Tom Cruise mother, special education teacher Mary Lee Pfeiffer, left his father Thomas Cruise Mapother III when he was just 12 years old, taking him and sister Lee Ann with her. He had attended eight elementary schools and three high schools in total. He had once aspired to become a Catholic priest when he attended a Franciscan seminary in Cincinnati.
Cruise suffered from dyslexia when he was a child, a reason, he claimed, that made his father lose patience with him often. The abuse from his father, who he called a "bully" and a "merchant of chaos," had made him learn not to trust some people. He dropped his father's name when he was 12 years old.
His first film role was in the 1981 film Endless Love starring Brooke Shields. His small role in the film had earned him a more considerably large part in the film Taps later in the year. He had starred in a couple of films before landing the role of Joel Goodsen in the 1983 film Risky Business, which boosted him to stardom. The scene where Cruise lip-synched the song Old Time Rock and Roll while in his underwear and white long sleeves had become an iconic moment in movie history.
Cruise had starred in several films but it was Top Gun, which opened in May 1986 and became the highest grossing film of the year, had become one of his most memorable films to date.
Cruise had been married three times. The first one was to actress Mimi Rogers, whom he married on May 9, 1987 and divorced on February 4, 1990. It was speculated that it was Rogers who introduced Cruise to the Scientology religion.
He married Australian Nicole Kidman on December 24, 1990. He met her on the set of their film Days of Thunder. They adopted two children together, Isabella Jane, born in 1992, and Connor Antony, born in 1995. The couple divorced on August 8, 2001. They separated just before their tenth wedding anniversary and when Kidman was three months pregnant. She had miscarried later on.
His marriage to former teen star Katie Holmes had raised eyebrows and promptly dropped his popularity rating. It was when he was still dating Holmes that Cruise had jumped on Oprah Winfrey's couch on her TV show to express his love for the younger actress. It became the subject of ridicules and failed the public's approval of the relationship, as Cruise is 16 years older than Holmes. She gave birth on April 18, 2006 to a daughter named Suri. They were married at a lavish ceremony in Italy on November 18, 2006.
Cruise is a passionate member of the Church of Scientology. He had claimed that his religion helped him overcome his dyslexia. In 2003, he became an active campaigner for their church. In 2005, he openly criticized Brooke Shields for using an anti-depressant drug to cure her postpartum depression. This led to an argument with The Today Show host Matt Lauer in June 2005, in which Cruise had laughed in Lauer's face while smugly telling him about his knowledge on the history of psychiatry. This had prompted Shields to strike back at Cruise, in which she said his comments were "irresponsible and dangerous." He had apologized to Shields in August 2006 but didn't change his opinion on anti-depressant drugs.
In January 2008, an biography of Cruise entitled "Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography" by Andrew Morton had emerged. The book, although disputed, is an attack on Cruise and the Church of Scientology.
