Tom Cruise

Thomas Cruise Mapother IV, better known by his screen name Tom Cruise, is an American actor and film producer. Forbes magazine ranked him as the world’s most powerful celebrity in 2006. He has been nominated for three Academy Awards and won three Golden Globe Awards. His first leading role was the 1983 film Risky Business, which has been described as “A Generation-X classic, and a career-maker” for the actor. After playing the role of a heroic naval pilot in the popular and financially successful 1986 film Top Gun, Cruise continued in this vein, playing a secret agent in a series of Mission: Impossible action films in the 1990s and 2000s. In addition to these heroic roles, he also played other roles, such as the misogynistic male guru in Magnolia (1999) and a cool and calculating sociopathic hitman in the Michael Mann crime-thriller film Collateral (2004).

In 2005, Economist Edward Jay Epstein argued that Cruise is one of the few producers (the others being George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Jerry Bruckheimer) who are able to guarantee the success of a billion-dollar movie franchise. 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.

Family and 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, an electrical engineer. Cruise has German and English ancestry from his paternal great-grandparents, William Reibert and Charlotte Louise Voelker; and Irish ancestry from his paternal great-great-grandfather Thomas O’Mara. It was O’Mara’s son Thomas who adopted the name Mapother, the surname of his older half-brothers, becoming Thomas Cruise Mapother I. Tom Cruise’s oldest sister, Lee Anne, was born in Louisville. His older sister Marian was born in Syracuse, as were Tom and his younger sister, Cass.

Cruise attended Robert Hopkins Public school for grades three, four, and five. The Mapother family then moved to the suburb of Beacon Hill, in Gloucester, Ontario, so Cruise’s father could take a position as a defence 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, eventually chipping his front tooth. In the game “British Bull Dog”, he then lost his newly capped tooth and hurt his knee. Henry Munro was also where Cruise became involved in drama, unter 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 toured with five other classmates to various schools around the Ottawa area, even being filmed at the local Ottawa TV station. The two were also singled out for a version of Jesus Christ Superstar, as well as a Marcel Marceau-type act. It was at this point that Mary Lee Mapother helped foster her son’s acting aspirations: when the religious overtones of the former caused concern for school principal Jim Brown, Cruise’s mother convinced him that the play should proceed, and she founded the Gloucester Players, a theatrical troupe where Cruise and some of the boys in Steinburg’s class acted.

When Cruise was twelve, his mother left his father, taking Cruise and his sister Lee Anne with her. After a long period of near-poverty, in which Tom’s newspaper-delivery earnings helped put food on the table, his mother married a plastics salesman named Jack South.

Besides Ottawa, cities in which Cruise lived included Louisville, Kentucky; Winnetka, Illinois; and Wayne, New Jersey. In all, Cruise attended eight elementary schools and three high schools. 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. Cruise graduated from Glen Ridge High School in New Jersey in 1980.

Cruise has said that he suffered from abuse as a child. This was partially due to his 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.” 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.

Other Information

• Full Name : Thomas Cruise Mapother IV
• Born : July 3, 1962 (1962-07-03)
• Birth Place : Syracuse, New York, U.S.
• Occupation : Actor, Film producer
• Years active : 1981–present
• Spouse(s) : Mimi Rogers (1987–1990), Nicole Kidman (1990–2001), Katie Holmes (2006–present)
• Domestic partner(s) : Penélope Cruz (2001–2004)

Awards Won

• BAFTA Awards

1. Britannia Award : 2005 Excellence in Film

• Golden Globe Awards

1. Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama (1989 Born on the Fourth of July)
2. Best Actor – Motion Picture Musical or Comedy (1996 Jerry Maguire)
3. Best Supporting Actor – Motion Picture (1999 Magnolia)

• Golden Raspberry Awards

1. Worst Screen Couple : 1994 Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles shared with Brad Pitt
2. Most Tiresome Tabloid Targets : 2006 shared with Katie Holmes

• NBR Award for Best Actor : 1996 Jerry Maguire
• NBR Award for Best Cast : 1999 Magnolia
• Saturn Award for Best Actor (film) : 2001 Vanilla Sky
• IAS Freedom Medal of Valor : 2006

Links

• Official site
• Tom Cruise at the Internet Movie Database
• Tom Cruise at Yahoo! Movies
• Tom Cruise – Wikipedia.org

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Tags: Academy Award, golden globe award, nicole kidman, Tom Cruise