Thomas Cruise Mapother IV (born July 3, 1962), more commonly known as Tom Cruise, is an American actor and film producer. He is tied with Tom Hanks as the only actors to have seven consecutive US$100 million plus blockbusters on his résumé, and 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 1983's Risky Business. After that, he starred in many top films and became a Hollywood celebrity. Cruise is also known for his criticism of psychiatry, and for his support of Scientology, which has attracted controversy and media interest.

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 Colonial English ancestry from his paternal great-grandparents, William Reibert and Charlotte Louise Voelker; and purportedly Welsh ancestry from his paternal great-great-grandfather, Dylan Henry Mapother, who emigrated from Flint, Wales to Louisville, Kentucky in 1850. His great-great-grandmother Mary Cruise married twice. Her first husband was Dillon Henry Mapother, by whom she had six children. She remarried after Dillon's death, to Thomas O'Mara. Their son Thomas O'Mara, enumerated as such in the 1880 Census, was later known as "Thomas Cruise Mapother". The reason(s) for him changing his name are not entirely clear. Thus, from his and his wife Anna Stewart Bateman, he has Irish and Colonial English ancestry, respectively. His maternal ancestry is half Irish and half German (including Alsatian). Anna Stewart Bateman's great-grandfather was a third cousin of President George Washington and descended seven times from King Jean de Brienne of Jerusalem, once from King Louis VIII of France, once from King Henry III of England, twice from King Edward I of England and three times from King Edward III of England.

When Cruise was twelve, his mother left his father, taking Cruise and his sister Lee Anne with her. Cities in which Tom lived included Ottawa, Ontario (where he attended Colonel By Secondary School), 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 and aspired to become a Catholic priest. He eventually graduated from Glen Ridge High School in New Jersey in 1980.

Cruise has said that he suffered from abuse as a child. 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 subject to 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.

Cruise's first acting role came in 1981, when he had a small role in Endless Love, a drama/romance film starring Brooke Shields. Later that same year he had a more substantial role in the film Taps, appearing alongside George C. Scott, Timothy Hutton and Sean Penn. The film about military cadets was moderately successful. In 1983, he was one of many teenaged stars to appear in Francis Ford Coppola's The Outsiders. The cast for this film included Rob Lowe, Matt Dillon, Patrick Swayze, and Ralph Macchio, some of which were part of the Brat Pack. That same year Cruise appeared in the teen comedy Losin' It with Shelley Long. Also in 1983, Risky Business was released, widely thought to be the film that 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. The film has been described as "A Generation-X classic, and a career-maker for Tom Cruise". A fourth film that was released in 1983 was the high-school football drama, All the Right Moves.

Cruise's next film was the 1985 fantasy film Legend directed by Ridley Scott. Cruise was then picked as the first choice by producers Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson for an upcoming American fighter pilot film. Cruise at first apparently turned down the project, but helped to alter the script he was given and developed the film. After being taken for a flight with the Blue Angels, Cruise changed his mind and signed on with the project. The project was titled Top Gun and opened in May 1986 becoming the highest grossing film of the year, taking in US$353,816,701 in worldwide figures. The Navy even used it as an ad for recruitment. He also starred in Martin Scorsese's The Color of Money along with Paul Newman that same year, which earned Paul a Best Actor academy award. In 1988 he starred in the light hearted drama Cocktail. The film received mixed reviews and Cruise was subsequently nominated for a Razzie award in 1989 . Later that year, Rain Man was released, which also starred Dustin Hoffman and was directed by Barry Levinson. The film was praised by critics and was nominated for eight Academy Awards, and won four, including Best Picture and Best Actor.

Cruise was welcomed with similar success the following year when he received Academy Award nominations for Oliver Stone's Born on the Fourth of July, which was based on the best selling autobiography of Anti-Vietnam War hero Ron Kovic; for the first time the audience knew Tom could play complicated roles other than handsome boys. In 1990, Cruise starred as hot-shot race car driver "Cole Trickle" in Tony Scott's Days of Thunder. While filming Days of Thunder Cruise first met Australian actress Nicole Kidman, who was his co-star. Cruise's next film was Ron Howard's Far and Away where he again was starring with Nicole Kidman. After Days of Thunder he starred in the military thriller A Few Good Men with Jack Nicholson and Demi Moore. This film was very well received and earned Cruise a Golden Globe and MTV nominations. The following year he starred in Sydney Pollack's The Firm along with Gene Hackman and Ed Harris. It was based on the best selling novel by John Grisham, and won Favorite Dramatic Motion Picture at the People's Choice Awards.

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 which was also very well received, although Rice was outspoken in her criticism of Cruise having been cast in the film. In 1996, Cruise starred in (as well as produced) Brian de Palma's Mission: Impossible. The film, a remake of the 1960s TV series, grossed US$456,494,803 worldwide, making it the third highest grossing film that year. That same year he played the title role in the comedy-drama Jerry Maguire. The film earned him an Academy Award Best Actor nomination as well as winning co-star Cuba Gooding, Jr. an Academy Award; the film was nominated for five Academy Awards in total. The film also included the line "Show Me the Money!" which became part of popular culture. Jerry Maguire saw Tom Cruise become the first actor in history to star in five consecutive films that grossed at least $100 million in domestic release. In 1999 he starred in the erotic thriller Eyes Wide Shut which took two years to complete and was director Stanley Kubrick's last film. It was also the last film in which he starred alongside then spouse Nicole Kidman. But the film, which had a straightforward description of sex and a recondite story-telling style, raised great controversies. Cruise also played a misogynistic male guru in Magnolia (1999), which netted him a Best Supporting Actor Oscar nomination.

In 2000, Cruise returned as Ethan Hunt in the second installment of the Mission Impossible films, releasing Mission: Impossible II. The film was directed by Hong Kong director John Woo and branded with his Gun fu Style, but it continued the series' blockbuster success at the box office, taking in almost US$546 M in worldwide figures, like its predecessor, being the third highest grossing film of the year. The following year Cruise starred in the remake of the 1997 film Abre Los Ojos, Vanilla Sky. In 2002, Cruise starred in the dystopian science fiction thriller, Minority Report which was directed by Steven Spielberg and based on the science fiction short story by Philip Dick; as well as The Last Samurai.

In the 2004 Michael Mann's crime-thriller film Collateral, Cruise took a surprising turn against his generic "good guy" role by playing the role of a sociopathic hitman. In 2005, Cruise starred in Steven Spielberg's War of the Worlds. The film earned US$234 M and ultimately earned US$591.4 M worldwide . The film also earned three Razzie nominations including one for Cruise.

In 2006, he reprised his role as Ethan Hunt in the third installment of the Mission Impossible film series Mission: Impossible III which was also a box office success and was more positively received by critics than its predecessor. He is set to appear in the upcoming films Lions for Lambs and Valkyrie.

Cruise partnered with producer Paula Wagner to form Cruise/Wagner Productions which has co-produced several of Cruise's films, the first being Mission: Impossible in 1996 which was also Cruise's first project as a producer. He won a Nova Award (shared with Paula Wagner) for Most Promising Producer in Theatrical Motion Pictures at the PGA Golden Laurel Awards in 1997 for his work as a producer for the film Mission: Impossible.

His next project as a producer was the 1998 film Without Limits about famous American runner Steve Prefontaine. Cruise returned to work as a producer in 2000, continuing work on the Mission Impossible sequel. He then served as an executive producer for The Others which starred Nicole Kidman, also that year, he again worked as actor/producer in Vanilla Sky. He subsequently worked on (but did not star in) Narc, Hitting It Hard and Shattered Glass. His next project, which he also starred in, was The Last Samurai, he was jointly nominated for the Motion Picture Producer of the Year Award at the 2004 PGA Golden Laurel Awards. He then worked on Suspect Zero, Elizabethtown and Ask the Dust.

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.

Cruise-Wagner Productions, Tom Cruise's film production company, is said to be developing a screenplay based on Erik Larson's New York Times bestseller, "The Devil in the White City" about a real life serial killer at the Chicago World's Fair. Kathryn Bigelow is attached to the project to produce and helm. Meanwhile, Leonardo DiCaprio's production company, Appian Way, is also developing a film about Holmes and the World's Fair, in which DiCaprio will star.

On August 22, 2006, Paramount Pictures announced it was ending its 14-year relationship with Cruise/Wagner Productions. In the Wall Street Journal, chairman of Viacom (Paramount's parent company) Sumner Redstone cited the economic damage to Tom Cruise's value as an actor and producer from his controversial public behavior and views. Cruise/Wagner Productions responded that Paramount's announcement was a face-saving move after the production company had successfully sought alternative financing from private equity firms. Industry analysts such as Edward Jay Epstein commented that the real reason for the split was most likely Paramount's discontent over Cruise/Wagner's exceptionally large share of DVD sales from the Mission: Impossible franchise. However, Radar has claimed that the "personal conduct" complained of by Redstone was an allegedly Cruise-inspired attempt to intimidate Brad Grey, CEO of Paramount. According to Radar, when Grey was walking to his car one night after tense negotiations with Cruise over Mission: Impossible 3, he was "surrounded by more than a dozen Scientologists, who pressured him to ease up on the actor ... Following a terse exchange, the visitors allowed Grey to get into his car and leave, but the message was clear." Grey reportedly stood his ground and convinced Cruise to accept a lower fee than the actor had initially demanded.

According to an Associated Press report on November 2 2006, Tom Cruise and Paula Wagner announced that they will be in charge of the United Artists film studio. Cruise will produce and star in films for United Artists, while Wagner will serve as UA's chief executive.

Production begins summer 2007 for Valkyrie, a thriller based on an attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler at the height of WWII which was acquired in March 2007 by United Artists. On March 21, 2007 Cruise signed on to play a major role. This project marks the second production to be greenlighted since Cruise and Wagner took control of United Artists. Production is under way on its inaugural film, Lions for Lambs, directed by Robert Redford and starring Redford, Meryl Streep and Cruise. Lambs is scheduled for release November 9, 2007.

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.

In 2006, Premiere magazine established Cruise as Hollywood's most powerful actor, as Cruise came in at number 13 on the magazines 2006 Power List, being the highest ranked actor.

On 16 June, 2006, Forbes magazine published 'The Celebrity 100', a list of the most powerful celebrities, which Cruise topped. The list was generated using a combination of income (between June 2005 and June 2006), web references by Google, press clips compiled by LexisNexis, television and radio mentions (by Factiva), and the number of times a celebrity appeared on the cover of 26 major consumer magazines.

As of August 2006, "a USA Today/Gallup poll in which half of those surveyed registered an "unfavorable" opinion of the actor" was cited as a reason in addition to "unacceptable behavior" for Paramount's non-renewal of their production contract with Cruise. In addition, Marketing Evaluations reports that Tom Cruise's Q score (which is a measure of the popularity of celebrities), had fallen 40%. It was also revealed that Cruise is the celebrity people would least like as their best friend. Tom Cruise came bottom with just 3 percent, while the winner was 'School of Rock' star Jack Black.

Cruise was married to Mimi Rogers (married on May 9, 1987, divorced February 4, 1990). Rogers is generally believed to be the one who introduced Cruise to Scientology.

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). They separated when Kidman was three months pregnant, just shy of their tenth wedding anniversary; she later miscarried.

Cruise was next romantically linked with Penélope Cruz, the lead actress in his film Vanilla Sky. In March 2004, he announced that their relationship had ended in January.

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. She accepted his proposal, and the couple married in Bracciano, Italy on November 18, 2006.

On April 18, 2006 Katie gave birth to a baby girl named Suri at Saint John's Health Center in Santa Monica, California. Cruise stated that the name derives from the Hebrew word for "princess" or the Persian word meaning red rose. (See also Sarah.) She is the first child for Holmes and third for Cruise, who (as previously mentioned) has two adopted children with Nicole Kidman.

Cruise is arguably Hollywood's most outspoken member of the Church of Scientology. He became involved with Scientology in 1990 through his first wife, Mimi Rogers. Cruise has publicly said that Scientology, specifically the L. Ron Hubbard Scientology Study Tech, helped him overcome his dyslexia.

By 2003, Tom Cruise had become an active campaigner for Scientology and a promoter of Scientology "Tech" available to non-members. He lobbied politicians in France and Germany, where the legal system regards Scientology as a cult and business respectively. In 2005 the Paris city council revealed that Cruise had lobbied officials Nicolas Sarkozy and Jean-Claude Gaudin, described him as a spokesman and militant for Scientology, and barred any further dealings with him. Cruise co-founded and raised donations for Downtown Medical to offer New York 9/11 rescue workers detoxification therapy based on the works of L. Ron Hubbard. This has drawn criticism from the medical profession, as well as firefighters. For these activities and others, David Miscavige awarded Scientology's Freedom Medal of Valor to Cruise in late 2004.

A controversy erupted in 2005 after he openly criticized actress Brooke Shields for using the drug Paxil (paroxetine), an anti-depressant, to which Shields attributes her recovery from postpartum depression after the birth of her first daughter in 2003. Cruise asserted that there is no such thing as a chemical imbalance, and 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 by calling them "irresponsible and dangerous", In late August of 2006, Cruise apologized in person to Shields for his comments; Shields said that she was "impressed with how heartfelt [the apology] was [...] I didn't feel at any time that I had to defend myself, nor did I feel that he was trying to convince me of anything other than the fact that he was deeply sorry. And I accepted it." Cruise's spokesman confirmed that Cruise and Shields had made up but said that Cruise's position on anti-depressants had not changed. Shields was a guest at Cruise's and Holmes's wedding.

Cruise also said 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 said 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 widely disputed. Scientology is well-known for its anti-psychiatry stance.

Cruise has made several expressions of his feelings for Holmes to the media, most notably the "couch incident" which took place on the popular Oprah Winfrey Show of May 23, 2005. Cruise "jumped around the set, hopped onto a couch, fell rapturously to one knee and repeatedly professed his love for his new girlfriend." The phrase "jumping the couch," fashioned after "jumping the shark," is used to describe someone "going off the deep end" in public in a manner extreme enough to tarnish his or her reputation. It enjoyed a short-lived popularity, being chosen by the editors of the Historical Dictionary of American Slang as the "slang term of the year" in 2005 and by the nonprofit group Global Language Monitor as one of its top phrases for the year.

The "couch incident" was voted #1 of 2005's "Most Surprising Television Moments" on a countdown on E!., and was the subject of numerous parodies.

In 2005, the television show South Park provoked controversy with "Trapped in the Closet", an episode that satirized Scientology and the long-standing rumors regarding Cruise being a closeted homosexual. In the episode, Cruise becomes depressed and locks himself in a closet, after Stan Marsh (one of the main child characters in the series) tells Cruise (who has been told that Stan is the reincarnation of L. Ron Hubbard) that he considers Jon Heder to be a better actor than Cruise. As Cruise hides in the closet, depressed at the thought that L. Ron Hubbard doesn't like his work as an actor, several characters make numerous "come out of the closet" jokes. The show also has Nicole Kidman (Cruise's ex-wife) attempt to get Tom to "come out of the closet", telling him that Katie Holmes won't think any less of him and that she doesn't think any worse of him either. Meanwhile John Travolta (also the subject of rumors regarding possible homosexuality) and R. Kelly (who had just recorded a series of music videos called "Trapped in the Closet", regarding a man hiding in the closet of a woman he had a one-night stand with) also join Cruise in the closet, to hide after Cruise tells the two how comfortable a hiding spot Stan's closet is.

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 III if the episode was broadcast. Viacom owns both Paramount and Comedy Central. Paramount and Cruise's representatives denied any threats. The creators of South Park, Trey Parker and Matt Stone, claimed in a typically satirical response to be "servants of Xenu" and declared that the "million-year war for Earth" had only just begun. The Los Angeles Times reported that, "For Stone and Parker, Closetgate will be the gift that keeps on giving."

"Trapped in the Closet" was nominated for an Emmy, but did not win one, and was re-aired July 19, 2006 and afterwards. A reference to the episode was also made at the Emmy Awards. In the opening segment, host Conan O'Brien is trying to make his way to the awards show. However, he ends up in Stan's room (in animated form). A freaked out O'Brien runs into the closet, leading Stan to ask him to come out of the closet. O'Brien immediately runs out saying somebody else is in there. A moment later, an irritated Tom Cruise steps out and shuts the door.

*The Daily 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. * David Ehrenstein — Tom Cruise's lawyers threaten to sue Ehrenstein for his book titled "Open Secret: Gay Hollywood 1928-1998", that discussed Cruise's appeal to both men and women. *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 but never confirmed 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.

*'''''Buffalo Beast newspaper' - After The Beast's publication of their 50 Most Loathsome People of 2004 (which included Cruise in the list), Cruise's lawyer Bertram Fields threatened to sue the small independent publication. The Beast, seeing the opportunity for nationwide exposure (particularly after the story broke on the entertainment program Celebrity Justice and later in mainstream newspapers) actively encouraged the lawsuit, effectively calling Fields' bluff. No lawsuit was ever filed and Cruise was included more prominently in the 2005 list. *TomCruise.com - In 2006, Cruise sued infamous cybersquatter Jeff Burgar to obtain control of the TomCruise.com domain name. When owned by Burgar, the domain redirected to information about Cruise on Celebrity1000.com. The decision to turn TomCruise.com over to Cruise was handed down by WIPO on July 5, 2006. The decision was criticized by The Register suggesting that the WIPO conflict resolution system is flawed and "that if you were provided with the names of the panellists in any given case, you could predict with almost complete certainly what the outcome was."

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. He then demoted his sister and replaced her with veteran publicist Paul Bloch, from the publicity firm Rogers and Cowan. DeVette explained that it was her decision to work on philanthropic projects rather than publicity.Such restructuring is seen as a move to curtail publicity about his Scientology views, as well as the hard-sell of his relationship with Katie Holmes backfiring with the public.

October 10, 2006 was declared "Tom Cruise Day" in Japan, making him the first Hollywood star to have a special day named in his honor. The Japan Memorial Day Association said that he was awarded with a special day because he has made more trips to Japan than any other Hollywood star.

* List of Louisvillians * Citizens Commission on Human Rights * List of Welsh-Americans * List of Scientologists * Brat Pack * Flint, Wales * Church of Scientology * TomKat * Supercouple * Tom Cruise: Unauthorized, (1998)

* * * * * *Ancestry of Tom Cruise *Transcript of the Matt Lauer interview *Full Dotson Rader Interview; 4/16/06 *Rolling Stone Interview: "The Passion of the Cruise"; 08/11/04 *Roles that Tom Cruise has turned down *Tom Cruise at Rotten Tomatoes *Tom Cruise at Beliefnet