Tom Cruise
Tom Cruise's Biography
Tom Cruise, age 46, was born on July 3, 1962 in Syracuse, New York, USA. Tom Cruise's Zodiac Sign is Cancer and his birthday falls under the Year of the Tiger.
Tom Cruise (born Thomas Cruise Mapother IV) is an American actor and producer who has starred in a number of top-grossing movies. His first leading role in a blockbuster movie was in 1983's Risky Business.
Cruise was born to Thomas Cruise Mapother III and Mary Lee Pfeiffer. The very first Mapother's were Welsh immigrants to the United States. Cruise also has German ancestry from his paternal great-grandparents, William Reibert and Charlotta Louise Voelker. Cruise's parents moved frequently when he was a child, residing in a number of locations throughout the United States and Canada, including Ottawa, Louisville, Kentucky, Glen Ridge, New Jersey, where he attended Glen Ridge High School, and Wayne, New Jersey. Before going into acting, Cruise attended a Franciscan seminary and aspired to become a Catholic priest.
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).
Never one to shy away from challenging himself, 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 former spouse Nicole Kidman. Cruise also turned in a powerful supporting performance as a misogynistic male guru in Magnolia (1999), which netted him a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination, and also played a villainous hitman who kidnaps unsuspecting cabbie Jamie Foxx in Michael Mann's Collateral (2004), a complex role Cruise played with intensity.
Cruise teamed with producer Paula Wagner to form Cruise/Wagner Productions, which has co-produced several of Cruise's films such as Mission: Impossible and its sequels, Vanilla Sky (2001), and The Last Samurai (2003). The company also co-produced The Others (2001).
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.
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 a role of this type, Cruise has portrayed 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 (1986), Rain Man (1988), A Few Good Men (1992), Jerry Maguire (1996), Cocktail (1988), Vanilla Sky (2001), The Last Samurai, War of the Worlds (2005), and others. His most recent film, War of the Worlds (2005), achieved USD $34.6 million in ticket sales around the world on its debut, more than any other of his films on opening day.
In 2003, Cruise was named to the Board of Governors of the National Space Society, a nonprofit, educational space advocacy organization founded by Dr. Wernher von Braun. An enthusiastic advocate of space exploration, he provided the narration to the successful IMAX film Space Station 3D.
He has been married twice, to Mimi Rogers (May 9, 1987 - February 4, 1990) and later Nicole Kidman (December 24, 1990 - August 8, 2001). He and Nicole adopted two children, Isabella (born 1993) and Connor (born 1995). Cruise recently discussed his bi-racial son with the TV talkshow host Oprah Winfrey. Oprah asked Cruise if the issue of his race was ever discussed in the household. "We're from the human race, human kind," Cruise said. "I mean, what's there to talk about? He's my son. Listen, that's just how I feel about it. He's my son. I've never thought about color, race, I just have not thought about that."
During his marriage to actress Nicole Kidman, the couple endured public speculation about their sex life and rumors that Cruise was gay. In May 2001 he filed a lawsuit against gay porn actor Chad Slater. 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.
It is also rumored that Nicole Kidman lost her interest of Scientology, and the friction between her and Cruise over this issue drove the marrige apart.
Cruise was next romantically linked with Penélope Cruz, the lead actress in his film Vanilla Sky (2001). In March 2004, he announced that his relationship with Penélope had ended in January. In April 2005, he began dating Katie Holmes. On May 23, 2005, Cruise raised some eyebrows with a frenzied appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show in which he — 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, the actress Katie Holmes."
On 17 June 2005, Tom announced that he had proposed to Katie at the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris, France. She accepted his offer, but the couple have yet to decide on a wedding date.
On June 19, 2005 at the London premiere of War of the Worlds Cruise was squirted in the face with water via a joke microphone by a man posing as a reporter. The intended comedy sketch was to be included in an upcoming reality show on British television channel Channel 4. Cruise was not humored by the prank as he claimed that it was "disgusting" that someone should act in such a way.
Tom Cruise is now filming Mission: Impossible 3 (2006), reprising his role as agent Ethan Hunt. Beyond that it is known that for many years he has been interested in playing the Marvel Comics superhero Iron Man in a film version due to be released in 2007.
On October 5, 2005, it was reported by People magazine that Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes are expecting a baby. The birth would be Katie's first child, and Tom's third. Cruise has two adopted children, Connor, 10, and Isabella, 12, from his marriage to Nicole Kidman.
Tom Cruise and Scientology
Cruise is arguably Hollywood's most outspoken member of the Church of Scientology. He joined in 1986 while married to Mimi Rogers. Cruise has publicly said that Scientology, specifically the L. Ron Hubbard Scientology Study Tech, allowed him to overcome his dyslexia.
Since 2004, Cruise has talked more openly about Scientology and promoted its ideas, especially its rejection of psychiatric drugs, which was the subject of a heated argument with Matt Lauer on the Today Show on June 24, 2005. He openly criticized actress Brooke Shields for using the drug Paxil, an anti-depressant, which Shields claims helped her recover from post-partum depression after the birth of her daughter in 2003; Brooke Shields subsequently questioned Cruise's wisdom. 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 well-known 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%, no outside source has ever verified this claim, let alone declaring it the only successful program as a matter of statistical fact.)
More Tom Cruise Links
» Tom Cruise filmography in acting
» Tom Cruise filmography in writing
» Tom Cruise movie posters
» Tom Cruise websites
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