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Actor. Born Thomas Cruise Mapother IV, on July 3, 1962, in
Syracuse, New York. His family moved around a great deal when
Cruise was a child in order to accommodate his father’s career
as an electrical engineer. Cruise’s parents divorced when he was
11, and the children moved with their mother to Louisville,
Kentucky, and then to Glen Ridge, New Jersey, after her
remarriage. Like his mother, a teacher and amateur actress, and
his three sisters, Cruise suffered from dyslexia, which made
academic success difficult for him. He excelled in athletics,
however, and had considered pursuing a career in professional
wrestling until a knee injury sidelined him during high school
in Glen Ridge. At age 14, Cruise enrolled in a Franciscan
seminary with thoughts of becoming a priest, but he left after a
year. When he was 16, a teacher encouraged him to participate in
the school’s production of the musical Guys and Dolls. After
Cruise won the lead of Nathan Detroit, he found himself
surprisingly at home on the stage, and a career was born.
Cruise set a 10-year deadline for himself in which to build an
acting career. He left school and moved to New York, struggling
through audition after audition before landing an appearance in
1981’s Endless Love, starring Brooke Shields, and a small role
in the military school drama Taps, also released in 1981 and
costarring Sean Penn. His role in Taps was upgraded after
director Harold Becker saw Cruise’s potential, and his
performance caught the attention of a number of critics and
filmmakers.
In 1983, Cruise appeared in The Outsiders, directed by Francis
Ford Coppola, alongside Emilio Estevez, Matt Dillon, Rob Lowe,
all prominent members of a group of young actors that the
entertainment press had dubbed the “Brat Pack.” The film was not
well received, but it allowed Cruise to work with an acclaimed
director in a high-profile project. His next film, Risky
Business (1983), grossed $65 million and immediately made Cruise
a highly recognizable actor, thanks in no small part to a
memorable scene of the young actor dancing in his underwear.
In 1986, after a nearly two-year hiatus, the budding film star
released the big-budget fantasy film Legend, which did poorly at
the box office. That same year, however, Cruise’s A-list status
was confirmed with the release of Top Gun, a testoterone-fueled
action-romance set against the backdrop of an elite naval flight
school, and costarring Kelly McGillis, Anthony Edwards, and Meg
Ryan. The film became the biggest-grossing film of 1986. Cruise
followed up on the tremendous success of Top Gun with a string
of both critically acclaimed and commercially successful films,
including The Color of Money (1986), costarring Paul Newman,
Rain Man (1988), costarring Dustin Hoffman, and director Oliver
Stone’s Born on the Fourth of July (1989), for which Cruise
received an Academy Award nomination and a Golden Globe for Best
Actor.
Cruise married the actress Mimi Rogers in 1987; the couple
divorced in 1990, the same year in which Cruise made the
race-car drama Days of Thunder with a young Australian actress
named Nicole Kidman.
Though the movie was formulaic and a relative failure among
critics and at the box office, the two lead actors had real
chemistry. On Christmas Eve, 1990, Cruise and Kidman were
married in Telluride, Colorado, after a whirlwind courtship.
In 1992, Cruise proved once more that he could hold his own
opposite a screen legend—in this case his heavy-hitting costar
was Jack Nicholson—in the military courtroom drama, A Few Good
Men. Demi Moore also starred. Over the next several years,
Cruise made a few moderately well received movies, including The
Firm (1993) and Interview with a Vampire (1994), costarring Brad
Pitt, before breaking out again in 1996 with two huge hits—the
$64 million blockbuster, Mission: Impossible, which Cruise also
produced, and the highly acclaimed Jerry McGuire, directed by
Cameron Crowe. For the latter, Cruise earned a second Academy
Award nomination and a second Golden Globe for Best Actor.
Cruise and Kidman spent much of 1997 and 1998 in England,
shooting Eyes Wide Shut, an erotic thriller that would be
acclaimed director Stanley Kubrick’s final film before his death
in 1999. The movie was released in the summer of 1999 to mixed
reviews. In 1999, Cruise appeared in the critically acclaimed
ensemble film Magnolia, turning in a much-talked-about
performance as a self-confident sex guru that earned him a
Golden Globe award and an Academy Award nomination for Best
Supporting Actor. In 2000, Cruise starred in the long-awaited
smash hit Mission: Impossible 2, alongside Anthony Hopkins,
Thandie Newton, and Ving Rhames.
In 2002, projects included Vanilla Sky, his second collaboration
with director Cameron Crowe, and Minority Report directed by
Steven Spielberg. Cruise began 2003 with a trip to Australia to
shoot the $100 million The Last Samurai.
Over the years, Cruise has fiercely defended the happiness and
the legitimacy of his marriage, and with Kidman has filed two
different lawsuits against tabloid publications for stories he
considered libelous. In each case the couple received a
published retraction and apology, along with a large monetary
settlement, which they donated to charity.
On February 5, 2001, Cruise and Kidman announced their
separation after 11 years of marriage. The couple cited the
difficulties involved with two acting careers and the amount of
time spent apart while both are working. Cruise filed for
divorce shortly thereafter. The publicity surrounding the
surprising breakup continued throughout the spring, as Kidman's
publicist confirmed in late March that the actress suffered a
miscarriage roughly one month after the separation was
announced. The Cruise-Kidman divorce was finalized in August
2001. The couple have two adopted children, Isabella and Connor.
Following the divorce, Cruise dated his Vanilla Sky costar,
Spanish actress Penélope Cruz.
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