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If you haven’t heard of Tom Cruise at least once in your lifetime, you are most definitely missing out on some of the greatest movies ever made, along with one of the leading men of Hollywood who has carried this industry for a while now. Tom Cruise has been an important pillar of Hollywood for decades now, and especially with Top Gun: Maverick, which was released earlier this year, he continues to be on top. We do not doubt that he will maintain this streak for years to come because Tom Cruise has a whole lot going on for him, and his acting career especially.
Tom Cruise might belong to the older generation of actors and actresses in Hollywood, but he doesn’t look a day over thirty. His roles continue stealing hearts, just like they did back in the 90s. From romantic comedies to action thrillers, Tom Cruise has done it all, and we can’t wait to tell you more about him. So, keep reading to find out everything you need to know about Tom Cruise, from his net worth to his biography, to his dating history and more:
As of 2022, Tom Cruise’s net worth is estimated at approximately $600 million. Cruise is a household name and has starred in dozens of blockbusters in his career of over 40 years! His films have earned $9.5 billion cumulatively, and he achieved his first-ever billion-dollar film with the release of Top Gun: Maverick this past spring. He ranks three times on Celebrity Net Worth’s list of the Ten Largest Acting Paychecks in Hollywood History. Cruise is not only an actor, but also a producer, and his producer credit on the Top Gun sequel just might help him take home about $200 million since he’ll take home a sizeable portion of the film’s gross sales and streaming sales, as well.
Thomas Cruise Mapother IV was born in Syracuse, New York, on July 3, 1962. He was raised in the Roman Catholic Church, and his childhood was rather difficult. His family did not have a lot of money, and he described his father as a bully, disclosing that he and his siblings suffered physical violence and abuse at the hands of their father. As a child, Cruise attended 15 schools in 14 years and spent several years in Canada after his father was hired as a defense consultant for the Canadian Armed Forces. Cruise first began acting when he was in the fourth grade at Robert Hopkins Public School. When he was in sixth grade, his mother left his father and brought him and his siblings back to the United States. He graduated from Glen Ridge High School in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, in 1980.
Cruise briefly studied at St. Francis Seminary in Cincinnati, Ohio, intending to become a Franciscan priest, but he was expelled for drinking. It was at this point that he decided to move to New York City to pursue an acting career. With the blessing of his mother and stepfather, Cruise moved to New York City at age 18 and began working as a busboy. He soon moved to Los Angeles to try out for television roles. He made his debut in the 1981 film Endless Love. In the same year, he landed a major supporting role in the military drama Taps, in which he portrayed a crazed military academy student. From this point forward, he began to book significant roles consistently, beginning with 1983’s The Outsiders, based on S.E. Hinton’s novel of the same name. He then appeared in All the Right Moves and Risky Business, the film that put him on the map. He had become somewhat of a superstar by the time he starred in Top Gun in 1986.
Cruise co-starred with Paul Newman in Martin Scorsese’s The Color of Money in 1986, and their performances were praised by critics. In 1988, he starred in Rain Man with Dustin Hoffman, and the film won the Academy Award for Best Picture. He won a Golden Globe Award for Best Actor and was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance as Ron Kovic, a real-life paralyzed Vietnam War veteran, in 1989’s Born on the Fourth of July.
Cruise starred opposite his then-wife Nicole Kidman in 1990’s Days of Thunder and 1992’s Far and Away. Notably, he starred with Christian Slater, Brad Pitt, and Antonio Banderas, in the film adaptation of Anne Rice’s best-selling novel Interview with the Vampire. If Cruise wasn’t well-known enough yet by 1996, he sure became so when he starred as superspy Ethan Hunt in the reboot of Mission: Impossible. In the same year, he starred in the title role of Cameron Crowe’s Jerry Maguire, opposite stars like Renée Zellweger and Cuba Gooding, Jr. In 1999, he starred alongside Kidman once again in Stanley Kubrick’s Eyes Wide Shut.
The year 2000 saw the release of Mission: Impossible 2, the second film in the franchise. It was the highest-grossing film of the year at $547 million worldwide. His next five films were all critical and commercial successes: Vanilla Sky (2001) with Cameron Diaz and Penélope Cruz; Minority Report (2002); The Last Samurai (2003), for which he was nominated for the Golden Globe Award for Best Actor; Collateral (2004); and War of the Worlds (2005), a very loose adaptation of the H.G. Wells’ eponymous novel. He embarked on Mission: Impossible 3, which was received more positively by critics than the first two films had been, in 2006, and Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol in 2010.
While he appeared in several other films in the meantime, his next major success was 2014’s Edge of Tomorrow. The fifth installment of the Mission: Impossible series, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation, premiered in 2015 to critical acclaim. The sixth film in the series, Mission: Impossible – Fallout, opened in 2018 and grossed over $791 million. Most recently, Cruise reprised his role as Captain Pete “Maverick” Mitchell in 2022’s Top Gun: Maverick. He was awarded an Honorary Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival, where it premiered.
Cruise has been involved in several controversies throughout his career, much of which stems from his association with the Church of Scientology. His first wife Mimi Rogers converted him to Scientology in 1986, and he became a gratuitous advocate for the church and zealot in the early 2000s. He has claimed that Scientology has helped him to overcome dyslexia, with which he has struggled since he was a young child. He has campaigned for Scientology to afford religious status in Europe and lobbied foreign politicians for the cause. In 2004, he met with former United States Secretary of Education Rod Paige to promote and endorse Scientologist education methods. Tom Cruise was awarded the Scientology Freedom Medal of Valor in 2004, an award created for him in recognition of his efforts to offer 9/11 first responders “detoxification therapy” based on the works of L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology. He also has attempted to convert other celebrities, such as Steven Spielberg, Victoria, and David Beckham, and Jada Pinkett and Will Smith.
The Church of Scientology is notorious for its rejection of psychology and psychiatry, so it’s not surprising that Cruise stated, “I think psychiatry should be outlawed,” in 2004. In 2005, he also criticized actress Brooke Shields for her use of the antidepressant Paxil while she was struggling with postpartum depression after giving birth to her first daughter in 2003. He claimed that there is no such thing as a chemical imbalance, but he eventually apologized to Shields in person in 2006.
At the beginning of his career, Cruise had short-lived relationships with Rebecca De Mornay, Patti Scialfa, Melissa Gilbert, and Cher.
He married actress Mimi Rogers in 1987, and she converted him to the Church of Scientology. Rogers had grown up in Scientology but left the organization later on. They divorced in February 1990.
While filming Days of Thunder, Cruise met Nicole Kidman, and the two married on Christmas Eve, 1990. They adopted two children together, and he later filed for divorce in February 2001, not knowing that Kidman was pregnant. Unfortunately, Kidman had an ectopic pregnancy and sadly, the baby did not survive. He began dating his Vanilla Sky co-star, Penélope Cruz, sometime in 2001, and they broke up in 2004.
In 2005, Cruise – then 44 years old – began dating actress Katie Holmes, who is 17 years his junior. He declared his love for Holmes on The Oprah Winfrey Show, jumping on the couch on stage. In November 2006, they were married in a Scientologist ceremony in Odescalchi Castle in Bracciano, Italy. David Miscavige, the head of Scientology, was Cruise’s best man. Holmes filed for divorce in June 2012, and the couple signed a settlement in July. Cruise claims that Holmes divorced him to protect their daughter, Suri, from Scientology.
Cruise is the song of Mary Lee, née Pfeiffer, and Thomas Cruise Mapother III. His mother was a special education teacher, and his father was an electrical engineer. Both of his parents were from Louisville, Kentucky. He is of English, Irish, and German ancestry, and has three sisters: Lee Anne, Cass, and Marian. After leaving his father, his mother remarried Jack South in 1978. Cruise’s father died of cancer in 1984.
Cruise has three children, two of whom are adopted. Cruise adopted two children with his second wife, Nicole Kidman. Cruise’s eldest child is Isabella Jane Kidman Cruise, who recently turned 30 on December 22, 2022. She lives in Croydon, United Kingdom, with her husband, IT consultant Max Parker. Cruise’s son, Connor Antony, will be 28 this coming January. Not much is known about Connor, but he did marry Silvia Zanchi in 2019. Finally, Tom’s youngest child, Suri is 16 and going on 17. Born in April 2006, Suri is his biological daughter with Katie Holmes.
2023 is going to be a good year for Tom Cruise and we can’t wait to see him in the upcoming Mission: Impossible movie! Do let us know in the comments what your favorite Tom Cruise role has been so far because for us, he played Maverick in Top Gun: Maverick definitely takes the cake!