Thomas Cruise Mapother IV (; born July 3, 1962), better known by his
screen name Tom Cruise, is an
American actor and
film producer.
Forbes magazine ranked him as the world's most powerful celebrity in 2006.
He has been nominated for three
Academy Awards and won three
Golden Globe Awards. His first leading role was the 1983 film
Risky Business , which has been described as "A Generation-X classic, and a career-maker" for the actor.
After playing the role of a heroic naval pilot in the popular and financially successful 1986 film
Top Gun, Cruise continued in this vein, playing a secret agent in a series of
Mission: Impossible action films in the 1990s and 2000s. In addition to these heroic roles, he also played other roles, such as the
misogynistic male guru in
Magnolia (1999) and a cool and calculating sociopathic hitman in the
Michael Mann crime-thriller film
Collateral (2004).
Economist
Edward Jay Epstein argues that Cruise is one of the few producers (the others being
George Lucas,
Steven Spielberg and
Jerry Bruckheimer) who are able to guarantee the success of a billion-dollar movie franchise. Since 2005, Cruise and Paula Wagner have been in charge of the
United Artists film studio,
with Cruise as producer and star and Wagner as the chief executive. Cruise is also known for his support of and adherence to the
Church of Scientology.
[ Scientology News: Tom Cruise Tops List of Scientology Celebrities at Celebrity Centre International 34th Anniversary Church of Scientology; 2006; Accessed March 23, 2007]
Family and early life
Cruise was born in
Syracuse, New York,
the son of Mary Lee (
née Pfeiffer), a special education teacher, and Thomas Cruise Mapother III, an electrical engineer.
Cruise has
German and Colonial
English ancestry from his paternal great-grandparents, William Reibert and Charlotte Louise Voelker; and purportedly
Welsh ancestry from his paternal great-great-grandfather, Dylan Henry Mapother, who emigrated from
Flint,
Wales, to
Louisville, Kentucky, in 1850.
[Icons Of Wales - Tom Cruise] His oldest sister, Lee Anne, was born in Louisville. His older sister Marian was born in Syracuse, as were Tom and his younger sister, Cass.
[Tom Cruise Biography at Tiscali.co.uk]
