TOM CURISE

TOM CRUISE GLOBAL MEGASTAR

IF there’s one thing that global megastar Tom Cruise is good at it’s winning new friends. And he certainly did that across the UK during 2021.

Cruise, unbelievably now 59 but with enviable youthful looks and the energy of a 25 year-old, was here making the seventh film in the Mission: Impossible franchise.

As a result, he popped up filming in various unlikely places including Birmingham, Yorkshire and Derbyshire and was spotted bringing his stardust to Wimbledon, Silverstone Grand Prix and Wembley Stadium for the Euro 2020 final.

All of which proved a delight for his many UK fans and showed yet again that Cruise is one of the film world’s most popular – and accessible – actors.

Acting certainly wasn’t the first choice for the young Thomas Cruise Mapother IV growing up in Syracuse, New York. At 14, he was a student in a Franciscan seminary with an ambition to join the priesthood. He was the only son of four children of nomadic parents. As a result, the youngster spent his boyhood always on the move and by the age of 14 he had attended 15 different schools in the US and Canada.

He finally settled in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, with his mother and her new husband and pretty soon abandoned plans to become a priest, dropped out of school and at 18 was headed for New York and a possible acting career.

The catalyst, he later recalled was “when I saw Akira Kurosawa’s film Seven Samurai.

“After about 30 seconds, I realized that this was not just a cultural thing, it was universal.

“Years later, I read Bushido. It talked about many things that I strive for in my own life: loyalty, compassion, the idea of looking back on your life and taking responsibility for everything you’ve ever done.

“I’m fascinated by the Samurai and the Samurai code – it’s one of the main reasons I wanted to make The Last Samurai (2003).”

Tom Cruise, as he then became, made his film debut in Endless Love (1981) and, from early on, that star quality was plainly evident to both female and male audiences.

Within five years, the young man with the billion dollar smile was starring in some of the most successful films of the 1980s including Top Gun, The Color of Money, Rain Man and Born on the Fourth of July.

Unsurprisingly, by the 1990s, he was one of the highest paid actors in the world, earning an average 15 million dollars a picture.

The hits continued coming: Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994), the first Mission: Impossible (1996) and Jerry Maguire that same year.

He received an Academy Award Nomination for Best Actor in Jerry Maguire and many Cruise fans still think it was one of his best films.

Mission: Impossible became his biggest franchise, however, earning him a total of 3 billion dollars worldwide and counting.

As an actor, Cruise specialises in likeable, laidback, intelligent characters and is intensely believable onscreen. Not content with being a highly successful actor, he has replicated much of this in producing films including the Mission: Impossible titles.

His work has not only brought him an extremely healthy bank balance but also a raft of awards – from Best Dressed Male Movie Star to one of the Most Beautiful People in the World. He also ranks highly among the top box-office stars over the past couple of decades.

However, he is pragmatic about such conspicuous recognition.

“Awards are wonderful,” he is reported as saying. “I’ve been nominated many times and I’ve won many awards. But my journey is not towards that. If it happens, it will be a blast. If it doesn’t it’s still been a blast.”

What has always endeared Cruise to the filmgoing public, however, has been the knowledge that he has always performed many of his own daredevil film stunts.

The latest Mission: Impossible was no different and shots of Cruise hanging out of trains and planes became regular media headline fodder during the year.

Needless to say, he has also acquired a number of injuries doing these as well!

He enjoys skydiving, scuba diving and piloting his Pitts Special S-28 stunt plane. Cruise is not only remarkably fit for any age but relishes the kind of running and throwing himself around that is the staple fare of his action movies.

He is believable because he is actually doing it!

Cruise has been married three times. In 1987 to Mimi Rogers, in 1990 to Nicole Kidman (whom he met when they starred in Days of Thunder) and to Katie Holmes in 2006. He has three children Isabella Jane, Suri and Connor.

He is quite rightly considered being far from a one-dimensional character and renounced his devout Catholic beliefs in 1990 to embrace the Church of Scientology.

When he worked with Paul Newman on The Color of Money, he enjoyed plenty of conversations with the politically active actor.

This resulting consciousness-raising affected Cruise and he countered the jingoistic tone of Top Gun by choosing a film with a strong anti-war tonewith Born on the Fourth of July (1989).

He is obviously an actor who considers each role carefully. On his lead role in Jack Reacher (2012), he commented; “Reacher is such a great character. He doesn’t have a cell phone, he doesn’t have email. He’s off the grid. He pays for things in cash.

“People look at things through the prism of the colours of their life but Jack Reacher does things the way we want to sometimes. In that sense, he’s sort of Dirty Harry, a James Bond, a Josey Wales.”

Cruise’s work ethic and attention to detail are legendary. For the film Eyes Wide Shut, he was required to do 95 takes of just walking through a door.

He sums up his work philosophy: “The thing about filmmaking is I give it everything, that’s why I work so hard.