Tom Cruise was born on July 3, 1962 in Syracuse,
New York. He is 35. He was raised by his mother afterr she and his father
divorced. After a peripatetic childhood in which he reportedly attended
a dozen schools by age 12, Cruise turned to acting in high school after
a knee injury derailed his wrestling ambitions. Energized by landing the
role of Nathan Detroit in his high school production of Guys and Dolls,
he dropped out in his senior year to pursue an acting career.
By 1981, Cruise was in Los Angeles where he met
Paula Wagner, then an agent at Creative Artists Agency, who would subsequently
guide his film areer.He made his feature debut in a small role in Franco
Zeffirelli's notorious Brooke hields-starrer Endless Love, and gained attention
in a showy supporting role as an increasingly lunatic cadet in Taps.
Cool! Tom Cruise!
Cruise gained celebrity in the superior teenn sex satire
Risky Business (1983). As an anxious, affluent, suburban teen poised precariously
on the brink of young adulthood, Cruise created a reasonant protagonist
for young Reagan-era audiences. He even put on some extra pounds to emphasize
the softness and vulnerability of the character as he flirts with illicit
capitalism. In a star-making scene, Cruise, clad in a button-down shirt,
Jockey briefs, and cool shades, plays air guitar and dances wildly to Bob
Seger's anthem,"Old Time Rock'n'Roll." This celebrated sequence provided
a key to the actor's subsequent mega-success: he was an attractive but
fairly regular guy to whom audiences could easily relate. Intriguingly,
the part also showcased Cruise's magnetic sexual appeal much more effectively
than his subsequent screen roles.
Wow!
Tom Cruise!
Cruise performed well in a more naturalistic mode in
All the Right Moves (1983), a sober high school football drama that fared
modestly at the box office. He next grew his hair long and made the wrong
move with Ridley Scott's colossal fantasy flop, Lengend (1985). Cruise
consolidated his serious dramatic credentials with Barry Levinson's Rain
Man (1988), where he more than held his own opposite overbearing Oscar-winner
Dustin Hoffman. Oliver Stone's Born on the Fourth of July (1989) earned
him a Best Actor Oscar nomination for his hard-hitting portrayal of anti-war
activist Ron Kovic.
Cruise stumbled a bit with the critically
and commercially disappointing Far and Away (1992), a goofy period romance
co-starring his wife Nicole Kidman (whom he married in 1990 after they
worked together in Days of Thunder). He recovered with a highly popular
court- martial drama, A Few Good Men (1992), where in his successfully
confronted an iconic Jack Nicholson. He played a lawyer again in the thriller
The Firm (1993) with comparably successfully results at the box office.
Tom Cruise and his wife (Nicole Kidman)
Cruise was all but omnipresent in the media as he
aggressively promoted his feature producing debut, the post-Cold War espionage
movie, Mission Impossible (1996). Based on the fondly rememvered 60's TV
show, the project had languished in various development hells before Cruise
got involved. This marked the inaugural project for Cruise/ Wagner Productions,
the ocmpany the actor formed with his one-time agent in 1992. Rumors abounded
about Cruise clashing with director Brian De Palma over budgetary and story
matters.
Tom
Cruise (Joseph Donnelly) in "Far and Away"
Nonetheless, depite international location shooting,
high-tech stunts, compute -generated visual effects, and last-minute re-writes
by a stellar assortment of scripter, Mission: Impossible came in on time
and under budget at approximately $67 million. (Cruise deferred his $20
million salary.) The reviews were mixed- some treated it as an extravagant
but cold vanity production with a confused storyline but most admired the
cinematic technique. As anticipated, business was brisk.
Now a producer as well as an actor, Cruise had numerous
projects in various stages of development at the time of the release of
his summer blockbuster. Jerry Maguire (1996), in which he played a venal
sports agent, was lensing for a Christmas release. Cruise also annouonced
tthat he and Kidman were starting preproduction on legendary writer-director
Stanley Kubrick's long-awaited return to feature filmmaking, Eyes Wide
Shut (scheduled to begin lensing in the fall of 1996). This collaboration
would mark another milestone in Cruise's quest to be taken seriously as
an artist and not just another pretty face with major commercial
clout.
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