How Tom Cruise became one of the best paid Hollywood stars


A handsome young actor with a devastating smile, he became one of the hottest stars of the late 1980s. A combination of boyish charm and sexuality makes him particularly popular with women, and his cool, macho style has also given him a sizable male audience. Born Thomas Cruise Mapother IV, he was the third of four children of what became a broken home when he was 11 years old. His mother, an amateur actress, held the family together for five years before she finally remarried.

Tom Cruise was initially a poor student due to dyslexia. To compensate for his poor showing in class, he was active in sports. Having suffered an injury while in high school and not knowing what to do with his time while he recuperated, he was talked into auditioning for his high school production of Guys and Dolls. Cast as Nathan Detroit in the musical, he was immediately hooked on acting. He kicked around New York, taking any work he could get to hone his raw talent until he was given a small part in Endless Love (1981). He was given a small role that same year in Taps, but he was so powerful that the early footage was scrapped and he was given another, bigger part. It was his first important film.

1983 proved to be a banner year for Tom Cruise, who appeared in four films; three of which, however, went nowhere - All the Right Moves, Losin' It, and The Outsiders. His fourth film, Risky Business, was the sleeper hit of the year and featured his famous unabashed dance number in his underwear. Seeming to disappear after his initial success, he surfaced again in 1986, starring in the $30 million fantasy movie Legend - a movie that became a monumental bust at the box office. Had he not already filmed what became that year's biggest-grossing movie, Top Gun, Tom Cruise's career might have been severely crippled. Instead, the actor emerged as a major movie star with the clout that accompanies a $150-milliongrossing film.

Tom Cruise capitalized on his success by costarring with PAUL NEWMAN in The Color of Money (1987), playing a young pool player with talent to burn but who needs to learn self-control. It was a formula that recalled Top Gun and was repeated in Cocktail (1988), this time with Tom Cruise learning the ropes from an older, more experienced bartender played by Bryan Brown. Tom Cruise continued to share top billing with older stars, giving what many consider to be his best performance to date as DUSTIN HOFFMAN's brother in the Oscar-winning hit Rain Man (1988).

After playing a smug, superficial bartender in Cocktail (1988), an entertaining but critically panned film, Tom Cruise had what was probably his best role in OLIVER STONE's Born on the Fourth of July (1989). Playing Ron Kovic, a paralyzed, disillusioned Vietnam War veteran who becomes an angry antiwar protester, Tom Cruise won a Golden Globe Best Actor award and an Oscar nomination.

Days of Thunder (1990) was in some ways a reprise of his role in Top Gun but on a racetrack: He had to learn to cope with a mentor, a girlfriend, and an antagonist. He returned to dramatic form with A Few Good Men (1992), in which he was cast as a military lawyer pitted against a formidable foe, played by JACK NICHOLSON, who earned critical plaudits for his acting. The courtroom showdown between Tom Cruise and Nicholson was reminiscent of the Captain Queeg trial in The Caine Mutiny (1954). In Far and Away (1992), Tom Cruise and NICOLE KIDMAN (his wife) appeared together and provided the chemistry for the epic film set in Ireland and the United States. They ended the decade playing husband and wife in Kubrick's enigmatic Eyes Wide Shut (1999), just before the breakup of their marriage.

In three 1990s films, Tom Cruise played a somewhat smug, self-possessed young man who discovers that appearance is not reality and who has to overcome opponents and his own weaknesses to succeed. In The Firm (1993) he was a lawyer working for a classy law firm that he learns is corrupt; in Mission: Impossible (1996) he played a CIA agent who finds that he is being set up by people in the agency; and in Jerry Maguire (1996) he was a sports agent whose idealistic hubris costs him his clients and his job. The last film contains a familiar catchphrase of the 1990s: "Show me the money." He won a Golden Globe for Jerry Maguire as well as an Oscar nomination.

For the most part, Tom Cruise has been cast as the hero, but in Interview with the Vampire (1994) he played the vampire Lestat so well that he received an MTV award as the best villain of the year. In Magnolia (1999), playing a motivational speaker who specializes in teaching loser men how to seduce women, Tom Cruise is at his macho best. The role brought him an Oscar nomination and a Golden Globe as Best Supporting Actor. Again playing agent Ethan Hunt, Tom Cruise appeared in Mission: Impossible 2 (2000), a film that grossed more than $200 million but did not call upon Tom Cruise to exercise any acting skill. In Vanilla Sky (2001), which also did well at the box office, Tom Cruise played a superficial playboy involved with both Cameron Diaz and Penelope Cruz. In 2002 Tom Cruise starred in STEVEN SPIELBERG's flawed, special-effects-heavy, future-cop action movie Minority Report.

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This article was sent to us by: Damon C. Mitchell at 08102010

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