Tom Cruise Biography and Career
Thomas Cruise Mapother IV (born July 3, 1962), better known by his screen name of Tom Cruise, is an American actor and film producer. Forbes magazine ranked him as the world’s most powerful celebrity in 2006. He has been nominated for three Academy Awards and won three Golden Globe Awards.
His first leading role was the 1983 film Risky Business, which has been described as “A Generation-X classic, and a career-maker” for the actor. After playing the role of a heroic naval pilot in the popular and financially successful 1986 film Top Gun, Cruise continued in this vein, playing a secret agent in a series of Mission: Impossible action films in the 1990s and 2000s. In addition to these heroic roles, he also played other roles, such as the misogynistic male guru in Magnolia (1999) and a cool and calculating sociopathic hitman in the Michael Mann crime-thriller film Collateral (2004).
In 2005, the Hollywood journalist, Edward Jay Epstein argued that Cruise is one of the few producers (the others being George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Jerry Bruckheimer) who are able to guarantee the success of a billion-dollar movie franchise. Since 2005, Cruise and Paula Wagner have been in charge of the United Artists film studio, with Cruise as producer and star and Wagner as the chief executive. Cruise is also known for his controversial support of and adherence to the Church of Scientology.
Tom Cruise’s Popularity
In 1990, 1991 and 1997, People magazine rated him among the 50 most beautiful people in the world. In 1995, Empire magazine ranked him among the 100 sexiest stars in film history. Two years later, it ranked him among the top 5 movie stars of all time. In 2002 and 2003, he was rated by Premiere among the top 20 in its annual Power 100 list.
In 2006, Premiere ranked Cruise as Hollywood’s most powerful actor, as Cruise came in at number 13 on the magazines 2006 Power List, being the highest ranked actor.
On June 16, 2006, Forbes magazine published ‘The Celebrity 100’, a list of the most powerful celebrities, which Cruise topped. The list was generated using a combination of income (between June 2005 and June 2006), web references by Google, press clips compiled by LexisNexis, television and radio mentions (by Factiva), and the number of times a celebrity appeared on the cover of 26 major consumer magazines.
Tom Cruise’s Acting Career
Cruise’s first film role came in 1981, when he had a small role in Endless Love, a drama/romance film starring Brooke Shields. Later that same year he had a more substantial role in the film Taps, appearing alongside George C. Scott, Timothy Hutton and Sean Penn. The film about military cadets was moderately successful. In 1983, he was one of many teenaged stars to appear in Francis Ford Coppola’s The Outsiders. The cast for this film included Rob Lowe, Matt Dillon, Patrick Swayze, and Ralph Macchio, two of which were part of the Brat Pack.
That same year Cruise appeared in the teen comedy Losin’ It. Cruise’s breakthrough came after Risky Business was released, which helped to propel Cruise to stardom. One sequence in the film, featuring Cruise lip-syncing Bob Seger’s “Old Time Rock and Roll” in his underwear, has become an iconic moment in 1980s film. The film has been described as “A Generation-X classic, and a career-maker for Tom Cruise”. A fourth film that was released in 1983 was the high-school football drama, All the Right Moves. Cruise’s next film was the 1985 fantasy film Legend directed by Ridley Scott.
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