Tom Cruise
Tom Cruise was born on July 3, 1962in Syracuse, New York, the son of Mary Lee (née Pfeiffer), a special education teacher, and Thomas Cruise Mapother III, an electrical engineer. Although Cruise’s paternal surname (Mapother) is Welsh, it appears that his paternal great-grandfather, Thomas O’Mara, was of Irish ancestry and adopted his stepfather’s surname, becoming the first Thomas Cruise Mapother. He also has German and English ancestry from his paternal great-grandparents, William Reibert and Charlotte Louise Voelker, and German ancestry through his mother. Tom Cruise’s oldest sister, Lee Anne, was born in Louisville. His older sister Marian was born in Syracuse, as were Tom and his younger sister, Cass.
Cruise attended Robert Hopkins Public school for grades three, four, and five. The Mapother family then moved to the suburb of Beacon Hill, in Ottawa, Ontario, so Cruise’s father could take a position as a defence consultant with the Canadian Armed Forces. There, Cruise completed grade six at Henry Munro Middle School, part of the Carleton Board of Education, where he was active in athletics, playing floor hockey almost every night, showing himself to be a ruthless player, eventually chipping his front tooth. In the game “British Bull Dog”, he then lost his newly capped tooth and hurt his knee. Henry Munro was also where Cruise became involved in drama, under the tutelage of George Steinburg. The first play he participated in was called IT, in which Cruise won the co-lead with Michael de Waal, one playing “Evil”, the other playing “Good.” The play met much acclaim, and toured with five other classmates to various schools around the Ottawa area, even being filmed at the local Ottawa TV station.
The two were also singled out for a version of Jesus Christ Superstar, as well as a Marcel Marceau-type act. It was at this point that Mary Lee Mapother helped foster her son’s acting aspirations: when the religious overtones of the former caused concern for school principal Jim Brown, Cruise’s mother convinced him that the play should proceed, and she founded the Gloucester Players, a theatrical troupe where Cruise and some of the boys in Steinburg’s class acted.
Cruise married Mimi Rogers on May 9, 1987; they divorced on February 4, 1990. Rogers is generally believed to have introduced Cruise to Scientology.
Cruise met Nicole Kidman on the set of their film Days of Thunder. The couple married on December 24, 1990. He and Kidman adopted two children, Isabella Jane (b. December 22, 1992) and Connor Antony (b. January 17, 1995). They separated in February 2001 when Kidman was three months pregnant; she later miscarried.
Cruise was next romantically linked with Penélope Cruz, the lead actress in his film Vanilla Sky. After a three-year relationship, in March 2004, Cruise announced that their relationship had ended in January.
