Tom Cruise biography

The testoterone-fueled action-romance, set against the backdrop of an elite naval flight school, became the highest grossing film of 1986.

Cruise followed the tremendous success of Top Gun with a string of both critically acclaimed and commercially successful films. Cruise first starred in The Color of Money (1986), with co-star Paul Newman, then went on to work with Dustin Hoffman on the hit film,

Rain Man (1988). His next role as Vietnam Vet Ron Kovic in the biopic, Born on the Fourth of July (1989), earned Cruise an Academy Award nomination and a Golden Globe for Best Actor.

Personal Life

Cruise married actress Mimi Rogers in 1987. It was through Rogers that the actor became a student of Scientology, the religion founded by writer L. Ron Hubbard. Cruise later credited the church with curing his dyslexia. But while Cruise's spiritual life flourished, his marriage was quickly dissolving. Rogers and Cruise divorced in 1990.

That same year, Cruise made the racecar drama Days of Thunder with Australian actress Nicole Kidman. Though the movie was unpopular among critics and fans alike, the two lead actors had real chemistry. On Christmas Eve in 1990, after a brief courtship, Cruise and Kidman married in Telluride, Colorado.

Hollywood's Leading Man

In 1992, Cruise proved once more that he could hold his own opposite a screen legend when he co-starred with Jack Nicholson in the military courtroom drama, A Few Good Men. The film grossed more than $15 million its first weekend, and earned Cruise a Golden Globe nomination. Over the next several years, Cruise made several more well-received movies, including The Firm (1993) and Interview with a Vampire (1994) co-starring Brad Pitt.

Next, Cruise hit the big screen with two huge hits—the $64 million blockbuster, Mission: Impossible (1996), which Cruise also produced, and the highly acclaimed Jerry McGuire (1996), directed by Cameron Crowe. For the latter, Cruise earned a second Academy Award nomination and Golden Globe for Best Actor.

Cruise and Kidman spent much of 1997 and 1998 in England shooting Eyes Wide Shut, an erotic thriller that would be director Stanley Kubrick's final film before his death in 1999. The movie was released in the summer of 1999 to mixed reviews. That same year, Cruise appeared in the ensemble film Magnolia. His performance in the movie as a self-confident sex guru earned him another Golden Globe award and an additional Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor.

Cruise then starred in the long-awaited smash hit Mission: Impossible 2 in 2000 alongside Anthony Hopkins, Thandie Newton, and Ving Rhames. In 2002, he starred in his second collaboration with director Cameron Crowe, Vanilla Sky, as well as Stephen Spielberg's Minority Report.

Cruise began 2003 with a trip to Australia to shoot the $100 million film, The Last Samurai. Then in 2005, he teamed up with Steven Spielberg again for the mega-hit, War of the Worlds

Jumping the Couch

Over the next several years, Cruise and Kidman found themselves fiercely defending the happiness and legitimacy of their marriage.