Hey, he's got a fake girlfriend, why not a fake name?
http://www.nndb.com/people/791/000022725/Tom Cruise
AKA Thomas Cruise Mapother IV
Born: 3-Jul-1962
Birthplace: Syracuse, NY
Gender: Male
Religion: Scientology
Ethnicity: White
Sexual orientation: Matter of Dispute
Occupation: Actor
Level of fame: Famous
Executive summary: Flamboyant Scientologist
Tom Cruise is the world's most popular movie star, with films grossing nearly three billion dollars. Since Top Gun in 1986, almost every feature he has starred in has achieved blockbuster status, with box office revenues totalling $100-million or more in the U.S.
As a boy, his family moved often, and Cruise called more than a dozen cities home. He attended eight elementary schools and three high schools, not counting a short stint in Cincinnati's St. Francis Seminary at the age of 14. He took preliminary classes there that could have led to the Catholic priesthood, but abandoned those plans after one semester. Shortly after that, his parents divorced.
Cruise was on his high school wrestling team. While he was sidelined from athletics by a knee injury, he auditioned for the lead in his high school's production of Guys and Dolls, and got the role. With the opening night applause ringing in his ears, he decided to pursue acting as his career.
After graduating from high school, Cruise moved to New York City, where he worked as a bus-boy and took drama classes in the evening. He auditioned for TV commercials, but was often turned down as "too handsome" or "too intense."
He made his film debut at 19, with a small role in one of Franco Zeffirelli's worst films, Endless Love (1981). He received good notices for his performance as a belligerent cadet in Taps (also 1981), and appeared alongside a fleet of heartthrobs (Matt Dillon, Emilio Estevez, Leif Garrett, C. Thomas Howell, Rob Lowe, Ralph Macchio, and Patrick Swayze) in Francis Ford Coppola's The Outsiders.
Cruise became a leading man in a forgettable 1983 sex comedy, Losin' It. Most Americans, though, first noticed him in another '83 sex comedy, Risky Business, where he played a playful pimp. Stripped to his underwear and dancing in an emtpy house to Bob Seger's "Old Time Rock and Roll," Cruise achieved permanent meme status.
He has made an almost uninterrupted cavalcade of hit movies since then, including Top Gun, Rain Man, both Mission: Impossible films, Minority Report, and Collateral.
Cruise says he was diagnosed as dyslexic at seven, and tried to hide his learning disability from the other children at school. He has described his younger self as "a functional illiterate," through high school and his first several films. Explaining how such a functionally illiterate man can possibly make a good impression at auditions, Cruise says, "I'd get the director and producer to talk about the characters and the film. I'd glean information from them and I'd use that... I got pretty good at ad-libbing."
"Everything fell into place" when Cruise was converted to Scientology, at the urging of his then-wife Mimi Rogers. "Many people had tried to teach me, but no-one had taught me how to learn or how to study," until he used L. Ron Hubbard's learning method of "Study Technology."
In cooperation with the Church of Scientology, Cruise has opened two "9/11 Syndrome" treatment facilities in New York, for rescue workers who were sickened by sifting through tons of debris after September 11. The facilities offer exercise, sauna sweat-rooms, vitamins, using a regimen outlined in Hubbard's book Clear Body, Clear Mind.
In 2002, Cruise unsuccessfully lobbied the German government to change its official stance against Scientology. Since the late 1990's, German law has seen Scientology as a shady money-making enterprise, not a religion. Scientologists, of course, somehow see this as an infringement of their civil rights. It is also bad for business.
With his dashing good looks, his youthful interest in wrestling, and his two adopted but no biological children, many of Cruise's fans and detractors have long wondered what engorges his member. Cruise is rumored to be as in-the-closet as a winter jacket in July, and he has sued several people and publications that claimed he is homosexual.
In 2001, Cruise sued Bold magazine publisher Michael Davis, who had offered a $500-million bounty for compromising photos of Cruise cruising, and claimed to have obtained a videotape of Cruise in flagrante homo delicto. The magazine quickly published a retraction, and Cruise dropped his suit in exchange for a promise from Davis to never again state or imply that Cruise is anything but a heterosexual. The agreement also stipulated that "Plaintiff, Tom Cruise, does not appear on the videotape to which said defendant referred in his statement... Plaintiff is not, and never has been, homosexual and has never had a homosexual affair."
Cruise also sued Chad Slater (aka Kyle Bradford), a gay skin flick actor and "erotic wrestler" who had been quoted in an interview with Actustar, a French fan magazine, saying he had an affair with Cruise. After being served with Cruise's lawsuit, Slater-Bradford said that the interview had been fabricated by the magazine, and the magazine published a retraction. Cruise eventually won a $17-million verdict against the virtually penniless porn star.
While married to actress Nicole Kidman, Cruise also sued the Star supermarket tabloid, after it published a story claiming they had needed a sex coach for their steamy scenes in Stanley Kubrick's film, Eyes Wide Shut. That lawsuit was also settled, with a retraction by the Star and an unspecified donation to a charity of Cruise and Kidman's choice.
They also sued London's Express tabloid, over similar allegations that their marriage was a sham to hide the homosexuality of one or both of the stars. The Express had also alleged that Cruise was either impotent or sterile. The paper paid £350,000 and apologized. According to his lawyer:
"Tom is a great respecter of homosexual rights, but he's not gay, and he's ready to prove this in court. Tom is tired of it and it hurts his children. It's something that will be there forever. And damn it, he's going to stop it."
He is 5'7" tall, somewhat short for an American man. He usually wears "elevator shoes" and works with diminutive actresses to hide his height.
Cruise's cousin is actor William Mapother, who has appeared in several of Cruise's films, as well as Swordfish and In the Bedroom.
In a 1999 column, Roger Ebert complained that he was asked -- and refused -- to sign a pre-interview contract detailing what he could and could not ask in an interview with Cruise. In 2004, a Boston Globe reporter wrote that before he could chat with Cruise, he had been similarly required to sign a form stipulating that "neither Artist nor the Interview will be used or referred to in a derogatory manner."
"I can tell you that my personal experience with it, you know, I've been a Scientologist for going on, I guess 17 years. And it's extraordinary, it's extraordinary. And you know, you always have to look at someone who criticizes you, you have to look at them and say, okay, so? Who is that person? Why? What do they know? And I can tell you, you're sitting in front of a Scientologist who knows. And I can tell you from my personal experience it's been extraordinary for me. I wouldn't be here where I am today without, you know, those things to help me out."
Father: Thomas Mapother III (electrical engineer, b. 15-Oct-1934, d. Jan-1984)
Mother: Mary Lee (Pfeiffer) (Mapother) South
Father: Joseph South (stepfather)
Sister: Lee Anne (Mapother) DeVette (Cruise's spokesman; b. 1959)
Sister: Marian Mapother (teacher, b. 1961)
Sister: Cass Mapother (restauranteur; b. 1963)
Girlfriend: Melissa Gilbert (actress, Little House on the Prarie)
Girlfriend: Rebecca De Mornay (actress, Risky Business; lived together 1983-85)
Wife: Mimi Rogers (actress, The Rapture; m. 9-May-1987, div. Jan-1990)
Wife: Nicole Kidman (actress, Days of Thunder; m. 24-Dec-1990, div. 8-Aug-2001, two adopted children)
Son: Connor Anthony Kidman Cruise (adopted, b. 17-Jan-1995)
Daughter: Isabella Jane Kidman Cruise (adopted, b. 22-Dec-1992)
Girlfriend: Penelope Cruz (actress, Vanilla Sky; dated 2001-04)
Girlfriend: Sofia Vergara (Colombian actress, dated in 2005)
Girlfriend: Katie Holmes (2005)
High School: Glen Ridge High School (1980)
Scientology
Planet Hollywood
Welsh Ancestry
Risk Factors: Dyslexia
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