Tom Cruise

This is an article about the actor; for the inventor, see Tom Kruse.

Tom Cruise
Born	July 3, 1962 Syracuse, New York
Occupation(s)	Actor and producer

Tom Cruise (born Thomas Cruise Mapother IV on July 3, 1962) is an Academy Award-nominated and Golden Globe Award-winning American actor and film producer who has starred in a number of top-grossing movies and remains one of the most successful movie stars in Hollywood. His first leading role in a blockbuster movie was in 1983's Risky Business. In the last couple of years, he has received additional media coverage regarding his support of Scientology (and his related criticism of psychiatry), and his relationship with Katie Holmes.

Ancestry and early life

Cruise was born to Thomas Mapother III and Mary Lee Pfeiffer in Syracuse, New York. Cruise has German ancestry from his paternal great-grandparents, William Reibert and Charlotta Louise Voelker; and Welsh ancestry from his all-paternal great-great-grandfather, Dylan Henry Mapother, who emigrated from Flint, Wales to Louisville, Kentucky in 1850. His maternal ancestry is half Irish and half German (including Alsatian). Cruise had a transient existence as a child with his family residing throughout various locations in the United States and Canada. Cities where he lived included Ottawa, Canada, Louisville, Glen Ridge, New Jersey (where he graduated from Glen Ridge High School) and Wayne, New Jersey. In all, Cruise attended eight elementary schools and three high schools. He briefly attended a Franciscan seminary in Cincinnati and aspired to become a Catholic priest. It was recently brought forth that Cruise had suffered from child abuse when he was younger. 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 coward" and "a merchant of chaos". Cruise said he learned early on that his father was not to be trusted.. Cruise became interested in 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. While in high school Cruise was also a member of Key Club International the world's largest youth oriented, high school service organization.

Hollywood

Acting career

While it was not his first film, Risky Business (1983) propelled Cruise to stardom. One sequence in the film, featuring Cruise lip-syncing Bob Seger's "Old Time Rock and Roll" in his underwear, has become an iconic moment in film history. Cruise's status as an A-list actor was secured a few years later when he starred in Top Gun (1986).

He received Academy Award nominations for Born on the Fourth of July (1989) and Jerry Maguire (1996), both as Best Actor; and for Magnolia (1999), as Best Supporting Actor. In 1996, he became the first actor in history to star in five consecutive films that grossed $100 million in domestic release; the films were A Few Good Men (1992), The Firm (1993), Interview with the Vampire (1994), Mission: Impossible (1996) and Jerry Maguire (1996), he also had a very small role in Spy Kids: 3D.

Cruise also took on more unusual roles following Interview With The Vampire and Jerry Maguire, with Eyes Wide Shut (1999) which took two years to finish as director Stanley Kubrick's last film, alongside then spouse Nicole Kidman. Cruise also performed as a misogynistic male guru in Magnolia (1999), which netted him a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination, and in very rare form, played a villain as the hitman who kidnaps unsuspecting cabbie Jamie Foxx in Michael Mann's Collateral (2004).

A number of Cruise's more well-known and popular movies have cast him in a similar role, one which has been half-jokingly referred to by movie fans (and some critics) as the "Generic Tom Cruise Character." In this role, Cruise portrays a character who, as the film begins, is seen as a cocky, stuck-up, self-centered egotist who cares for little other than himself. As the events of the movie unfold, his character learns to become more open-minded and altruistic, until by the time the climax has been reached, he has undergone a radical change and been transformed into a better human being. Examples of the "Generic Tom Cruise Character" can be seen in Top Gun, Rain Man, A Few Good Men,The Firm, Jerry Maguire, Cocktail, Vanilla Sky, The Last Samurai, War of the Worlds, Minority Report and others.

However, in the 2004 action thriller film Collateral, Cruise combated these good-guy stereotypes with his surprising turn as gray-haired hitman with a killer smile, Vincent, who hijacks the cab to be transported to five hits on one night. His trademark smile and handling guns took a 180-degree turn for an unlikable character, opposite his good-guy characters.

In 2006 Tom Cruise earned three Razzie nominations, as worst actor for War of the Worlds and two of the five slots in a new Razzies category for Most Tiresome Tabloid Targets. [7] Cruise was nominated for the award for his anti-psychiatry statements and his very public romance with Katie Holmes the previous year. "He had been a very private person up until this past year," said Razzies founder John Wilson. "It certainly was a bizarre turn in terms of how he handles his personal life and the access that he gave the media to himself. The endless posing on the red carpet and just smooching like they were on the couch at home."

Cruise sometimes performs his own stunts (such as in "The Last Samurai").

Producing career

Cruise teamed with producer Paula Wagner to form Cruise/Wagner Productions, which has co-produced several of Cruise's films such as Mission: Impossible (1996), Vanilla Sky (2001), and The Last Samurai (2003). The company also co-produced The Others (2001). Tom 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 [8].

Popularity

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.

His frequent controversial outbursts promoting the Church of Scientology and his Scientology-based strong anti-psychiatry beliefs, combined with his unusually erratic behavior throughout 2005 (detailed below) may have led to a drop in his popularity. One survey for example, showed Cruise's popularity drop from 11th to 197th most liked celebrity over a six month period. ^[9]

Relationships

Mimi Rogers

Cruise was married to Mimi Rogers (married on May 9, 1987, divorced February 4, 1990). Scientology took interest in the divorce because Rogers was disaffected from Scientology (although she introduced Cruise to the religion in the first place); in managing the divorce for Cruise, they were able to convince her to accept a relatively paltry $10 million for the settlement. [10].

Nicole Kidman

Cruise met Nicole Kidman on the set of their film Days of Thunder. The couple married on December 24, 1990 and divorced on August 8, 2001. He and Kidman adopted two children, Isabella (born 1993) and Connor (born 1995). Cruise left Kidman three months pregnant, just shy of their 10 year wedding anniversary; she lost the child[11]. Reportedly, Kidman refused to explore Scientology and remained Catholic during their marriage.

Penélope Cruz

Cruise was next romantically linked with Penélope Cruz, the lead actress in his film Vanilla Sky. In March 2004, he announced that his relationship with Penélope Cruz had ended in January. It was suggested that Scientology played a role in the relationship failing. [12]

Katie Holmes

Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes at a Yahoo! press conference in March 2006.

In April 2005, Cruise began dating Katie Holmes, before announcing on 17 June 2005 that he had proposed to her at the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France. [13] She accepted his proposal, and the couple are expected to be married in the summer or fall of 2006. On April 18, 2006 Katie gave birth to a baby girl named Suri, whose name was chosen with its relation to Scientology, the Persian Rose and the birthplace. It's the first child for Holmes and third for Cruise, who (as previously mentioned) has two adopted children with Nicole Kidman.

Controversy

Scientology

Cruise is arguably Hollywood's most outspoken member of the Church of Scientology. He became involved with the church in 1990 through his first wife, Mimi Rogers. It has been claimed that Cruise belongs to one of the highest echelons of the Church of Scientology, known as "Operating Thetan Seven" or OT-VII , and it has been suggested that Cruise's increasing willingness to talk openly about Scientology may be a reflection of this.

A controversy erupted in 2005 after he openly criticized actress Brooke Shields for using the drug Paxil, an anti-depressant, which Shields claims helped her recover from postpartum depression after the birth of her daughter in 2003. Cruise asserted, contrary to assertions in the medical field, that there is no such thing as a chemical imbalance, that psychiatry is a form of pseudoscience. This led to a heated argument with Matt Lauer on The Today Show on June 24, 2005. Brooke Shields responded to Cruise's comments as "irresponsible and dangerous". (Coincidentally, Holmes and Shields both gave birth on April 18, 2006.)

Cruise has publicly said that Scientology, specifically the L. Ron Hubbard Scientology Study Tech, helped him overcome his dyslexia.

File:Szaszcruise picture.jpg

Cruise with Dr. Szasz shown at a CCHR annual dinner.

Cruise also claimed in an Entertainment Weekly interview that psychiatry "is a Nazi science" and that methadone was actually originally called Adolophine after Adolf Hitler, a myth well-known as an urban legend. In an interview with Der Spiegel magazine, Cruise claimed that "In Scientology, we have the only successful drug rehabilitation program in the world. It's called Narconon... It's a statistically proven fact that there is only one successful drug rehabilitation program in the world. Period". While Narconon claims to have a success rate over 70% , the accuracy of this figure has been disputed. It has been reported that Cruise adopted his anti-psychiatry philosophies from Dr. Thomas Szasz, a leading critic of the moral and scientific foundations of psychiatry.

As of 2005, Tom Cruise has begun campaigning on behalf of the Church of Scientology before politicians and government officials around the world. Such advocacy does not go well in several European countries where this organization is considered to be a cult. As an example, on July 13th, 2005, after it was learned that he lobbied Nicolas Sarkozy and Jean-Claude Gaudin (the mayor of Marseille), the city council of Paris vowed "never to receive [before the council or the mayor] the actor Tom Cruise, spokesman for Scientology and self-declared militant for this organisation"

On March 13, 2006 (L. Ron Hubbard's birthday), Isaac Hayes quit the television show South Park, reportedly because of a controversial episode that satirized Scientology. Dubbed "Closetgate" by the Los Angeles Times, the controversy continued as Comedy Central, the channel that broadcasts South Park in the U.S., pulled the "Trapped in the Closet" episode at the last minute from a scheduled repeat on March 15 2006. It was alleged that Cruise threatened Paramount with withdrawal from promotion of his latest film Mission Impossible 3 if the episode was broadcast. Viacom owns both Paramount and Comedy Central. Paramount and Cruise's representatives denied any threats. Trey Parker and Matt Stone, in a typically satirical response, claimed to be "servants of Xenu" and declared that the "million-year war for Earth" had only just begun. The LA Times reported that, "For Stone and Parker, Closetgate will be the gift that keeps on giving."

Concern has also been voiced about Holmes and her relationship to Scientology. Roger Friedman of the Fox News Channel claimed that Katie Holmes disappeared for sixteen days in April when even her own family did not know her whereabouts. Allegedly, the last time she had been seen, Holmes had flown to meet with Tom Cruise for a possible role in Mission Impossible 3. When she re-appeared, Holmes stated she was in love with Tom Cruise and studying Scientology. The actress then fired her long-time manager and agent and acquired Jessica Rodriguez, a prominent member of the Church of Scientology.

2005 Oprah appearance

File:Cruiseonoprah.jpg

Tom Cruise jumps ecstatically on Oprah's couch

Cruise has indulged in over-the-top media-friendly expressions of his deep love for Holmes, most notably the "couch incident" which took place on the popular talk show, The Oprah Winfrey Show of May 23, 2005: Cruise — in the words of The New York Times — "jumped around the set, hopped onto a couch, fell rapturously to one knee and repeatedly professed his love for his new girlfriend." This scene has been parodied in numerous venues in film (Scary Movie 4)and TV (the "couch incident" was voted #1 of 2005's "Most Surprising Television Moments" on a countdown on E! ), and the Internet (including one reworking of the scene to make it look like Cruise kills Oprah with Sith lightning emanating from his hands). Comedian Dane Cook parodied the incident a week later on Jimmy Kimmel, professing his love for Katie Holmes with a home-made tattoo on his back (A photograph affixed with tape) and going all the way to the female restroom to get her.

Litigation

• Express newspaper — During his marriage to actress Nicole Kidman, the couple endured public speculation about their sex life and rumors that Cruise was gay. In 1998, he sued a British tabloid that alleged that the marriage was a sham designed to cover up his homosexuality.
• Chad Slater — In May 2001 he filed a lawsuit against gay porn actor Chad Slater (aka Kyle Bradford). Slater had allegedly told the celebrity magazine Actustar that he had engaged in an affair with Cruise. Both Slater and Cruise denied this, and in August 2001 Slater was ordered to pay $10 million to Cruise in damages.
• Michael Davis — He also sued Michael Davis, a magazine publisher, who alleged that he had photographs that would prove Tom Cruise was homosexual; this suit was dropped in exchange for a public statement by Davis that Tom Cruise was heterosexual.

Wiretapping investigation

On March 17, 2006, the "Page Six" gossip column in the New York Post reported that Cruise's former wife Nicole Kidman was questioned by the FBI as part of the ongoing Pellicano wiretap investigation. Telephone voice recordings of Kidman speaking to Cruise were found when authorities first raided Pellicano's offices in 2002.

The tapes were allegedly made in 2001, shortly after Kidman and former husband Cruise announced they were separating. Cruise used lawyer Dennis Wasser to negotiate his separation, and Wasser regularly retained Pellicano's services. Although he has not been charged in the case, Wasser has been told by the FBI he is a "person of interest."[14][15]

Cruise's personal attorney Bertram Fields has also been repeatedly connected to the same wiretapping investigation.

Publicist

Cruise's more open attitude to Scientology has been attributed to the departure of his publicist of 14 years, Pat Kingsley, in March 2004. He replaced her with his sister, fellow Scientologist Lee Anne DeVette, who served in that role until November 2005 [16]. He then demoted his sister and replaced her with veteran publicist Paul Bloch, from the publicity firm Rogers and Cowan. Such restructuring is seen as a move to curtail publicity about his Scientology views, as well as the hard-sell of the Tom/Kat relationship backfiring with the public [17], [18]. DeVette explained that it was her decision to work on philanthropic projects rather than publicity[19].

Miscellaneous

In April 2005, Cruise began dating Katie Holmes. This very public love affair took a dramatic turn when Cruise and Holmes got engaged in Paris [20] while on a world publicity tour for their two most recent movies (War of the Worlds for Cruise, and Batman Begins for Holmes). War of the Worlds director Steven Spielberg indicated that he was frustrated by media coverage of Cruise's relationship during promotion of the film, though he believed it to be genuine. [21] On October 5, 2005, it was reported by People magazine that Holmes was pregnant. Cruise came under fire from various medical professionals after he bought a sonogram machine to monitor his baby. The American College of Radiology claims that overuse or misuse of the medical equipment is unnecessary and could be harmful to the baby's health, and that it may be illegal to own. [22] On April 18, 2006 Holmes gave birth to a baby girl named Suri, the first child for both Holmes and Cruise although the latter has two adopted children: Connor Antony (born January 17 1995) and Isabella Jane (born December 22 1992) from his marriage to Nicole Kidman.

Cruise's behavior in recent interviews and his very public romance with Katie Holmes led him to become the butt of numerous jokes on late night television shows such as Late Night with Conan O'Brien. [23] The jokes commonly referred to Cruise being insane or parody the Lauer interview.

In February 2006 an article in Life & Style magazine reported that Cruise and Holmes were splitting up, but keeping up a public pretense until the Spring (when the birth of their child will roughly coincide with the release of Mission Impossible 3, Cruise's next film). Arnold Robinson, a publicist for the couple, denied there being any truth to the story. A representative for Life & Style magazine responded, "We stand 100 percent behind our story", and claimed it had been verified by two anonymous friends of Cruise. [24]

In an April 2006 interview with GQ magazine taken while Holmes was pregnant, Cruise jokingly suggested that he might eat her placenta after birth - a health practice known as placentophagy. He was quoted as saying "I'm gonna eat the placenta. I thought that would be good. Very nutritious. I'm gonna eat the cord and the placenta right there." But when the interviewer said it would be a big meal, Cruise replied: "OK, maybe I won't." In a later interview with Diane Sawyer, Cruise joked about the comments and said he wasn't really going to eat it. [25][26][27]

Selected filmography

All salaries are reported by IMDB source. They do not account for inflation.

Year	Title	Role	Other notes	Salaries
1981	Endless Love	Billy
1981	Taps	Cadet Captain David Shawn
1983	The Outsiders	Steve Randle
1983	Losin' It	Woody
1983	Risky Business	Joel Goodson		$75,000
1983	All the Right Moves	Stef
1985	Legend	Jack O' The Green
1986	Top Gun	Lt. Pete 'Maverick' Mitchell		$2,000,000
1986	The Color of Money	Vincent Lauria
1988	Cocktail	Brian Flanagan
1988	Young Guns	Cowboy	uncredited cameo
1988	Rain Man	Charlie Babbitt		$3,000,000 + % of gross
1989	Born on the Fourth of July	Ron Kovic	Academy Award Nomination - Best Actor
1990	Days of Thunder	Cole Trickle
1992	Far and Away	Joesph Donnelly		$13,000,000
1992	A Few Good Men	Lt. Daniel Kaffee
1993	The Firm	Mitch McDeere
1994	Interview with the Vampire	Lestat de Lioncourt		$15,000,000
1996	Mission: Impossible	Ethan Hunt		$70,000,000 (gross participation)
1996	Jerry Maguire	Jerry Maguire	Academy Award Nomination - Best Actor	$20,000,000 against 15%
1999	Eyes Wide Shut	Bill Harford		$20,000,000
1999	Magnolia	Frank T.J. Mackey	Academy Award Nomination - Best Supporting Actor
2000	Mission: Impossible II	Ethan Hunt		$75,000,000 (gross participation)
2001	Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures	Narrator
2001	Vanilla Sky	David Aames	also producer	$20,000,000 + 30% of profits
2002	Space Station 3D	Narrator
2002	Minority Report	John Anderton		$25,000,000+
2002	Austin Powers in Goldmember	Himself	cameo
2003	The Last Samurai	Nathan Algren	also producer	$25,000,000 + % of profits
2004	Collateral	Vincent
2005	War of the Worlds	Ray Ferrier	Razzie Nomination - Worst Actor	20% profit participation ($118,283,263.20)
2006	Mission: Impossible III	Ethan Hunt	also producer	$75,000,000

Worldwide film grosses

These figures do not account for inflation.

Year	Title	Gross
2005	War of the Worlds	$591,416,316
2000	Mission: Impossible II	$545,902,562
2003	The Last Samurai	$456,758,981
1996	Mission: Impossible	$456,494,833
2002	Minority Report	$358,372,926
1988	Rain Man	$354,825,435
1986	Top Gun	$353,816,701
1996	Jerry Maguire	$273,552,592
1993	The Firm	$270,248,367
1992	A Few Good Men	$243,240,178

See boxofficemojo.com. Figures are subject to minor adjustments (usually upwards) when studios release revised official figures, which sometimes occurs years after first release.

Other work

Tom Cruise co-hosted the annual Nobel Peace Prize Concert in Oslo, Norway with Oprah Winfrey in 2004.

See also

• Homosexuality and Scientology
• List of famous Louisvillians
• "Jumping the couch"
• Citizens Commission on Human Rights

References

• "Actor Tom Cruise Opens Up about his Beliefs in the Church of Scientology", SPIEGEL Online. (April 27, 2005)
• Shields, Brooke. "War of Words", New York Times. (July 1, 2005)
• "Cruise Leaves Big Tip For Accident Victim", NBC4 TV. (December 17, 2004)
• "Tom Cruise Says Scientology Helped with Learning Disability", beliefnet / Associated Press. (July 11, 2003)
• Gonzales, Luis. "New Church of Scientology Opens in Madrid", beliefnet.
• "Cruise lobbies over Scientology". BBC News. (January 30, 2002)
• "Tom Cruise buys sonogram machine to watch baby". (November 25, 2005)
• "Tom & Katie Expecting a Baby". People magazine. (October 5, 2005)

External links

• Tom Cruise discusses Jesus "Comparing Chrisitianity and Scientology"
• Template:Ymovies name
• Template:Nndb name
• Tom Cruise "The premier resource for all information regarding Tom Cruise"
• Full Dotson Rader Interview; 4/16/06
• Rolling Stone Interview: "The Passion of the Cruise"; 08/11/04