kay,
let's face it, if you could trade places with anybody for one day, who
wouldn't want to be Tom Cruise??!!
He's one of the best-looking men on the planet (so he's a little short,
but work with me here), he's hotter than Atlanta in July, he's worked with
nearly every top-name director, he commands $20 million a picture and he's
got legions of fans the world over.For a man with all that going for him, a very public figure who by all accounts is truly larger than life, Cruise effortlessly projects an image of being a regular guy. Okay, a regular, extremely rich, extremely handsome, extremely recognizable guy, but a regular guy nonetheless. From coming to the aid of a victim of a hit and run accident in Los Angeles in 1996, to rescuing a family stranded at sea when their boat caught fire, to lifting a young boy to safety to
By all accounts Cruise is a loving and devoted father to his two adopted children Connor and Isabella, and prior to
Kidman. Their divorce was quick, squashing any opportunity for a long drawn-out battle splashed in the tabloids.
This month Cruise reunites with director Cameron Crowe (Jerry Maguire) in Vanilla Sky, an American adaptation of the Spanish film Abre Los Ojos. Cruise stars opposite his new girlfriend, Spanish beauty Penélope Cruz. The two made their first public appearance together at the premiere of her film Captain Corelli's Mandolin earlier this year.
Born Thomas Cruise Mapother IV on July 3, 1962 in Syracuse, NY, Cruise attended 15 different schools growing up, due to his parent's nomadic lifestyle. When he was 12, Cruise's parents divorced and his mother ended up working three jobs to support the family. In the years that followed, Cruise's relationship with his father deteriorated and after several years of not speaking, they reconciled only a short time before his father succumbed to cancer in 1984.
The only boy of four children, growing up in a household of women undoubtedly contributed to Cruise's ability to charm them later in life. After a brief stint in a Franciscan seminary in his early teens, Cruise attended Glen Ridge High School in New Jersey during which time he was active in both soccer and wrestling. Cruise considered pursuing a career or at the very least a college scholarship in sports, but had to quit due to a knee injury. With sports out of the picture, Cruise took an interest in his high school drama club, got bitten by the acting bug and went on to play Nathan Detroit in a school production of Guys and Dolls.
In his senior year, Cruise dropped out of high school entirely to pursue
acting full-time. He attended drama classes in New York and auditioned for
a variety of TV commercials. To his dismay, his efforts were in vain, that
is until he landed a small (as in, blink and you miss him) role in the
1981 movie Endless Love starring Brooke
Shields. His next role, in Taps, was to have consisted of only
one line, but director Harold Becker
was so impressed with Cruise's performance that he offered him the third
biggest role in the movie. Later that year Cruise starred in the quickly
forgotten teen sex comedy Losin' It, directed by then up-and-coming
director Curtis Hanson (L.A.
Confidential, Wonder Boys).In 1983, Cruise was cast alongside Matt Dillon, Patrick Swayze and Rob Lowe in the gritty ensemble drama The Outsiders from director Francis Ford Coppola. The Outsiders brought Cruise some attention, but it wasn't until his ground-breaking, Ray-ban donning, tighty-whitey wearing performance in Risky Business later that year that Cruise really hit his stride. Follow-up roles in less successful films such as All the Right Moves and Legend did little to harm his popularity. Having worked with Ridley Scott (one half of the Scott family Dynamic Director duo) in Legend, Cruise went on to work with Ridley's brother, Tony, in the 1986 testosterone-infused action flick Top Gun and followed it up with his role as a cool (but not cooler than Paul Newman) hustler in The Color of Money, directed by Martin Scorsese.
He revved up his career to full throttle by reuniting with director Tony Scott in the Simpson/Bruckheimer produced racing flick Days of Thunder. It was on the set of that film that Cruise met Kidman, who would later become his second wife (Cruise was briefly married to actress Mimi Rogers in the late '80s). He continued his stream of successful movies working with nearly every A-list director in the business. The failure of Cruise's 1992 big budget period drama Far and Away, in which he starred opposite his wife and under the direction of Ron Howard, proved to be a disappointment but did little to diminish Cruise's box office bankability.
Two years later, in what proved to be a very lucrative maneuver, Cruise turned down any upfront money in exchange for a 30 percent of the gross in back-end deal which netted him an estimated $75 million for his producing and acting duties in the Brian dePalma helmed Mission: Impossible. Later that year Cruise had us at "Hello" with his performance as a jaded sports agent who discovers what's really important in life with the help of single mother Renée Zellweger in Cameron Crowe's Jerry Maguire. In Eyes Wide Shut Cruise and then wife Kidman fulfilled a life-long ambition to work with acclaimed and controversial director Stanley Kubrick. Sadly, Kubrick passed away shortly before the film was released.
Early next year, Cruise will star in Minority Report, his collaboration with Steven Spielberg. He will take the early part of 2002 off and then in June will begin filming Cold Mountain, the much anticipated project from acclaimed writer/director Anthony Minghella (The English Patient). Adapted from the award-winning novel of the same name, Cold Mountain tells the story of a badly wounded Confederate soldier who abandons his squad to make the long journey home to North Carolina to see his beloved wife, Ada. Rumor has it that Renée Zellweger is in line for the role. Loosely based on Homer's The Odyssey (also the inspiration for last year's O Brother, Where Art Thou?), Hollywood insiders are already predicting that Cold Mountain could be the film that finally wins Cruise his Oscar gold.
An avid skydiver, scuba-diver and pilot, Cruise has landed on People Magazine's "Most Beautiful" list not once but three times and was named "Sexiest Man Alive" in 1990. Love him or hate him, you have to admit it would be cool to be him, even if it was just for one day.
- Amy Ferguson