: ''For the inventor, see Tom Kruse.''
'''Tom Cruise''' (born '''Thomas Cruise Mapother IV''' on July 3, 1962) is an Academy Award-nominated, Golden Globe Award-winning American actor and film producer. He has starred in a number of top-grossing movies and remains one of the most successful movie stars in Hollywood.
Early life
Cruise was born to Thomas Mapother III and Mary Lee Pfeiffer in Syracuse, New York.
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0169455/news WENN, "Cruise's Family Tree Treat"]Cruise has German ancestry from his paternal great-grandparents, William Reibert and Charlotta Louise Voelker; and Welsh ancestry from his paternal great-great-grandfather, Dylan Henry Mapother, who emigrated from Flint, Wales to Louisville, Kentucky in 1850.
[http://www.genealogy.com/famousfolks/tomc/d0/i0000031.htm Ancestry of Tom Cruise: Fourth Generation] [http://www.bbc.co.uk/wales/iconsofwales/sites/content/pages/tom_cruise.shtml] His maternal ancestry is half Irish and half German (including Alsatian).
[http://worldconnect.rootsweb.com/cgi-bin/igm.cgi?op=PED&db=houston&id=I3330 Dreyfous-Kahrs-Thomas-Hamilton Family]Cruise had a transient existence as a child, his family residing in near-poverty, because Cruise's father refused to pay child support after his estrangement from the family when his son was eleven. Cities in which he lived included Ottawa, Ontario (where he attended Lisgar Collegiate Institute), Louisville, Kentucky, Winnetka, Illinois and Wayne, New Jersey. In all, Cruise attended eight elementary schools and three high schools. He briefly attended a Franciscan seminary in Cincinnati and aspired to become a Catholic priest. He eventually graduated from Glen Ridge High School in New Jersey.
It was recently discovered that Cruise had suffered from child abuse when he was younger. He stated that when something went wrong, his father came down hard on him. He told ''Parade Magazine'' that his father was "a bully and a coward" and "a merchant of chaos". Cruise said he learned early on that his father was - and, by extension, some people were - not to be trusted: "I knew from being around my father that not everyone means me well."
[http://www.cnn.com/2006/SHOWBIZ/Movies/04/06/people.cruise.ap/index.html CNN report about Parade Magazine article] Having gone through fifteen schools in twelve years, Cruise, who dropped his father's name at age twelve, was also subject to bullying at school.
Cruise started acting after being sidelined from his high school's wrestling team due to a knee injury. While injured, he successfully auditioned for a lead role in his high school's production of ''Guys and Dolls'' and decided to become an actor after his success in the role. Cruise graduated from high school in 1980.
Hollywood
Acting career
Cruise's first acting role came in 1981, when he had a small role in ''Endless Love'', a drama/romance film starring Brooke Shields. He had a much larger role in a substantially bigger film, ''
Taps'', starring alongside George C. Scott, Timothy
