Tom Cruise Biography

Thomas Cruise Mapother IV (born July 3, 1962), better known as Tom Cruise, is an American film actor and producer. He has been nominated for three Academy Awards and he has won three Golden Globe Awards.

Tom Cruise first debuted in a major film in Francis Ford Coppola's The Outsiders, released in March 1983. His first leading role was in the film Risky Business, which was released in August 1983. 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 has starred in a variety of other successful films such as Rain Man (1988), Days of Thunder (1990), A Few Good Men (1992), Jerry Maguire (1996), Magnolia (1999), Vanilla Sky (2001), Minority Report (2002), The Last Samurai (2003), Collateral (2004) and War of the Worlds (2005).

Since 2005, Tom 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. Tom Cruise is also known for his support of and adherence to the Church of Scientology.

Early life
Tom Cruise was born in Syracuse, New York, the son of Mary Lee (née Pfeiffer), a special education teacher, and Thomas Cruise Mapother III (died 1984), an electrical engineer. Cruise's surname originates from his great-grandfather, Thomas Cruise O'Mara, who was adopted by a Welsh immigrant and renamed "Thomas Cruise Mapother". Cruise is of German, Irish, and English ancestry. Cruise grew up in near poverty in a Catholic family dominated by an abusive father he described as "a merchant of chaos". He was beaten by his father, who Tom Cruise described as a bully and coward.

Tom Cruise

He was the kind of person where, if something goes wrong, they kick you. It was a great lesson in my life—how he’d lull you in, make you feel safe and then, bang! For me, it was like, 'There's something wrong with this guy. Don't trust him. Be careful around him.'
Cruise attended Robert Hopkins Public School for grades three, four, and five. The Mapother family then moved to the suburb of Beacon Hill, in Ottawa, 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, and eventually chipping his front tooth. In the game British bulldogs, he then lost his newly capped tooth and hurt his knee. Henry Munro was also where Cruise became involved in drama, under 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. Tom Cruise was bullied regularly in the 15 different schools he attended in 12 years. When Cruise was twelve, his mother left his father, taking Cruise and his sister Lee Anne with her.

Tom Cruise briefly attended a Franciscan seminary in Cincinnati (on a church scholarship) and aspired to become a Catholic priest. In his senior year, Tom played football for the varsity team as a linebacker, but he was cut from the squad after getting caught drinking beer before a game.

Filmography

Tom Cruise

1981 Endless Love
1981 Taps
1983 The Outsiders
1983 Losin' It
1983 All the Right Moves
1983 Risky Business
1985 Legend
1986 Top Gun
1986 The Color of Money
1988 Cocktail
1988 Rain Man
1989 Born on the Fourth of July
1990 Days of Thunder
1992 Far and Away
1992 A Few Good Men
1993 The Firm
1994 Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles
1996 Mission: Impossible
1996 Jerry Maguire
1999 Eyes Wide Shut
1999 Magnolia
2000 Mission: Impossible II
2001 Stanley Kubrick: A Life in Pictures
2001 Vanilla Sky
2002 Space Station 3D
2002 Minority Report
2002 Austin Powers in Goldmember
2003 The Last Samurai
2004 Collateral
2005 War of the Worlds
2006 Mission: Impossible III
2007 Lions for Lambs
2008 Valkyrie
2008 Tropic Thunder
2010 Knight and Day
2011 Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol
2012 Rock of Ages
2013 One Shot
2013 Horizons