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Biography
There's a popular Hollywood saying.
Question: Who can guarantee you a box-office smash? Answers: 1) Tom
Cruise 2) Tom Cruise 3) That's it. Just look at the figures. Mission:
Impossible - $180 million, A Few Good Men - $141 million, Rain Man -
$172 million, Top Gun - $176 million, Jerry Maguire - $158 million, The
Firm - $158 million, Mission: Impossible 2 - $215 million. These are
conservative estimates, the true money made worldwide from Cruise's
movies is infinitely higher.
But it's not just the money, there's
critical respect too. Oscars and Oscar nominations have rained down on
Cruise productions. Paul Newman, Dustin Hoffman, Cuba Gooding Jr, Jack
Nicholson, Cameron Crowe, Holly Hunter, Oliver Stone, Barry Levinson,
all of them have good reason to believe Tom Cruise is some kind of Oscar
talisman. Do well next to Cruise and you've a fine chance of being
short-listed.
Cruise's early life was so tough it's a bona fide miracle that he's come
so far. He was born Thomas Cruise Mapother IV in Syracuse, New Jersey on
the 3rd of July, 1962, to nomadic parents. His mother, Mary Lee Pfeiffer
from Louisiana, had married Thomas Cruise Mapother III, an electronics
engineer from the University of Kentucky, whose job with General
Electric took them all over. Daughter Lee Anne was born in Louisville,
then Marian, Tom and Cass (a third daughter) were born in Syracuse. Then
they moved to Ottawa, to Missouri, back to New Jersey, and back to
Louisville, before finally divorcing when Tom was 12 (his father would
soon die of cancer). Mary Lee took the kids to live at Taylorsville
Road, Kentucky, where life was one hell of a struggle.
Young Tom was titular Man Of The Family,
but they all had to work, Tom putting his newspaper delivery earnings
into the general coffers. At one point there was so little money that
Tom took a scholarship at the St Francis Seminary in Cincinnati where,
for a year, he studied for the priesthood and, more importantly, ate
properly. Eventually, Mary Lee married again; Jack South. There were
more moves - indeed, by the age of 14, Tom had attended 15 different
schools - but, eventually, they settled, Tom enrolling at Glen Ridge
High School, New Jersey. From here, he went straight into acting.
Cruise had actually first thought of
acting around the age of five. Mary Lee was a teacher with a keen
interest in amateur theatrics (his cousin William Mapother was an actor)
and Tom would be taken regularly to the cinema. He loved it, but the
constant movement made settling into anything next to impossible. Later
he would say "Nothing was quick enough in terms of life for
me". Tom, a dreamy, lonely child living much of the time in his own
interior world, was always the New Kid, forced to prove himself
endlessly, and this was made yet more problematic by both shyness and
dyslexia.
It's thought the latter was brought on by
teachers demanding he write with his right hand but, whatever the cause,
Tom found learning demanded a terrific effort as pages turned to
meaningless blocks of weird scribbles before his eyes. Constantly
challenged by his parents, making him exceptionally competitive, he was
desperate to fit in - more, to win. So he threw himself into sports -
wrestling, raquetball, ice hockey, everything. He wasn't particularly
gifted but his intensity and hyper-energy made him difficult to resist.
What eventually drew him to acting was an accident. Suffering a knee
injury while wrestling, it was suggested that he try his hand at school
theatre productions. Being Cruise, he threw himself in at the deep end,
with the musical Guys And Dolls (he'd soon also perform in Godspell),
and immediately began to pursue excellence in the field. Typically, he
gave himself a 10-year deadline to achieve success. At 18, he left Glen
Ridge and moved to New York, supporting himself by working as a bus-boy,
a porter in an apartment block and a table-cleaner at Mortimer's
restaurant. In the evenings he took drama classes, auditioning for TV
ads whenever possible. He looked good, he had that winning smile, but he
was never hired. Casting directors always described him as "too
intense". Feeding on hot dogs and rice, he lived, he now says
"like an animal in the jungle".
As yet, he had no connections, but he did have some advantages. Moving
from state to state, he'd found his need to fit in had caused him to
pick up the appropriate accent. He was always playing a role. Then there
was his charm. As the only son in the family, he had grown up around
women. Indeed, he remembers his sister Marian's friends coming round
when he was just 6 or 7, sitting him up on the kitchen sink and using
him for kissing practice. He says the first time he almost suffocated -
but it was fun. So he was easy around women, capable of turning on the
grace and charm (the very first example being his winning of Laurie
Hobbs at the Sacred Heart School in Louisville), and this confidence
served him well.
While in New York, Thomas Cruise Mapother
IV shortened his name to the far snappier Tom Cruise. He went to Los
Angeles to audition for TV roles (there's a famous clip of him trying
out with a very young Heather Locklear - neither got the part), but got
none. He did though sign with the Creative Artists Agency and got film
work. First was Endless Love, directed by Franco Zeffirelli, renowned
for Jesus Of Nazareth. Brooke Shields starred but Cruise, way down the
bill (with James Spader, also making his debut), had a foot on the
ladder. Or not, considering the film was so dismal.
Returning to New Jersey, he was surprised
to hear he had another audition, for a one-line part in Taps, the tale
of military academy students so loyal the fight to prevent its closure.
Where before Cruise's intensity had been a drawback, now it made him.
Director Harold Becker (who'd earlier made The Onion Field, and would
later helm Sea Of Love and Malice) was so impressed by his test he
lifted Cruise to third on the bill, as belligerent cadet Dick Shawn.
Holding his own alongside Timothy Hutton, Sean
Penn and even George C. Scott, Cruise was now headline material.
Next came Losin' It, about four kids trying to lose their virginity in
Tijuana (smooth Cruise gets an older, married woman), then the big one,
Risky Business. Here Cruise played a smart teenager who, his parents out
of town, gets tied up with a high-class prostitute and a bunch of shady
figures. Wisecracking, dancing in his undies and sporting those classic
Ray-Bans, he was a sensation (and he would, for a while, date his
co-star Rebecca DeMornay).
He could have settled for this, used that killer smile to become the
face of the go-getting, sharp-suited Eighties generation. Instead, he
chose to work with another legendary director, Francis Ford Coppola,
briefly joining the Brat Pack for The Outsiders. Then he starred in the
slow, testing All The Right Moves, about a High School football star
dreaming of scholarship and escape from his miserable Pennsylvania mill
town. He was clearly attempting to widen his scope, next taking an even
wilder shot with Ridley Scott's Legend, playing canny pixie Jack
opposite Tim Curry's magnificent clomping demon.
Now came the first huge hit, Top Gun, with Ridley Scott's brother Tony.
Here Cruise was Pete "Maverick" Mitchell, a slick and arrogant
fighter-pilot, extremely casual with the millions of dollars-worth of
hardware he's riding. Promoted with Berlin's Take My Breath Away, it was
a silly, macho, flag-waving monster of a hit (particularly amongst the
gay community, though that's seldom mentioned) but again Cruise was
intent upon growing as an actor, not simply as a star. Now he played
Vincent, the cocky pool-player who draws Paul Newman's Fast Eddie (first
seen in The Hustler) out of retirement in The Color of Money.
As a willing foil, Cruise helped win
Newman the Oscar, but Newman changed Cruise forever. A renowned worker
for charity, Newman raised his consciousness and got him interested in
car-racing (he drove for Newman's team and thus got the idea for his
later vehicle, Days Of Thunder). And, inadvertently, he got him married,
Cruise meeting actress Mimi Rogers (Someone To Watch Over Me, The Doors)
at Newman's Road Racing Classic Show in Georgia. Having dated Cher and
Melissa Gilbert, Cruise would be with Rogers (six years his senior) for
three years. Together they would serve on the board of the
environmentally concerned Earth Communications Office.
Having dared to play alongside Newman, now there was Dustin Hoffman, and
Hoffman in a show-stealing Oscar role to boot. But it should be noted
that Cruise, as Charlie Babbitt, a flash yuppie who discovers a less
superficial life with his retarded brother, was the one who made that
film. Hoffman needed someone onscreen to react to him, to lend him
humanity, to connect with the audience - and Cruise, his performance
ignored in the rush to praise Hoffman's, did it brilliantly. Then came
Cocktail. Director Roger Donaldson had just done the superior Kevin
Costner thriller No Way Out, the producers were expecting an update
of The Graduate; it turned out to be an empty-headed jumble (though
Cruise made an impressive tequila juggler).
Yet Cruise's trajectory was upwards, and now came Oliver Stone's Born On
The Fourth Of July (something of a cheat, that, as Cruise was actually
born on the 3rd). Here Cruise played real-life Vietnam
vet-turned-anti-war-activist Ron Kovic, a man physically destroyed yet
spiritually raised by the paralysis of his lower body. He won his first
Golden Globe and an Oscar nomination. He moved on to Days Of Thunder,
again with Tony Scott.
And his second wife. Cruise had come
across Nicole
Kidman at the premiere of her excellent Dead Calm. She amused him.
Now, starring together, she won him completely, and he starred with her
again in his next picture, Far And Away (directed by Ron Howard), about
Irish lovers battling for a decent life on the American frontier. For
Cruise, this tale was close to home as his great-great-grandfather,
Dillon Henry Mapother, had moved from southern Ireland to Louisville
back in 1850.
The movie was not a raging hit, but
Cruise was by now super-bankable. His presence made the fairly average
conspiracy flick The Firm into a smash. Still, he was trying to shake
his pretty-boy image, be seen as the "actor-artist" he
believed himself to be. He worked constantly at this. On Days Of Thunder
he was so intense the crew dubbed him Laserhead. On Far And Away, Ron
Howard noted that he actually ran to the toilet and back.
He is NEVER late, and demands the same
professionalism from his co-workers. So next he took on Interview With
The Vampire, as the murderous Lestat, drunk on power and immortality.
Fans of the book denounced this casting, as did its author Anne Rice
though, having seen the picture, she made an abrupt u-turn, claiming
Cruise's Lestat would be remembered like Olivier's Hamlet. His charm and
intensity had coupled well again.
Now it was massive hits all the way. Cruise - cool, smart and pumped -
made an excellent Ethan Hunt in Brian De Palma's Mission: Impossible.
Then came Cameron Crowe. Cruise knew him already - Crowe had written
Cruise's first ever cover feature, for Interview Magazine. Now a
director, Crowe was working on Jerry Maguire, about a sports agent
discovering his humanity while teetering on the brink of financial ruin.
Cruise was brilliant - harassed, arrogant, sweet and triumphant - and
again happily played second fiddle where necessary, to Cuba Gooding Jr
("Show me the money!"), Renee Zellweger ("You complete
me"), and even toddler Jonathan Lipnicki. Another mighty hit,
another Golden Globe, another Oscar nomination.
Now Cruise took the chance to work with another of the great directors.
Along with Kidman, he spent three years on Stanley Kubrick's slow,
ultra-considered Eyes Wide Shut. Sadly, the film was a little TOO
considered for most and, oddly, Cruise gained more respect and attention
for his far shorter role in Magnolia. As Frank TJ Mackey, a
rabble-rousing male therapist, he was tremendous - posing, cajoling,
demanding ("Respect the cock!"). And he was moving,
particularly beside his father's (Jason Robards) death-bed. Deservedly,
there was another Golden Globe, and another Oscar nomination - that
Michael Caine pipped him was nothing short of outrageous.
Mission: Impossible 2, with John Woo, was another mega-hit. Then it was
back to Crowe with Vanilla Sky, a "rock'n'roll" remake of the
Spanish weird-out Open Your Eyes - Cruise had bought the remake rights
after seeing the movie with production partner Paula Wagner, then got
Crowe involved. It's worth noting that Cruise was now such a massive
star that the film's poster was simply a picture of his head and
shoulders beside a list of words reading "Love, Hate, Dreams, Life,
Work, Play, Friendship, Sex". Completely meaningless, that list,
when it comes to explaining what the film was about, but it absolutely
did not matter. Everyone was only going to see Cruise anyway.
The movie featured Cruise as a New York
playboy, the inheritor of a publishing empire, in a bizarre love
triangle with Cameron
Diaz and Penelope
Cruz (herself the star of the original). Then there's a car accident
and everything goes mad - Cruise is so horrifically scarred he spends
the rest of the movie in a mask. It actually went mad for Cruise Cruz in
real life too. After the movie wrapped, the media went into
feeding-frenzy at the news that Cruise had split with Kidman after 10
years of marriage (they have two adopted children - Isabella and Connor)
and begun seeing Cruz.
Tom and Nicole tried to keep a lid on it,
but it was impossible, what with Cruise having to attend the premiere of
Kidman's The Others (directed by Amenabar, Cruise had produced the film
- no doubt as part of the Open Your Eyes/ Vanilla Sky deal). Of course,
everyone was interested in the splitting of Tom and Nicole's mighty
fortune, and fascinated when Kidman revealed that in March, 2001, one
month after Cruise filed for divorce, she had suffered a miscarriage.
Next came Minority Report, a sci-fi thriller from the pen of Philip K.
Dick (screenplay by Frank Darabont of Shawshank Redemption fame), about
future-cops who, with the aid of Pre-Cogs (weird, bald types who float
in big tanks and see the future) can arrest criminals before they commit
their crimes. Cruise played the head of Washington's Pre-Crime unit,
who's himself accused and pursued by rival Colin
Farrell. Adding Steven Spielberg to Tom's incredible list of
directors, it was hugely inventive stuff, action-packed but still
teeming with intelligence, Spielberg having got together some of the
deepest minds in America to help build his future-world. It cost over
$100 million yet, with Cruise attached (unlike Spielberg's relative
failure A:I), it still made money.
For his next project, Cruise would step back in time with The Last
Samurai. Here he was Nathan Algren, a US cavalryman and hero of the
American civil war, who's invited to modernise the army of the Emperor
of Japan, then under threat from the samurai warriors of a rebel leader.
He agrees but, captured by the enemy, he learns and comes to respect
their codes of honour (in return teaching their children baseball). It
was an interesting premise, and expertly filmed by Edward Zwick - after
Glory a veteran of major battle sequences - yet many found it a little
too close to Kevin
Costner's Dances With Wolves for comfort. As ever, Cruise drove the
film to success (receiving a Golden Globe nomination for his efforts),
promoting it with huge vigour. In the process, he became the first man
ever to appear on Marie Claire's front cover, and publicly sang Elvis
Presley's I Want You, I Need You, I Love You with Japanese Prime
Minister Junichiro Koizumi.
Cruise's next project would be on a far smaller scale, when he teamed up
with Michael Mann for Collateral. Here cab driver Jamie
Foxx played an LA cabbie who picks up a fare only to discover the
guy's a hit-man. This is Cruise, probably the world's most charming
assassin, who then forces Foxx to drive him around town as he carries
out his bloody work. Can Foxx out-wit this deadly fellow and perhaps
save himself and the final victim? The movie was yet another hit, proof
that Cruise could get away with playing a villain and further proof (if
any was needed) that he's a great guy to accompany onscreen, Foxx being
nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar.
With script and director problems
plaguing Mission Impossible 3, Cruise and Spielberg now brought forward
their plans to remake War Of The Worlds. This time ancient aliens have
buried three-legged machines in the ground and bring them to life by
hitting them with lightning bolts containing alien drivers. Cue death
rays, destruction, total chaos and some of the most amazing SFX in
history (check out the burning train or Cruise walking through a downed
aircraft) as an immature, divorced Cruise attempts to protect his
children by running, hiding and seeking a means of fighting back. A
hugely expensive production, budgeted at $132 million, it nevertheless
rewarded its makers handsomely, Cruise yet again breaking the $200
million barrier with ease.
Surely Cruise will soon direct himself. He did helm an episode of TV
series Fallen Angels back in 1993 and is a producer too, having worked
on both Mission: Impossibles, plus Without Limits (directed by Robert
Towne, writer of Chinatown, and The Firm, Days Of Thunder and the
Mission movies), Narc and The Others.
Of course, being the biggest movie star in the world, Cruise receives
attention of another kind. He's had to sue people for claiming he's gay,
one being "erotic wrestler" Chad Slater (AKA Kyle Bradford)
who went so far as to claim he'd had an affair with Cruise which had
ended his marriage to Kidman. June 2001 saw Cruise launch another $100
million suit against one Michael Davis who approached various news
services claiming he had a video of Cruise in a homosexual
relationship.
Cruise often sues when he feels lies are
being told and his reputation damaged. He gives all proceeds to charity
- now taking a big percentage of his film's grosses (he made $75 million
from M:I2), he hardly needs the money. He also gets gyp for his
membership of the Church of Scientology, which he joined in 1990,
despite his stated opinion that it's aided him enormously, and even
helped clear up his dyslexia.
Always big news in the tabloids, Cruise would hit new heights in 2005
when it was announced that, having split from Penelope
Cruz, he was dating actress Katie
Holmes, 16 years his junior. Many publicly asserted that it was a
publicity stunt designed to hype their oncoming blockbusters War Of The
Worlds and Batman Begins. Many more would agree once Cruise had appeared
on the Oprah Winfrey Show, bouncing up and down on the sofa and loudly
declaring his love. But June would see Cruise propose to Holmes on the
Eiffel Tower and October would bring an announcement that she was
pregnant. Still, though, the unpleasant gossip would not stop, most of
the stories characterising Holmes as a poor naive girl who, having
worshipped Cruise as a little girl, was now being drawn into Scientology
despite her Catholic beliefs.
Cruise had occasionally involved himself
in politics - in 2000 he backed Hillary Clinton's Senate campaign - but
now he became far more outspoken. The press campaign for War Of The
Worlds often became very heated, with Cruise defending his belief in
Scientology, aggressively attacking the absurdly common diagnosis of ADD
and willy-nilly prescription of the likes of Ritalin, then rubbishing
psychology, psychiatry and the use of anti-depressants (statements that
drew him into a very public war of words with, among others, the actress
Brooke Shields). Though some of his points were good, particularly on
the subject of Ritalin, he would be quite badly shown up when reporters
began to research some of his more outrageous claims about the history
of psychiatry and drugs.
But, though away from the industry Cruise does like to scuba-dive and
sky-dive and also pilots aircraft, including a Pitts Special S-2B stunt
plane, mostly it's about work. Cruise resents being thought of as a
beefcake actor or a pretty-boy maker of pulp entertainment. He did,
after all, turn down Top Gun 2, despite a promised 500% wage rise, made
Born On The Fourth Of July for scale (plus percentage) and took no
upfront fee for The Last Samurai. He's tested himself against the best
for so long, he's been involved in so many award-winning projects, he
feels he deserves better. And he does.~ Dominic Wills
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