In 1976, if you had told fourteen-year-old Franciscan seminary student THOMAS CRUISE MAPOTHER IV that one day in the not too distant future he would be Tom Cruise, one of the top 100 movie stars of all time, he would have probably grinned and told you that his ambition was to join the priesthood.

Tom is the only son (among four children) of nomadic parents, Mary Lee (Pfeiffer), a special education teacher, and Thomas Cruise Mapother III, an electrical engineer. His parents were both from Louisville, Kentucky, and he has German, Irish, and English ancestry.

Young Tom spent his boyhood always on the move, and by the time he was 14 he had attended 15 different schools in the U.S. and Canada. He finally settled in Glen Ridge, New Jersey with his mother and her new husband. While in high school, Tom wanted to become a priest but pretty soon he developed an interest in acting. He dropped out of school, and at age 18 headed for New York and a possible acting career.

The next 15 years of his life are the stuff of legends. He made his film debut with a small part in Endless Love (1981) and from the outset exhibited an undeniable box office appeal to both male and female audiences.

With handsome movie star looks and a charismatic smile, within 5 years Tom Cruise was starring in some of the top-grossing films of the 1980's including TOP GUN (1986), THE COLOR OF MONEY (1986), RAIN MAN (1988) and BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY (1989).

By the 1990s he was one of the highest-paid actors in the world earning an average 15 million dollars a picture in such blockbuster hits as INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE: THE VAMPIRE CHRONICLES (1994), MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE (1996) and JERRY MAGUIRE (1996), for which he received an Academy Award Nomination for Best Actor.

Tom Cruise's biggest franchise, Mission Impossible, earned a total of 3 billion dollars worldwide. Tom Cruise has also shown interest in producing, with his biggest producer credits being the Mission Impossible franchise.

His latest movie, Top Gun Maverick hit $1.37 Billion in the global box office as of August 14, 2022, making it the 6th hightest grossing movie in history, surpassing other record holders, Titanic and Avengers Infinity Wars.

Filmed in 2018 and initially slated for a summer 2019 release, Top Gun Maverick was pushed to the summer of 2020 to allow for production to work out all the complex flight sequences. Then the world exploded, with a global pandemic leading Paramount Pictures to push the movie's release several times in 2020 and 2021 to avoid movie theater closures and to maximize potential audiences.