No one says “blockbuster” like Cruise, and no one gives their all the way that he does—after all, who else has scaled the Burj Khalifa for a part? But behind the scenes, Cruise’s legacy is a lot more complicated.
Tom Cruise Facts
1. He’s Not Really A Cruise
We know him as Tom Cruise, but he was born Thomas Cruise Mapother IV—the only brother to three sisters. His parents were Mary Lee, a special education teacher, and his father and namesake, Thomas Cruise Mapother III, was an electrical engineer. Sadly, the name wasn’t the only thing that Cruise’s father gave him.
2. His Home Life Was Unbearable
Cruise’s family didn’t have it easy in those early years. His father found it difficult to hold down a job, and with four mouths to feed, they didn’t have much money—but that wasn’t the only reason for their struggle. Cruise confessed that his father would regularly beat him, and that he rarely felt safe around the man, calling him an “merchant of chaos” and a “bully.”
3. Things Weren’t Much Better Outside
Cruise’s father should have been a source of support and stability, but he provided neither. If he wasn’t emotionally or physically abusing his kids, he was uprooting the family in search of the next job. This had a dire effect on Cruise—without routine in his life or consistency in his education, he fell behind.
He was doing poorly in school, was small for his age, and had few friends. It was not an easy time for Cruise.
4. He Was Always The Outcast
As a result of his father constantly moving the family, Tom Cruise actually went to 15 different schools in 12 years. Imagine the difficulty of being the new kid in school 15 times over. Other kids cruelly preyed on Cruise, and being in remedial classes certainly didn’t help. He was a victim both at home and at school—and things would get worse before they got better.
5. He Got Answers He Didn’t Want To Hear
When Cruise was 7 years old, a school psychiatrist diagnosed him with dyslexia. Knowing the reason why he was doing so poorly in school should’ve been a relief, but instead, Cruise took a dark turn. The diagnosis enraged him, and he began to question what it all meant. It’s likely that this moment in his life greatly influenced Cruise’s lifelong grudge against psychiatry. It’s something that would come back to haunt him years later.
6. She Finally Ended It
Despite all the difficulty that Cruise faced both at home and at school, there was a bright side to it all: his mother Mary Lee. At different times, she worked three jobs to support the family. Still, she was a caring and warm force in her kid’s lives. When Tom Cruise was in sixth grade, his parents finally divorced. While for many kids, this would be a tragedy, it was a relief for their family.
7. He’s A Daredevil
Cruise loves to do his own stunts for his films, and this penchant for danger didn’t just come out of nowhere. He began trying out risky endeavors when he was barely out of diapers—sometimes, with disastrous results. When he was just three or four years old, he took the sheets from his bed and tried to use them to parachute off the garage roof.
Young Cruise woke up on the ground, dazed. Luckily, since then, his stunts have tended to have less dangerous results—although there have been a handful of very close calls.
Paramount Pictures, Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015)
8. They Escaped In The Middle Of The Night
Drama and turmoil filled Cruise’s parents’ final moments together, and it culminated in a chilling late-night flight from the family home. Mary Lee meticulously planned how she would leave her husband. She had the kids pack their bags at night and sleep with them beside their beds. They silently packed the car and headed for Kentucky the next morning at 4:30 AM.
There were no goodbyes, and for the next decade, Cruise only saw his father a handful of times.
Dick Thomas Johnson, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons
9. The Family Was In A Dark Place
The Cruise family went down to his mother’s hometown of Louisville, KY, and began a new life there, without their abusive father. Once again, without a two-income household, they struggled, with each sibling doing their best to chip in. His sisters waitresses, and Cruise did odd jobs for his neighbors. At the same time, he began to exhibit a disturbing dark side.
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10. His Fury Knew No Bounds
Cruise’s difficult childhood had left him full of anger and resentment, and he had trouble knowing what to do with the boiling rage that bubbled beneath the surface. He was fiercely protective of his family, and often threatened his sister’s boyfriends. Cruise was boisterous and became the leader of the pack with his rebellious group of friends. He had a chip on his shoulder—and his father was the reason why.
11. It Finally Ended
He’d followed the family back to Kentucky. At one point, the two Toms ran into each other, with Sr. inviting the kids to go see a movie together. Cruise outright refused him and told him to stay away from the family. He did. Soon after the divorce was final, Thomas Cruise Mapother III married a widow with four children of her own. The newlyweds then abandoned those children and took off to Florida.
The situation appalled Cruise. For his relationship with his father, it was the final nail in the coffin.
Featureflash Photo Agency, Shutterstock
12. He Couldn’t Cut It
Cruise’s mother had raised him in the Catholic church, and despite his rebellious nature and penchant for fighting, he spent a year in a Franciscan seminary as a teen. There were a few things holding him back from dedicating his life to the church, however, and one of them was girls. Cruise had been a playboy before he even entered high school, racking up girlfriends in Ottawa and Louisville.
At the same time, he was developing a passion for acting—and before long, it would come to change his life.
Georges Biard, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons
13. He Left The Nest
As soon as Cruise graduated high school, he moved to New York City to begin his career as an actor, with the full support of his mother and her new husband, Jack South. However, it wasn’t always so warm. Cruise had been the man of the house. His relationship with South had a rocky start, but they ultimately bonded. In NYC, Cruise waited tables while looking for acting jobs.
After a few months of that, he decided to give Los Angeles a try. It was a decision he wouldn’t regret.
Frankie Fouganthin, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
14. He Hit The Ground Running
The phrase “overnight star” is something of a cliché, but it definitely applies to Tom Cruise. First he got a bit part in a film, then two supporting roles. All of a sudden, it happened. Producers were lining up to throw lead roles at him—including the one that cemented his status as a star, Risky Business. Cruise had swagger, youth, good looks, and charisma. He was the total package—but his early years as a star were still filled with ups and downs.
Twentieth Century, Taps (1981)
15. He Was A Ladies’ Man
Cruise’s new lifestyle as an in-demand young star was a 180-degree turn from his modest upbringing—and he definitely took advantage of his newfound fame. He’d always been popular with the ladies, and now, flocks of adoring female fans followed him everywhere he went. In a tell-all memoir, his Risky Business co-star Curtis Armstrong told a tale of a line-up of women who waited outside Cruise’s hotel room door in Chicago during filming.
As soon as one would leave, another would go in. And it wasn’t just fans…
Warner Bros., Risky Business (1983)
16. His Views Were Questionable
Another co-star, Bronson Pinchot, told a different story about Cruise’s on-set behavior. He claimed that every second sentence out of Cruise’s mouth was homophobic, and that his slurs often had little to do with the conversation. Pinchot also said that Cruise didn’t really get along with any co-stars—but that part doesn’t seem entirely true…
17. He Had Steamy Affairs With A-Listers
As we said, it wasn’t just female fans who had the hots for Cruise—he was breaking hearts in Hollywood as well. While making Risky Business, he reportedly had an affair with co-star Rebecca de Mornay, who had a partner at the time. He was also involved with Cher and musician Patti Scialfa (who would go on to marry Bruce Springsteen) in those early years.
Risky Business, Warner Bros. (1983
18. The Filming Was A Disaster
Things were running incredibly smoothly for Cruise, whose next project was the fantasy film Legend. Then, all of a sudden, it all came to a grinding halt. Filming was delayed when the studio burned to the ground—but then Cruise received some chilling news of his own. His father had cancer, and likely wouldn’t make it.
Legend Production, Legend (1985)
19. They Had One Final Moment Together
Tom Cruise left the film to make one last visit to his ailing father in hospital. Before he arrived, his father told him that in order to see him, Cruise had to fulfill one bizarre condition. He wasn’t allowed to confront his father about anything that had gone on between them in the past. Despite his lingering anger over his childhood, Cruise agreed.
The pair saw each other one last time before Thomas Cruise Mapother III passed on. Cruise later made a heartbreaking confession about the visit, saying that “When I saw him in pain, I thought, 'What a lonely life.' […] It was sad."
Caroline Bonarde Ucci, CC BY 3.0, Wikimedia Commons
20. He Made It To The Top
Tom Cruise returned to Hollywood—and his next project was one that would take him to superstar status. Top Gun was Cruise’s biggest hit yet—but despite its success, it would be a film he’d come to regret. After talking to Paul Newman on the set of his next film, Cruise began to regret the tone of Top Gun, which many felt glorified war and amplified the Cold War politics of the era.
Despite this walkback, Cruise has said that he’d be involved if the filmmakers were ever to make a sequel…
21. He Learned From His Mistakes
In response, Cruise signed up for Born on the Fourth of July, a film whose tone was decidedly anti-war. It was a critical hit, and it netted Cruise his first Academy Award nomination. While the studio initially criticized the casting, not believing that Cruise could handle such a dramatic role, it was appropriate in more ways than one—after all, Cruise had been born on the third of July.
Featureflash Photo Agency, Getty Images
22. He Was Keeping A Secret
In 1987, while Tom Cruise was preparing to film the movie Cocktail, he became involved with actress Mimi Rogers. This time, Cruise surprised everyone by giving up his old ways for his new paramour, who was six years his senior—and that wasn’t the only shock. Before many even found out that they were dating, the pair secretly married in 1987. And reforming the ex-playboy wasn’t the only thing Rogers did during the relationship…
Alan Light, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons
23. She Changed Him
At this point, Cruise was the biggest star in Hollywood—and despite the fact that they’d gotten married in a Unitarian church, Rogers was a devout Scientologist. You do the math. Rogers was said to have introduced Cruise to the tenets of Scientology very gently and gradually—and for their part, the church knew what they had on their hands.
Winning over Cruise would be a huge coup, so they lavished him with special perks and attention. It would be the beginning of a long and controversial relationship.
24. He Had A Wandering Eye
Unlike Cruise’s relationship with Scientology, his marriage to Rogers wasn’t long—although it wasn’t without its fair share of scandal. Cruise had been married for just two years when he hand-picked an up-and-coming young Australian starlet to play opposite him in the film Days of Thunder. Her name? Nicole Kidman. Many speculated that the pair actually hooked up on the movie set, long before Cruise’s eventual divorce from Rogers—but their story didn’t end there.
Paramount, Days of Thunder (1990)
25. She Bared It All
Years later, in an interview with Playboy, Mimi Rogers revealed what happened behind bedroom doors during her marriage to Tom Cruise. She claimed that he was thinking of becoming a monk, and that “he thought he had to be celibate to maintain the purity of his instrument. ... My instrument needed tuning."
The comments caused quite a stir, and Rogers later retracted them and apologized to Cruise, but the damage was done—and rumors about his performance in the bedroom have plagued Cruise ever since.
26. He Owed It All To Them
One of the reasons why Cruise may have fallen so hard for Scientology was that he believed that their programs “cured” him of the dyslexia that he had struggled with since he was a child. He claims that until Hubbard’s Study Technology learning method taught him to read, he was functionally illiterate. Yet, he’d read all those film scripts…
United Artists, Rain Man (1988)
27. He Ignored Them…At First
Following his divorce, Cruise jumped headlong into his romance with Nicole Kidman—but he still had baggage from his first marriage, in the form of his newfound devotion to Scientology. The church identified Kidman as a potential trouble source, due to her Catholic background, but Cruise ignored their protests. At first, they were living a fairytale—but eventually, it would come back to haunt them.
Featureflash Photo Agency, Shutterstock
28. Then Comes Marriage
In 1990, Cruise proposed to Kidman, and the pair got married on Christmas Eve of that year. It was just ten months after his divorce from Rogers. Fools might rush in, but their marriage was solid—at least at first. In between appearing in their own projects, the two acted in two films together…but the tabloid scrutiny was incredibly intense.
29. They Became Parents
As newlywed superstars, the spotlight was on Cruise and Kidman, and tabloids breathlessly awaited news of a pregnancy…but it never came. Many thought they were simply concentrating on their careers, but after years of waiting, they wound up adopting. First came Isabella in 1993, and Connor in 1995. Finally, they were a family.
30. You Can’t Be Everyone’s Pick
Cruise walked a fine line in the 90s, balancing life as a husband and parents with his film commitments. He won starring role after starring role—but not everyone was a fan. Author Anne Rice wanted to cast another actor in the role of Lestat for Interview with the Vampire, while producers were dead-set on Cruise.
Warner Bros., Interview With The Vampire (1994)
31. He Had A “Told You So” Moment
Rice put up quite the battle, even trying to come to a compromise by recommending a number of other non-Cruise picks—but she ended up eating her words. When the film was complete, she took it all back. Rice praised Cruise for his acting, personally apologized to him, and even took out expensive ads in the New York Times and Vanity Fair to laud the film. When you’re a divisive personality like Cruise, that’s certainly gotta feel good.
32. He Was Pure Profit
If the 80s cemented Tom Cruise as a superstar, in the 90s he became a big-money megastar the likes of which Hollywood had never seen (and the 2000s…well, we’ll get to that). It’s impossible to overstate how profitable Cruise was in this period. He became the first actor to appear in five consecutive movies that grossed over $100 million. In 1993, he started his own production company, which made the movie series that would come to define his career—Mission: Impossible.
33. He Earned His Stripes
The Mission: Impossible series was life-changing in more ways than one. In one scene, where Cruise’s character blows up an aquarium in order to escape a risky situation, the director wasn’t satisfied with Cruise’s stunt double—so Cruise stepped in and performed the stunt himself, even though there was a huge danger that he’d drown.
From then on, Cruise was hooked, and began to perform most of his own stunts—culminating in some truly impressive, terrifying, and occasionally disastrous feats.
34. They Did A 180
After starring in a string of back-to-back hit films, Cruise made a decision that went against everything he’d done in his career. He accepted a role in the wildly controversial Stanley Kubrick film Eyes Wide Shut, opposite his wife Nicole. Kubrick told them they could appear as the leads, but they couldn’t even so much sign up for another movie until it was completed.
Regardless, they jumped at the chance to work with the acclaimed director. They had no idea what they were getting into.
35. They Couldn’t Escape
By the time that Kubrick cast Cruise and Kidman, Eyes Wide Shut had been in the making for nearly 30 years. However, just because the cameras were rolling didn’t mean that things went smoothly. It became the longest constant film shoot in history. On top of that, controversy and scandal plagued the movie from the moment they started filming—and Cruise was at the center of it all.
36. He Was The Subject Of Rampant Gossip
The cryptic themes of the film, along with the high-level of secrecy on set on invited whispers about the film’s content, including one featuring a racy secret society party that the studio scrambled to censor—but that wasn’t all. Tabloids picked up reports that producers had hired a couples' therapist to help Cruise and Kidman through their intimate scenes together, alleging that the long-married couple had no chemistry.
These reports only played into the rumors about Cruise’s sexuality that had followed the actor for years—but he didn’t take the gossip sitting down.
Warner Bros., Eyes Wide Shut (1999)
37. They Fought Back
In 1998, Cruise sued a British tabloid for alleging that his marriage was a sham worked up to cover what he was actually into behind closed doors. The suit was successful, but the tabloids didn’t back down, and continued to publish rumors about Cruise, his marriage to Kidman, and even allegations that he was impotent and sterile.
Every time, Cruise and Kidman would win the lawsuits, but it was like playing whack-a-mole. Whenever they’d beat down one rumor, another would pop up in its place—but the worst was yet to come.
38. It All Amounted To Nothing
After all the attention on the film’s more notorious and risqué scenes and the personal lives of its stars, it didn’t perform as expected at the box office. It was a crushing disappointment, but at least Cruise and Kidman had much to look forward to. After the long and gruelling work on Eyes Wide Shut, they were now open to take on other projects, and their tenth anniversary was approaching—but behind the scenes, Cruise was hiding something.
39. They Went From Hot To Ice Cold
Gossip mags reported on Cruise and Kidman’s anniversary celebrations on Christmas Eve, 2000, saying that they’d renewed their vows that day, and then spent time in Vegas during the days that followed—but it was only after that the dark truth of those days emerged. Two months later, Cruise and Kidman announced that they’d separated.
Fans were shocked, and details about what had transpired between the anniversary and the announcement slowly began to come out.
40. He Was Vicious
At first, neither star really shared what was happening behind the scenes—but Cruise did make one mysterious statement. When asked about the reasons for the separation, Cruise replied with three cryptic words: “Nicole knows why.” This fueled the tabloids to speculate that Kidman had had an affair behind Cruise’s back.
41. It All Happened at Once
Just two days after announcing the separation, Tom Cruise announced that he had filed for divorce from Nicole Kidman, citing irreconcilable differences. Kidman was devastated by the news—and her heartbreak would only get worse. She was actually pregnant at the time of the separation. Soon after the announcement, she suffered a miscarriage.
Christopher Polk, Getty Images
42. They Didn’t Match Up
During the divorce, details about their finals days together emerged—but each had a different story. Cruise claimed that the relationship was over before they celebrated their tenth anniversary, with Kidman arguing others. There was likely a twisted reason behind this discrepancy.
43. He Pulled a Quick One
The probable reason behind this strange argument about timing is surprisingly brutal. In California, divorces that don’t involve pre-nuptial agreements change significantly if the marriage lasts longer than ten years. Lasting for 10 years hugely changes the financial responsibility of one party in the divorce toward the other.
In other words, by claiming that they’d never hit their decade anniversary, Cruise wouldn’t have to pay Kidman alimony. The divorce only got more complicated from there.
44. His Faith May Have Played A Part
Courts finalized the divorce in 2001, and neither party has ever given a definitive reason to the press about why the relationship ended—but many have their own ideas. It was during this period that Cruise was becoming more and more involved with Scientology, almost to a degree of fervor, while Kidman never ended up joining the church…and that’s not all.
45. They Took His Side
Since the divorce, Cruise’s two adopted kids with Kidman, Isabella and Connor, have spent more and more time with their father. But they’ve also become more active in Scientology. Sadly, this came with a devastating side effect—as a result, they seem to have drifted further and further from Kidman.
46. He Drew Inspiration From His Own Loss
One of Cruise’s best performances was in Paul Thomas Anderson’s 1999 film Magnolia. In one scene, Cruise’s character has a complete breakdown—but it wasn’t acting. He went completely off-script for the brutal moment where he falls apart beside his dying father. He didn’t love the lines as written, so he channeled his own grief over the passing of his actual father 15 years earlier.
His scene was so moving that it even brought Philip Seymour Hoffman, one of his generation’s greatest actors, to the verge of tears.
New Line Cinema, Magnolia (1999)
47. He Rebounded
Soon after his divorce from Kidman, Cruise became involved with Penelope Cruz when they worked on the film Vanilla Sky together, but their romance ended after three years. With Cruise suddenly single, a strange sequence of events came to pass—with the Church of Scientology behind it all.
48. It Was A Sham
After years of dating women who weren’t Scientologists, it appears that the church thought it was time that their most famous member had a girlfriend to match his status. Several sources claim that church leaders began a secret project to find Cruise a new partner that involved “auditions” of different actresses who were also church members.
This led to Cruise briefly becoming involved with actress Nazanin Boniadi—but many saw through it all, and their “romance” only led to more speculation about Cruise’s bedroom proclivities.
49. He Lives For Danger
Since the mid-90s, Cruise has done nearly all of his own stunts, but this has almost cost him on a number of occasions. Probably the most harrowing was when he was almost beheaded while filming The Last Samurai. In a terrifying accident, the mechanical horse he was riding malfunctioned, meaning he couldn’t duck out of the way of an oncoming sword. Only one actor’s quick thinking saved his life, stopping the blade an inch from Cruise’s neck.
The Last Samurai, Warner Bros.
50. He Found A New Love
Cruise’s next romance did seem normal for all of, oh, two seconds, but in the end, it was no less strange than what had transpired before. Many began to whisper about a potential romance with actress Katie Holmes. In April 2005, Cruise and Holmes made their first public appearance together—but soon after, a truly bizarre incident cast a dark shadow over their budding romance.
51. He Fell Hard
Who could forget Cruise’s infamous “couch-jumping” on The Oprah Winfrey Show? Cruise became so overwhelmed with excitement about his new relationship that he expressed it in just about the most bizarre way possible. The wild incident was rated the “#1 Most Surprising Moment of TV” in 2005—but the weirdness didn’t stop there.
52. It Was A Whirlwind
Soon after, Cruise and Holmes announced Katie's pregnancy. Cruise followed it up by proposing to Holmes at the Eiffel Tower. Their wedding took place at an Italian castle in November 2006. It was a Scientologist ceremony, which only fueled rumors that Holmes had been hand-selected for Cruise by his handlers at the church.
53. He Dictated The Plan
On April 18, 2006, Holmes gives birth to her daughter with Tom Cruise in a silent birth. They named the girl Suri. The founder of Scientology, L. Ron Hubbard, recommended silent or quiet births, and they are common among Scientology's practitioners. As the practice outlines, in a silent birth "everyone attending the birth should refrain from spoken words as much as possible" and "... chatty doctors and nurses, shouts to 'PUSH, PUSH' and loud or laughing remarks to 'encourage' are avoided."
Scientologists believe that any spoken words could negatively affect both mother and child.
Everett Collection, Shutterstock
54. He’s Different
Leah Remini was a prominent member of Scientology for decades, but when she broke with the Church, she began to reveal their darkest secrets—including Tom Cruise’s disturbing behavior behind closed doors. She described Cruise as “a big kid” with bizarre whims, like the time he invited her and some other celebrities over to play an adult game of hide and seek at his house. Unfortunately, this was just the tip of the iceberg.
55. He’s Not Easy To Work For
According to Remini, Cruise’s jovial energy was also incredibly volatile: he once berated his staff because they ruined his plans to bake cookies, saying, "'LRH [Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard] is here,' holding his hand over his head; 'Dave [Miscavige] and I are here,' placing his hand at chin level, and then with his hand down at his waist he said, 'you are here.'"
Ouch, Tom, ouch.
56. His Best Friend’s Wife Went Missing
At the highly-publicized wedding of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, Leah Remini noticed that Shelly Miscavige, the wife of Scientology leader David Miscavige, was conspicuously missing from the ceremony—even though David was the best man. When she pressed about the subject, the Church of Scientology turned on her, and that’s when she began to have her doubts about the group.
Either way, Cruise remains the most powerful celebrity attached to the church—and Shelly Miscavige hasn’t been seen in a decade.
Scientology Media, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons
57. He Was In For A Surprise
Tom Cruise may have shocked Nicole Kidman when he filed for divorce—but in 2012, he was the one who was blindsided. Almost six years after they were married, Holmes filed for divorce while Cruise was in Iceland shooting a new movie. Holmes’s father, who is a lawyer, helped her with the divorce, making sure Holmes retained custody of her daughter Suri. Both parties tried to hide the details, but eventually, some made their way out…
Everett Collection, Shutterstock
58. It Drove Them Apart
New York courts handled the divorce, and as a default, all documents remain sealed, so most of what is known about the divorce is speculation. However, one suspicious detail points to a concrete reason behind the split: Holmes had converted to Scientology when she married Tom Cruise, but she conspicuously stopped associating with the church after their divorce.
59. He Shamed Her
The Church of Scientology asserts that psychiatry is a pseudoscience and the prescription drugs that are used in treatment for mental illness are unnecessary. As a result, Cruise got into hot water in 2005 when he criticized actress Brooke Shields after she shared her experience of using anti-depressants to combat post-partum depression—but the story didn’t end there.
60. They Turned It Around
Shields shot back at Cruise, saying that he should "should stick to saving the world from aliens and let women who are experiencing postpartum depression decide what treatment options are best for them." Subsequently, many were surprised to learn that Cruise actually approached Shields to personally apologize to her. In many ways, it went completely out of his character.
61. He’s A Real Life Hero
Speaking of saving women…Tom Cruise is a hero off camera as well as on. In 1996, he accompanied a woman to the hospital after witnessing her getting hit by a car, and when he discovered she had no insurance, he paid her $7,000 hospital bill in full.
www.flickr.com, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons
62. It All Ends The Same Way
Tom Cruise has been married three times in his life—to Mimi Rogers, Nicole Kidman, and Katie Holmes—but there’s one strange detail that each of his marriages have in common. At the time of each divorce, each actress was 33 years old.
63. He Hasn’t Found Love Again
Following his divorce from Holmes, Cruise had mostly remained single. It does seem like the Scientologists tried to do their thing again. Tabloids briefly linked Cruise to fellow member Yolanda Pecoraro, who later became engaged to yet another church member. Cruise’s current loner lifestyle is a far cry from his rep as a playboy in the early 80s.
64. He’s Got A Sense Of Humor
In August 2017, a Twitter user suggested that Tom Cruise wore a prosthetic butt in one of Valkyrie's scenes. The tweet went viral, but the actor denied the accusation and cheekily commented, "I do my own mooning."
65. He's Not In Her Life
In a story that's something of a sad mirror of Nicole Kidman's experience, Cruise has become less and less involved with his daughter Suri since his divorce from her mother, Katie Holmes. Photographers last spotted them together at least six years ago. Many suspect that Cruise's children with Kidman have distanced themselves from her because she's no longer involved with Scientology. On the flip side, many speculate that Cruise doesn't spend time with Suri because her mother took her away from the church.
66. He Lost His Biggest Fan
No amount of fame can save you from devastating heartbreak, and Tom Cruise is proof. In 2017, his beloved mother Mary Lee passed on peacefully in her sleep. Cruise had always been particularly close with his mother, clinging to her when his father bullied him. She’d also been incredibly supportive of his acting, even when he was a teen. She was 80 years old.
67. Tragedy Struck
Back in the early 90s, Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman were barely out of their honeymoon phase when she got pregnant—but they were in for a devastating shock. Kidman suffered from an ectopic pregnancy and lost the baby. Heartbroken, they kept it a secret from the press, with Kidman only revealing what really happened after their divorce.
Eva Rinaldi, CC BY-SA 2.0, Wikimedia Commons
68. They Were Listening
The tabloids often blamed Scientology for Kidman's divorce from Tom Cruise. Very little was known about the split’s awful details—until former Scientologists revealed that Cruise and the Church of Scientology had actually tapped Kidman's phone toward the end of their marriage without her knowledge.
69. He Kept Watch
When Katie Holmes was pregnant with her daughter Suri in late 2005, Tom Cruise was ecstatic—to a perhaps extreme degree. Cruise actually ordered his own personal sonogram machine, so he could watch their child in the womb every day. For $200,000, that better have been some view.
The Sydney Morning Herald, Getty Images
70. They Scared Her
In 2012, when news broke of Tom Cruise’s divorce from Katie Holmes, she immediately went into hiding. Many thought it was to hide from the media, but that wasn’t the case at all. Holmes tried to conceal her location because she was terrified of how the Church of Scientology would react to the news.
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