Cruise began acting in the early 1980s and made his breakthrough with leading roles in Risky Business (1983) and Top Gun (1986), the latter earning him a reputation as a sex symbol. Critical acclaim came with his roles in the dramas The Color of Money (1986), Rain Man (1988), and Born on the Fourth of July (1989).
For his portrayal of Ron Kovic in the latter, he won a Golden Globe Award and was nominated 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 (1992), the thriller The Firm (1993), the horror film Interview with the Vampire (1994), and the sports comedy-drama Jerry Maguire (1996); 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 (1999) earned him another Golden Globe Award and 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 (1996โ2025). His other films in the genre include Vanilla Sky (2001), Minority Report (2002), The Last Samurai (2003), Collateral (2004), War of the Worlds (2005), Knight and Day (2010), Jack Reacher (2012), Oblivion (2013), Edge of Tomorrow (2014), and Top Gun: Maverick (2022).
Cruise holds the Guinness World Record for the most consecutive $100 million-grossing movies, with eleven such 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 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.
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 and education
Cruise was born on July 3, 1962, in Syracuse, New York, to electrical engineer Thomas Cruise Mapother III (1934โ1984) and special education teacher Mary Lee (nรฉe Pfeiffer; 1936โ2017). His parents were both from Louisville, Kentucky, and had English, German, and Irish ancestry. Cruise has two older sisters, Lee Anne and Marian, and a younger sister, Cass. One of his cousins, William Mapother, is also an actor and has appeared alongside Cruise in five films.
Cruise grew up in near poverty and had a Catholic upbringing. He later called his father "a merchant of chaos", a "bully", and a "coward" who beat his children: "[My father] was the kind of person where, if something goes wrong, they kick you. It was a great lesson in my lifeโhow 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. He 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, but 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 he impressed director Harold Becker. He next won the role of Steve Randle in Francis Ford Coppola's 1983 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. Also in 1983, he appeared in All the Right Moves and Risky Business, which has been called "a Generation X classic, and a career maker for Tom Cruise." He 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 (1986), 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 panned by 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 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 โ 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 (1990) and Far and Away (1992), both of which co-starred then-wife Nicole Kidman as his love interest, followed by the legal thriller The Firm, a critical and commercial success. In 1994, Cruise starred with Brad Pitt, Antonio Banderas, and Christian Slater in Neil Jordan's Interview with the Vampire, a gothic drama/horror film based on Anne Rice's best-selling novel.
The film was well-received, although Rice initially criticized the casting of Cruise, as Julian Sands was her first choice. Upon seeing the film, she paid $7,740 (equivalent to $16,813 in 2025) for a two-page ad in Daily Variety praising his performance and apologizing for her 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, writing, "Tom Cruise has found the perfect superhero character on which to graft his breathlessly gung-ho screen personality." The same year, Cruise had 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 $273 million worldwide against its $50 million budget.
In 1999, Cruise co-starred with Kidman in Stanley Kubrick's erotic and psychological drama film Eyes Wide Shut. Peter Bradshaw of The Guardian praised both of their performances, writing, "Cruise in particular lays himself open in that fiercely committed way that he tries everything as an actor". Also in 1999, Cruise took a rare supporting role, as 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 animalโhe's devastating." For his performance he received another Golden Globe and nomination for an Academy Award.
2000s: Established career
In 2000, Cruise returned as Ethan Hunt in the second installment of the Mission: Impossible films, Mission: Impossible 2. The film was helmed by Hong Kong director John Woo and branded with his gun fu style; it continued the series' success at the box office, taking in $547 million worldwide.
Unlike its predecessor, it was the highest-grossing film of the year but had a mixed critical reception. Cruise received an MTV Movie Award for Best Male Performance for the film. His next five films were major critical and commercial successes. The next year, Cruise starred in the romantic thriller Vanilla Sky with Cameron Diaz and Penรฉlope Cruz.
In 2002, he starred in the dystopian science fiction action film Minority Report, directed by Steven Spielberg and based on the short story by Philip K. Dick. It has been included on lists of the greatest science fiction films of all time.
In 2003, he starred in Edward Zwick's period action drama The Last Samurai, for which he received a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor in a Motion Picture โ Drama. In 2004, Cruise received critical acclaim for his performance as Vincent in Collateral. The critical consensus reads, "Driven by director Michael Mann's trademark visuals and a lean, villainous performance from Tom Cruise, Collateral is a stylish and compelling noir thriller." In 2005, Cruise worked with Spielberg again in War of the Worlds, a loose adaptation of H.
G. Wells's novel of the same name, which was the year's fourth highest-grossing film, at $591.4 million worldwide. Also in 2005, he was a nominee for the People's Choice Award for Favorite Male Movie Star and won the MTV Generation Award. Cruise was nominated for seven Saturn Awards between 2002 and 2009, winning once. Nine of the ten films he starred in during the decade made more than $100 million at the box office.
In 2006, he returned to his role as Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible III. The film was more positively received by critics than the previous films in the series and grossed nearly $400 million at the box office. In 2007, Cruise took a supporting role for the second time in Lions for Lambs, a commercial disappointment.
This was followed by an appearance as Les Grossman in the 2008 comedy Tropic Thunder with Ben Stiller, Jack Black, and Robert Downey Jr. The performance earned Cruise a Golden Globe nomination. Cruise played the central role in the historical thriller Valkyrie, released on December 25, 2008, to box-office success.
2010s: Action star
In March 2010, Cruise completed filming the action-comedy Knight and Day, in which he re-teamed with Cameron Diaz; the film was released on June 23, 2010. On February 9, 2010, Cruise confirmed that he would star in Mission: Impossible โ Ghost Protocol, the fourth installment in the series. It was released in December 2011 to high critical acclaim and box-office success. Unadjusted for ticket price inflation, it was Cruise's biggest commercial success to that date.
On May 6, 2011, Cruise received a humanitarian award from the Simon Wiesenthal Center and its Museum of Tolerance for his work as a dedicated philanthropist. In mid-2011, Cruise started shooting Rock of Ages, in which he plays the fictional character Stacee Jaxx. The film was released in June 2012 and was a rare box-office misstep for Cruise, but he received positive reviews, with Variety's film critic Justin Chang writing, "Channeling the likes of Axl Rose and Keith Richards with his tattoos, heavy furs and even heavier eyeshadow, Cruise clearly relishes the opportunity to play against type even as he sends up his world's-biggest-movie-star identity, displaying a cock-of-the-rock strut that viewers haven't seen since his turn in Magnolia."
Cruise starred as Jack Reacher in the film adaptation of British author Lee Child's 2005 novel One Shot. The film was released on December 21, 2012. It met with positive reviews from critics and was a box-office success, grossing $217 million worldwide. In 2013, he starred in the science fiction film Oblivion based on director Joseph Kosinski's graphic novel of the same name.
The film met with mixed reviews and grossed $286 million worldwide. It also starred Morgan Freeman and Olga Kurylenko. In 2014, Cruise starred in the science fiction-action film Edge of Tomorrow, which received positive reviews and grossed more than $370 million.
In 2015, Cruise returned as Ethan Hunt in the fifth installment of the Mission: Impossible series, Mission: Impossible โ Rogue Nation, which he also produced. Returning cast members included Simon Pegg as Benji and Jeremy Renner as William Brandt. Christopher McQuarrie directed. The film earned high critical acclaim and was a commercial success.
Cruise starred in the 2017 reboot of Boris Karloff's 1932 horror movie The Mummy. The new film, also titled The Mummy, received poor reviews and disappointed at the box office, though still grossing more than $400 million. In 2018, Cruise again reprised Ethan Hunt, in the sixth film in his franchise, Mission: Impossible โ Fallout.
The film was more positively received by critics than the previous films in the series and grossed more than $791 million at the box office. Unadjusted for ticket price inflation, it was Cruise's biggest commercial success to date.
2020s: Franchise films
In May 2020, it was reported that Cruise will star in and produce a movie shot in outer space. Doug Liman will direct, write, and co-produce. Both will fly to the International Space Station as part of a future Axiom Space mission in a SpaceX Dragon 2 spacecraft. In May 2021, Cruise protested the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (HFPA) by returning all three of his Golden Globe Awards in light of controversy surrounding the HFPA, particularly its lack of diversity, specifically no black members, and ethical questions related to financial benefits to some of its members.
In 2022, Cruise reprised his role as Pete "Maverick" Mitchell in Top Gun: Maverick, a film he also produced. The film premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, where Cruise received an Honorary Palme d'Or. It was released to widespread critical praise, with many reviewers deeming it superior to its predecessor. The film broke several box-office records, earning more than $1 billion and becoming the highest-grossing film of Cruise's career.
Cruise earned $100 million for the film, when combining ticket sales, his salary, and his cut of home entertainment rentals and streaming revenues.
