in Hollywood, and was described in 2005 by Hollywood economist Edward Jay Epstein as "one of the most powerful – and richest – forces in Hollywood". Epstein argues that Cruise is one of the few producers (the others being George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Jerry Bruckheimer) who are regarded as able to guarantee the success of a billion-dollar movie franchise. Epstein also contends that the public obsession with Cruise's tabloid controversies obscures full appreciation of Cruise's exceptional commercial prowess in the industry.[19]
Cruise/Wagner Productions, Cruise's film production company, is said to be developing a screenplay based on Erik Larson'sNew York Times bestseller, The Devil in the White City about a real life serial killer at Chicago'sWorld's Columbian Exposition. Kathryn Bigelow is attached to the project to produce and helm. Meanwhile, Leonardo DiCaprio's production company, Appian Way, is also developing a film about Holmes and the World's Fair, in which DiCaprio will star.[20]
Breakup with Paramount
On August 22, 2006, Paramount Pictures announced it was ending its 14-year relationship with Cruise. In the Wall Street Journal, chairman of Viacom (Paramount's parent company) Sumner Redstone cited the economic damage to Cruise's value as an actor and producer from his controversial public behavior and views.[21][22] Cruise/Wagner Productions responded that Paramount's announcement was a face-saving move after the production company had successfully sought alternative financing from private equity firms.[23] Industry analysts such as Edward Jay Epstein commented that the real reason for the split was most likely Paramount's discontent over Cruise/Wagner's exceptionally large share of DVD sales from the Mission: Impossible franchise.[24][25] However, Radar has claimed that the "personal conduct" complained of by Redstone was an allegedly Cruise-inspired attempt to intimidate Brad Grey, CEO of Paramount. According to Radar, when Grey was walking to his car one night after tense negotiations with Cruise over Mission: Impossible 3, he was "surrounded by more than a dozen Scientologists, who pressured him to ease up on the actor … Following a terse exchange, the visitors allowed Grey to get into his car and leave, but the message was clear." Grey reportedly stood his ground and convinced Cruise to accept a lower fee than the actor had initially demanded.[26]
Management of United Artists
According to an Associated Press report on November 2, 2006, Cruise and Paula Wagner announced that they will be in charge of the United Artists film studio.[17] Cruise will produce and star in films for United Artists, while Wagner will serve as UA's chief executive.
In 1990, 1991 and 1997, People magazine rated him among the 50 most beautiful people in the world. In 1995, Empire magazine ranked him among the 100 sexiest stars in film history. Two years later, it ranked him among the top 5 movie stars of all time. In 2002 and 2003, he was rated by Premiere among the top 20 in its annual Power 100 list.[3]
In 2006, Premiere magazine established Cruise as Hollywood's most powerful actor, as Cruise came in at number 13 on the magazines 2006 Power List, being the highest ranked actor.[28]
On 16 June2006, Forbes magazine published 'The Celebrity 100', a list of the most powerful celebrities, which Cruise topped. The list was generated using a combination of income (between June 2005 and June 2006), web references by Google, press clips compiled by LexisNexis, television and radio mentions (by Factiva), and the number of times a celebrity appeared on the cover of 26 major consumer magazines.
As of August 2006, "a USA Today/Gallup poll in which half of those surveyed registered an "unfavorable" opinion of the actor" was cited as a reason in addition to "unacceptable behavior"[29] for Paramount's non-renewal of their production contract with Cruise. In addition, Marketing Evaluations reports that Cruise's Q score (which is a measure of the popularity of celebrities), had fallen 40%. It was also revealed that Cruise is the celebrity people would least like as their best friend. Cruise came bottom with just 3 percent, while the winner was School of Rock star Jack Black.
