Cruise, Tom (1962– )

Hollywood star Tom Cruise is photographed here at the Broadway opening on 13 December 1998 of the play The Blue Room, which starred his wife, Nicole Kidman. The last film of US director Stanley Kubrick, Eyes Wide Shut, starred both Cruise and Kidman.

US film actor and producer. One of Hollywood's biggest box-office attractions of the late 1980s and 1990s, he has starred in a string of blockbuster action films, such as Top Gun (1986) and Mission: Impossible (1996). He also honed his craft with more dramatic roles, such as in Stanley Kubrick's haunting drama Eyes Wide Shut (opposite his then wife, Nicole Kidman), the dark drama Magnolia (both 1999), and the historical drama The Last Samurai (2003).

His clean-cut good looks earned him a succession of teen roles in the early 1980s, including his career-launching role as high school senior in the coming-of-age comedy Risky Business (1983), but he proved his dramatic mettle against Paul Newman in The Color of Money (1986). Other films include the bittersweet drama Rain Man (1988), the Vietnam War epic Born on the Fourth of July (1989), the action drama Days of Thunder (1990), the crime thriller A Few Good Men (1992), and the comedy Jerry McGuire (1996). He returned to the thriller genre in the early 2000s with films such as Vanilla Sky (2001), Minority Report (2002), Collateral (2004), and Mission: Impossible sequels (2000 and 2006).

His popularity declined in the mid-2000s after outbursts against psychiatry, based on his beliefs in the Church of Scientology. He married fellow actor Katie Holmes in 2006, and he and his producing partner Paula Wagner became heads of the United Artists film studio in 2007.

He was born in Syracuse, New York, but moved several times in the USA and Canada during his childhood. He considered a career in wrestling until sidelined by a knee injury, and enrolled in a Franciscan seminary for a year at age 14 with plans of becoming a priest. He began acting during high school and moved to New York City at age 18 to pursue his acting career.