JULY 3
Tom Cruise
Born July 3, 1962, in Syracuse, New York
Actor
Tom Cruise
Original Name - Thomas Cruise Mapother IV
His family moved around a great deal when Cruise
was a child in order to accommodate his father's
career as an electrical engineer. Cruise's
parents divorced when he was 11, and the children
moved with their mother to Louisville, Kentucky,
and then to Glen Ridge, New Jersey, after her
remarriage. Like his mother, a teacher and
amateur actress, and his three sisters, Cruise
suffered from dyslexia, which made academic
success difficult for him. He excelled in
athletics, however, and had considered pursuing a
career in professional wrestling until a knee
injury sidelined him during high school in Glen
Ridge. At age 14, Cruise enrolled in a Franciscan
seminary with thoughts of becoming a priest, but
he left after a year. When he was 16, a teacher
encouraged him to participate in the school's
production of the musical Guys and Dolls. After
Cruise won the lead of Nathan Detroit, he found
himself surprisingly at home on the stage, and a
career was born.
Cruise set a 10-year deadline for himself in
which to build an acting career. He left school
and moved to New York, struggling through
audition after audition before landing an
appearance in 1981's Endless Love, starring
Brooke Shields, and a small role in the military
school drama Taps, also released in 1981 and
costarring Sean Penn. His role in Taps was
upgraded after director Harold Becker saw
Cruise's potential, and his performance caught
the attention of a number of critics and
filmmakers. In 1983, Cruise appeared in The
Outsiders, directed by Francis Ford Coppola,
alongside Emilio Estevez, Matt Dillon, Rob Lowe,
all prominent members of a group of young actors
that the entertainment press had dubbed the
"Brat Pack." The film was not well
received, but it allowed Cruise to work with an
acclaimed director in a high-profile project. His
next film, Risky Business (1983), grossed $65
million and immediately made Cruise a highly
recognizable actor, thanks in no small part to a
memorable scene of the young actor dancing in his
underwear.
In 1986, after a nearly two-year hiatus, the
budding film star released the big-budget fantasy
film Legend, which did poorly at the box office.
That same year, however, Cruise's A-list status
was confirmed with the release of Top Gun, a
testoterone-fueled action-romance set against the
backdrop of an elite naval flight school, and
costarring Kelly McGillis, Anthony Edwards, and
Meg Ryan. The film became the biggest-grossing
film of 1986. Cruise followed up on the
tremendous success of Top Gun with a string of
both critically acclaimed and commercially
successful films, including The Color of Money
(1986), costarring Paul Newman, Rain Man (1988),
costarring Dustin Hoffman, and director Oliver
Stone's Born on the Fourth of July (1989), for
which Cruise received an Academy Award nomination
and a Golden Globe for Best Actor.
Cruise married the actress Mimi Rogers in 1987;
the couple divorced in 1990, the same year in
which Cruise made the race-car drama Days of
Thunder with a young Australian actress named
Nicole Kidman. Though the movie was formulaic and
a relative failure among critics and at the box
office, the two lead actors had real chemistry.
On Christmas Eve, 1990, Cruise and Kidman were
married in Telluride, Colorado, after a whirlwind
courtship.
In 1992, Cruise proved once more that he could
hold his own opposite a screen legend, in this
case his heavy-hitting costar was Jack Nicholson,
in the military courtroom drama, A Few Good Men.
Demi Moore also starred. Over the next several
years, Cruise made a few moderately well received
movies, including The Firm (1993) and Interview
with a Vampire (1994), costarring Brad Pitt,
before breaking out again in 1996 with two huge
hits, the $64 million blockbuster, Mission:
Impossible, which Cruise also produced, and the
highly acclaimed Jerry McGuire, directed by
Cameron Crowe. For the latter, Cruise earned a
second Academy Award nomination and a second
Golden Globe for Best Actor.
Cruise and Kidman spent much of 1997 and 1998 in
England, shooting Eyes Wide Shut, an erotic
thriller that would be acclaimed director Stanley
Kubrick's final film before his death in 1999.
The movie was released in the summer of 1999 to
mixed reviews. In 1999, Cruise appeared in the
critically acclaimed ensemble film Magnolia,
turning in a much-talked-about performance as a
self-confident sex guru that earned him a Golden
Globe award and an Academy Award nomination for
Best Supporting Actor. In 2000, Cruise starred in
the long-awaited smash hit Mission: Impossible 2,
alongside Anthony Hopkins, Thandie Newton, and
Ving Rhames. In 2002, projects included Vanilla
Sky, his second collaboration with director
Cameron Crowe, and Minority Report directed by
Steven Spielberg. Cruise began 2003 with a trip
to Australia to shoot the $100 million The Last
Samurai. In 2005, he teamed with Steven Spielberg
for the mega-hit War of the Worlds.
Over the years, Cruise has fiercely defended the
happiness and the legitimacy of his marriage, and
with Kidman has filed two different lawsuits
against tabloid publications for stories he
considered libelous. In each case the couple
received a published retraction and apology,
along with a large monetary settlement, which
they donated to charity.
On February 5, 2001, Cruise and Kidman announced
their separation after 11 years of marriage. The
couple cited the difficulties involved with two
acting careers and the amount of time spent apart
while both are working. Cruise filed for divorce
shortly thereafter. The publicity surrounding the
surprising breakup continued throughout the
spring, as Kidman's publicist confirmed in late
March that the actress suffered a miscarriage
roughly one month after the separation was
announced. The Cruise-Kidman divorce was
finalized in August 2001. The couple have two
adopted children, Isabella and Connor.
Following the divorce, Cruise dated his Vanilla
Sky costar, Spanish actress Penelope Cruz,
followed by a much-publicized relationship with
actress Katie Holmes. He and Holmes announced
their engagement in June 2005 and their first
child, Suri, was born in April 2006.
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