Tom Cruise
Thomas Cruise Mapother IV is an American actor and film producer. Regarded as a Hollywood icon, he has received various accolades, including an Honorary Palme d'Or, an Academy Honorary Award, and three Golden Globe Awards, in addition to nominations for four competitive Academy Awards. As of 2025, his films have grossed more than worldwide, placing him among the highest-grossing actors of all time. One of Hollywood's most bankable stars, he is consistently one of the world's highest-paid actors.
Cruise began acting in the early 1980s and made his breakthrough with leading roles in Risky Business and Top Gun, the latter earning him a reputation as a sex symbol. Critical acclaim came with his roles in the dramas The Color of Money, Rain Man, and Born on the Fourth of July. For his portrayal of Ron Kovic in the latter, he won a Golden Globe Award and received a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor. As a leading Hollywood star in the 1990s, he starred in commercially successful films, including the drama A Few Good Men, the thriller The Firm, the horror film Interview with the Vampire, and the sports comedy-drama Jerry Maguire ; for the latter, he won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor and his second nomination for the Academy Award for Best Actor. Cruise's performance in the drama Magnolia earned him another Golden Globe Award and a nomination for the Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor.
Cruise subsequently established himself as a star of science fiction and action films, often performing his own risky stunts. He played fictional agent Ethan Hunt in the Mission: Impossible film series. His other films in the genre include Vanilla Sky, Minority Report, The Last Samurai, Collateral, War of the Worlds, Knight and Day, Jack Reacher, Oblivion, Edge of Tomorrow, and Top Gun: Maverick.
Cruise holds the Guinness World Record for the most consecutive -grossing movies, a feat achieved with eleven films released between 2012 and 2025. In December 2024, he was awarded the U.S. Navy's highest civilian honor, the Distinguished Public Service Award, in recognition of his "outstanding contributions" to the military, with his screen roles. In March 2025, he was named the recipient of the British Film Institute Fellowship, the BFI's highest honor, for his contributions to cinema. Forbes ranked him as the world's most powerful celebrity in 2006. He was named People's Sexiest Man Alive in 1990, and received the top honor of "Most Beautiful People" in 1997. Outside his film career, Cruise has been an outspoken advocate for the Church of Scientology, which has resulted in controversy and scrutiny of his involvement in the organization. An aviation enthusiast, he has held a pilot certificate since 1994.
Early life
Cruise was born on July 3, 1962, in Syracuse, New York, to electrical engineer Thomas Cruise Mapother III and special education teacher Mary Lee. His parents were both from Louisville, Kentucky, and had English, German, and Irish ancestry. Cruise has three sisters named Lee Anne, Marian, and Cass. One of his cousins, William Mapother, is also an actor who has appeared alongside Cruise in five films.Cruise grew up in near poverty and had a Catholic upbringing. He later described his father as "a merchant of chaos", a "bully", and a "coward" who beat his children. He elaborated, " 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's father died of cancer in 1984.
In total, Cruise attended fifteen schools in fourteen years. Cruise spent part of his childhood in Canada; when his father took a job as a defense consultant with the Canadian Armed Forces, his family moved in late 1971 to Beacon Hill, Ottawa. He attended the new Robert Hopkins Public School for his fourth and fifth grade education. He first became involved in drama in fourth grade, under drama teacher George Steinburg. He and six other boys put on an improvised play to music called IT at the Carleton Elementary School drama festival. Drama organizer Val Wright was in the audience and later said that "the movement and improvisation were excellent... a classic ensemble piece."
In sixth grade, Cruise went to Henry Munro Middle School in Ottawa. That year, his mother left his father, taking Cruise and his sisters back to the United States. In 1978 she married Jack South. Cruise briefly took a Catholic church scholarship and attended St. Francis Seminary in Cincinnati. He aspired to become a priest in the Franciscan order but left after a year. Priests at the seminary have said Cruise chose to leave the school when his family relocated again; however, a former classmate said that they were both asked to leave after getting caught taking liquor. In his senior year of high school, he played football for the varsity team as a linebacker, but was cut from the squad after getting caught drinking beer before a game. He went on to star in the school's production of Guys and Dolls. In 1980, he graduated from Glen Ridge High School in Glen Ridge, New Jersey.
Acting career
1980s: Breakthrough and stardom
At age 18, with the blessing of his mother and stepfather, Cruise moved to New York City to pursue an acting career. After working as a busboy in New York, he went to Los Angeles to try out for television roles. He signed with CAA and began acting in films. He made his film debut in a bit part in the 1981 film Endless Love, followed by a major supporting role as a crazed military academy student in Taps later that year. Cruise was originally supposed to appear as a background actor but his role was expanded after impressing director Harold Becker. He next won the role of Steve Randle in Francis Ford Coppola's 1983 cinematic adaptation of S. E. Hinton's novel, The Outsiders, and shared the screen with an ensemble cast that included Matt Dillon, Emilio Estevez, Leif Garrett, C. Thomas Howell, Diane Lane, Rob Lowe, Ralph Macchio, and Patrick Swayze. That same year he appeared in All the Right Moves and Risky Business, which has been described as "A Generation X classic, and a career maker for Tom Cruise." He also played the male lead in the Ridley Scott film Legend, released in 1985. By 1986's Top Gun, his status as a superstar had been cemented.Cruise followed up Top Gun with Martin Scorsese's The Color of Money, which came out the same year, and which paired him with Paul Newman. Their chemistry won praise among critics with The Washington Post writing, "One of the subtle achievements of both Cruise's and Newman's performances is that you feel that both of them are genuinely top-notch pool hustlers". In 1988, Cruise starred in Cocktail, a film that was a box office success but failed with critics. His performance earned him a nomination for the Razzie Award for Worst Actor. Later that year he starred with Dustin Hoffman in Barry Levinson's Rain Man, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture.
In 1989, Cruise portrayed real-life paralyzed Vietnam War veteran Ron Kovic in Oliver Stone's war epic Born on the Fourth of July. Film critic Roger Ebert of the Chicago Sun-Times wrote, "Nothing Cruise has done will prepare you for what he does in Born on the Fourth of July ... His performance is so good that the movie lives through it. Stone is able to make his statement with Cruise's face and voice and doesn't need to put everything into the dialogue." The performance earned him a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor – Motion Picture Drama, the Chicago Film Critics Association Award for Best Actor, the People's Choice Award for Favorite Motion Picture Actor, a nomination for BAFTA Award for Best Actor in a Leading Role, and Cruise's first Best Actor Academy Award nomination.
1990s: Dramatic roles
Cruise's next films were Days of Thunder and Far and Away, both of which co-starred then-wife Nicole Kidman as his love interest, followed by the legal thriller The Firm, which was a critical and commercial success. In 1994, Cruise starred along with Brad Pitt, Antonio Banderas and Christian Slater in Neil Jordan's Interview with the Vampire, a gothic drama/horror film that was based on Anne Rice's best-selling novel. The film was well-received, although Rice was initially quite outspoken in her criticism of Cruise having been cast in the film, as Julian Sands was her first choice. Upon seeing the film, however, she paid for a two-page ad in Daily Variety praising his performance and apologizing for her previous doubts about him.In 1996, Cruise starred as superspy Ethan Hunt in the reboot of Mission: Impossible, which he also produced. The film was directed by Brian De Palma and was a box office success. Film critic Stephen Holden of The New York Times praised Cruise's performance, declaring "Tom Cruise has found the perfect superhero character on which to graft his breathlessly gung-ho screen personality." In the same year, Cruise took on the title role in Cameron Crowe's sports drama Jerry Maguire playing a sports agent in search of love. The film was a massive financial success grossing more than worldwide against its budget.
In 1999, Cruise costarred with Kidman in Stanley Kubrick's erotic and psychological drama film Eyes Wide Shut. Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian praised both Cruise and Kidman on their performances writing, "Cruise in particular lays himself open in that fiercely committed way that he tries everything as an actor". That same year he took a rare supporting role, as a motivational speaker, Frank T.J. Mackey, in Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia. Rolling Stone film critic Peter Travers heaped praise on Cruise writing, "Cruise is a revelation, fully deserving of the shower of superlatives coming his way ... Cruise seethes with the chaotic energy of a wounded animal—he's devastating." For his performance he received another Golden Globe and nomination for an Academy Award.