Tom Cruise is one of the most fascinating celebrities in Hollywood. On one hand, he is a sexy leading man who has been a household name for nearly four decades. On the other hand, he is an intensely private individual, forcing people to speculate about everything from his devotion to Scientology to the fact that he divorced three different women when they turned 33 years old.
Who, then, is the real Tom Cruise? Behind that famous smile and iconic Ray-Ban sunglasses, do we know who is really there?
To find out, we did a deep dive into Cruise’s life. And without further ado, here are the most shocking confessions from this enduring Hollywood star.
He described his father as a ‘bully’ who never saw any of his movies
In his own way, Tom Cruise helped define the image of the modern tough guy. After all, his most iconic roles have him portraying a fighter pilot and a spy. Because of that, you might expect that Cruise had a great paternal role model growing up.
Sadly, that is not the case. As People reports, Cruise once described his father by saying, “He was a bully and a coward – the person where, if something goes wrong, they kick you. It was a great lesson in my life, how he’d lull you in, make you feel safe and then, bang!”
Cruise’s mother left his father when Cruise was only 12, and Cruise dropped his father’s last name Mapother after his parents’ divorce. (Cruise was born Thomas Cruise Mapother IV, named after his father Thomas Cruise Mapother III.)
Despite the fact that his father never saw any of his movies, Cruise managed to reconcile with him when he was on his deathbed shortly after the release of Risky Business in 1983.
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He once considered becoming a monk
These days, Tom Cruise is basically the poster boy for Scientology. But according to ex-wife Mimi Rogers, he once considered a very different life for himself. Specifically, he thought about becoming a monk!
According to InStyle, Rogers once told Playboy that that “Tom was seriously thinking of becoming a monk. At least for that period of time, it looked as though marriage wouldn’t fit into his overall spiritual need. And he thought he had to be celibate to maintain the purity of his instrument.”
This allegedly contributed to their breakup, because Rogers suddenly becoming celibate was her own Mission: Impossible!
He doesn’t allow his likeness to be used for action figures
Tom Cruise has been redefining action movies for the better part of 40 years. Now ask yourself: how many times have you seen a toy bearing his likeness?
Unless you found an unauthorized or custom toy, the correct answer is “zero times.” This is because, according to MTV, Cruise doesn’t allow his likeness to be used for things like video games. Going back to the original NES Top Gun game (the one where trying to land made you throw your controller), an actual likeness of Cruise never appears.
To this day, action figure collectors who want a likeness of Tom Cruise have to either sculpt their own likenesses of the actor or find someone selling custom heads online!
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He once claimed he was a ‘functional illiterate’
Many have wondered over the years how Tom Cruise got wrapped up in Scientology. The answer is surprisingly simple: they helped him with his lifelong dyslexia struggles!
In an interview with People, Cruise said, “I’d try to concentrate on what I was reading, then I’d get to the end of the page and have very little memory of anything I’d read. I would go blank, feel anxious, nervous, bored, frustrated, dumb. I would get angry. My legs would actually hurt when I was studying.”
He went on to say that he was a “functional illiterate” and continued to struggle after high school. But he claims that Scientology “Study Technology” made his struggles a thing of the past.
He came up with Les Grossman’s look in ‘Tropic Thunder’
When the Tropic Thunder credits rolled, many were astonished that the character of Les Grossman was played by Cruise. After all, Grossman is overweight, bald, and has incredibly hairy arms. Oh, and he does an absurd dance number that looks nothing like the sexiness Cruise displayed in Risky Business.
At the time, many assumed this was director Ben Stiller’s idea of a joke. You know, to take one of the world’s sexiest men and make him look like that. Later, though, Cruise confessed that the character and much of his appearance was Cruise’s idea!
According to Cheat Sheet, he read the script thanks to his friendship with Stiller and wanted a character representing the overbearing movie studio. He gave Stiller a one-sentence description, “I want to have fat hands, and I’m gonna dance,” and everything spiraled out from there.
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He once called Nicole Kidman his ‘soul mate’
After the weird, allegedly monk-inspired divorce from Mimi Rogers, Cruise fell in love with Nicole Kidman. Once they got married, they were a genuine Hollywood power couple. And some wondered how much these two megastars actually cared for one another.
According to Cruise, the affection was genuine. As he told Vanity Fair in 1994, “It was that special connection when you recognize your soul mate. She is a person who understands. It was as if a whole new life had started for me.”
This quote takes on a bittersweet tone when you consider Cruise and Kidman divorced in 2001. In retrospect, Kidman may have truly been “the one” for Cruise, but they just couldn’t make it work in the long term.
He revealed the real reason why he does his own stunts
In addition to being an acclaimed actor, Cruise is especially famous for one thing: doing his own stunts. This is particularly impressive in the Mission Impossible movies, where audiences can see the world-famous actor actually hanging off of the largest building in the world.
In fact, Cruise became so well-known for this that some critics thought these were as much publicity stunts as they were physical stunts. However, Cruise ended up shocking the world by revealing the real reason why he demands to do his own stunts.
As ScreenRant reports, Cruise told Graham Norton. “It has to do with storytelling…. It allows us to put cameras in places that you’re not normally able to do.” While he didn’t elaborate much beyond that, it seems Cruise is convinced that showing a real actor doing real stunts creates a more convincing story. And in a world filled with awful CGI and bad stunt doubles, we have to agree with him!
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He thinks psychiatry isn’t science
Cruise’s career is quite sturdy right now. But back in 2005, he made a series of public appearances where he seemed dead set on destroying his career. This was around the time that he was jumping up and down on a sofa in front of Oprah Winfrey while declaring his love for Katie Holmes.
The chair-jumping prompted plenty of speculation as to what was wrong with Cruise. But he made other appearances in which he blurted out some shocking things. The best example of this was when he appeared on NBC’s TODAY to promote War of the Worlds.
His “mission” shouldn’t have been “impossible:” he just needed to promote the film. But when Matt Lauer asked about Cruise criticizing Brooke Shields for using antidepressants after giving birth, Cruise ended up blurting out that “psychiatry is a pseudoscience.”
While Cruise never changed his belief that antidepressants are unhealthy, Brooke Shields later revealed that Cruise visited her house in person and offered her a “heartfelt apology” for criticizing her.