is tom cruise from ottawa

Capital Facts: Tom Cruise's little-known Ottawa roots

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In celebration of Canada’s 150th birthday, the Citizen is rolling out one fact each day for 150 days until July 1, highlighting the odd, the fascinating and the important bits of Ottawa history you might not know about.

Actor Tom Cruise can trace his acting roots to Ottawa. He lived in Beacon Hill for a few years as a youngster, attending Robert Hopkins Public School, where he got involved in drama for the first time. A report in Hello Magazine in 2015 quoted the star of action franchises such as Mission Impossible, saying he had always been a risk-taker.

“I remember in Ottawa I used to do flips off the roof,” Cruise said. “That was the first time I broke my leg! I landed right on the sidewalk.”

— Christina Spencer

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Showbizz Daily (English)

Tom Cruise's younger years: from seminary student to world famous actor

Posted: February 25, 2024 | Last updated: February 25, 2024

Humble beginnings

Tom Cruise may be one of Hollywood's most famous actors, but he didn't have an easy start in life. Cruise experienced a lot of instability from a young age, in fact, over the years, Tom Cruise would attend 15 different schools!

Tom wanted to be a priest!

Join us to look at Tom Cruise's early years and how he eventually went from wanting to become a Catholic priest to becoming a Hollywood actor.

Tom grew up with three sisters

Tom Cruise, born Thomas Cruise Mapother IV to mother Mary Lee (pictured), a special education teacher, and father Thomas Cruise Mapother III, an electrical engineer. Tom Cruise was born in Syracuse, New York, and has three sisters.

Tom's father was abusive

Cruise has spoken in interviews about his life growing up and said that his family was poor and his father was abusive. In an interview with Fox News, Cruise said, "[My father] was the kind of person where, if something goes wrong, they kick you."

"It was a great lesson in life..."

Tom continued, "It was a great lesson in my life—how he'd lull you in, make you feel safe and then, bang! For me, it was like, 'There's something wrong with this guy. Don't trust him. Be careful around him.'"

Cruise's family was constantly moving

If dealing with an abusive father wasn't enough, the family was constantly moving due to their low income, which meant that Tom was often bullied at school.

"I was always the new kid..."

According to TheThings.com, Tom Cruise once said in an interview, "I had no really close friend. I was always the new kid with the wrong shoes, the wrong accent."

Being new all the time was hard

According to Wikipedia, the family moved so often that Tom Cruise attended 15 different schools in 14 years, over the course of his primary and secondary education years. Cruise has said that constantly being new was very difficult for him.

Tom was diagnosed with dyslexia

To make matters worse, he also had a learning disability. The actor said, "I didn't have a friend to share things with and confide in. And being diagnosed with dyslexia did not help matters."

Cruise and his family lived in Canada

In 1971, when Cruise was just nine years old, his father accepted a job as a defence consultant with the Canadian Armed Forces. So young Tom and his family moved north to Beacon Hill, Ottawa.

Tom discovered theatre in the fourth grade

In Ottawa, Cruise attended Robert Hopkins Public School, and thanks to his Drama teacher George Steinburg, Tom became interested in theatre while in the fourth grade.

Tom's interest in acting grew while in Canada

During his time in Canada that Tom's interest in acting continued to grow. In addition to Robert Hopkins Public School, Cruise also attended Henry Munro Middle school in Ottawa.

Tom chipped a tooth playing hockey

While living in Canada, the actor also became quite interested in hockey and, in particular, was talented at playing floor hockey. In early pictures of Cruise, you can see that he has a chipped tooth. The star told reporters in a 1985 interview that it was due to falling during a hockey game during his time in Canada.

In 1974 Tom moved back to the US

After just three years in Canada, in 1974, Tom's mother decided to leave his father and return to the United States with Tom and his sisters. Eventually, Tom's mother would remarry Tom's stepfather Jack South (pictured).

But still life was unstable...

Unfortunately for Tom and his sisters, their life continued to be quite unstable once his mother left his father. The family continued to move around frequently for the rest of Tom's childhood and teen years.

Tom once wanted to become a priest

Even though Tom Cruise is closely associated with the Church of Scientology these days, Cruise actually grew up in a devout Catholic household. Tom even considered becoming a priest at one point.

A place of solace for Tom

According to the Daily News, the Catholic Church was a place of solace in Cruise's youth, and Father Ric Schneider convinced young Tom to apply to St. Francis Seminary School in Cincinnati, Ohio.

"Tom was instantly hooked..."

The Daily News reported that the priest said, "Tom was instantly hooked, I think he wanted a good education. With his parents going through a divorce, it was tough on him, that's maybe one of the reasons why he came here."

He was the drama club leader at seminary

The news outlet reported that Tom barely passed the test required to enter into the seminary in 1976. And while he wasn't a promising student, he seemed to have a knack for acting and was the drama club leader.

"We thought the priests had a great lifestyle.."

Tom's best friend from his time in seminary, Shane Dempler spoke to the Daily News about Tom's time studying to be a priest. Dempler said, "He had a very strong Catholic faith. We went to Mass, spent time in the chapel and enjoyed hearing stories from the priests. We thought the priests had a great lifestyle and we were really interested in priesthood."

But Tom was no angel...

Despite his interest in becoming a priest, Tom Cruise was certainly not a saint during his time at the seminary. Shane Dempler said the pair would skip school to drink and smoke and eventually were asked to leave the seminary when they were caught stealing alcohol from the priests.

Tom knew that acting was his true calling

Tom then went on the finish his education at Glen Ridge High School in New Jersey. During his final years of high school, he participated in many school plays, and it was no surprise to friends that he decided to move to New York to pursue acting after graduating. Little did they know he would end up becoming one of the most famous actors in Hollywood.

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• The Fascinating Life of Tom Cruise: From Canada to Hollywood Stardom

Tom Cruise is one of the most famous actors in Hollywood. Before he became a household name, Tom Cruise had a complicated and busy life starting from Ottawa, Canada. Read about his journey from Canada to Hollywood stardom.

Thomas Cruise Mapother IV, better known as Tom Cruise , is one of the most famous actors in Hollywood. He has starred in some of the most iconic films of all time, from Risky Business to Top Gun and Mission Impossible. But before he became a household name, Tom Cruise had a complicated and busy life. Tom Cruise was born in Syracuse, New York in 1962. When he was four years old, his family moved to Ottawa, Canada, where his father had found a job.

Tom attended the new Robert Hopkins Public School for fourth and fifth grade studies. During this time, he discovered his love for acting while improvising at a Carleton Elementary School drama festival. In 1974, when Tom was in sixth grade, his mother Mary Lee took him and his sisters back to the United States. Tom continued his education in New Jersey and eventually moved to Los Angeles to pursue an acting career.

Tom Cruise's first major role was in the 1983 film Risky Business, which is widely recognized as the film that brought him to the public eye. This success continued when Tom Cruise received more Academy Award nominations, this time for his role in Born on the Fourth of July. He also starred in Losin' It with Shelly Long and Top Gun with Nicole Kidman. Tom Cruise won't play action hero Jack Reacher when the franchise restarts on television, because the star is too short. The film will see Tom Cruise reprise one of his most famous roles, Pete 'Maverick' Mitchell, 34 years after he first put on the costume of a United States Navy pilot. Tom Cruise has denied hilarious rumors that he was wearing a “fake ass” during his film Valkyrie several years ago, after a memorable screenshot went viral earlier this year.

Nicole Kidman has made a rare public statement about her adopted children with her ex-husband Tom Cruise. Scarlett Johansson has strongly denied a new claim by a former Scientologist that she once “auditioned” to date Tom Cruise after his split from Nicole Kidman. Hollywood superstar Tom Cruise has reportedly not seen the daughter he shares with his ex-wife, actress Katie Holmes for years. This week, Tom Cruise sent a message of support to fellow actor George Clooney after the latter was injured in an unpleasant motorcycle accident. Tom Cruise is one of the most recognizable faces in Hollywood and has been for decades. His incredible career has spanned over four decades and shows no signs of slowing down anytime soon.

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Tom Cruise Biography

Born: July 03, 1962

It's tough when you're one of the biggest stars on the planet—and everybody wants to take a shot at you.

"I've heard that I'm misogynist. I'm a homosexual. I'm brainless. How can I be all of these things?" Tom Cruise says. "I think people must sit in a room and make it up. I know they do. They sit there and wonder, 'Okay, what can we say next?'"

Born in Syracuse, New York, Tom Cruise 's father left home when he was a kid. The family—he has three sisters: Marian, Lee Anne and Cass—moved around a lot, including a stint spent living in Ottawa. He also suffered from dyslexia which didn't make school work all that easy.

Tom finally found the acting bug after his mother had remarried and settled in Glen Ridge, New Jersey. A knee injury that kept him off his high school wrestling team also made him think about joining the less injury prone ranks of the drama club.

After high school, he moved to New York and supported himself as a busboy and maintenance worker until he won an audition for Endless Love . Other films equally as bad as Endless Love followed until he won the lead in Risky Business (1983), which launched his career.

He was married to Mimi Rogers , but the couple divorced in 1990 after Tom met Nicole Kidman , at the time an up-and-coming Australian actress with whom he co-starred in Days of Thunder . Nicole and Tom married December 24, 1990. In February 2001 he and Nicole separated after he met Penelope Cruz on the set of Vanilla Sky (2001). In August 2001, he and Nicole, with whom he'd adopted two children, were divorced and in January 2004, he and Penelope broke up.

Nominated three times for an Oscar , Tom has never taken home the coveted statuette, although he has won three Golden Globes for his performances in Born on the Fourth of July (1989), Jerry Maguire (1996), Mission: Impossible (1996) and Magnolia (1999). However, he has also won a Razzie Award as Worst Actor for Cocktail (1988). Tom has a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, located at 6912 Hollywood Blvd.

Paid $75,000 for his first starring role in Risky Business , Tom is now one of Hollywood's top earners. In July 2012, Forbes listed him as the highest paid actor in Hollywood with $75 million in earnings from 2011 to 2012.

Tom began dating Katie Holmes , 16 years his junior, in April 2005. During an appearance on Oprah Winfrey 's talk show, he jumped on the sofa and giggled about his relationship with Katie, saying love had turned him into a lunatic. It gained him a lot of negative media attention, and even after they were engaged in June 2005, the media accused the couple of staging their romance as a publicity stunt. In fact, Tom became a figure of intense ridicule, which prompted Paramount Pictures to drop him and his production company after 14 years in August 2006. In an interview with the Wall Street Journal , Viacom chairman Sumner Redstone commented, "As much as we like him personally, we thought it was wrong to renew his deal. ... His recent conduct has not been acceptable to Paramount."

In the meantime, Tom and Katie became the parents of a daughter they named Suri on April 18, 2006. They were married in a lavish wedding that took place in an Italian castle on November 18, 2006.

Tom then revitalized his career by teaming with MGM to resurrect United Artists, a classic movie studio originally founded by Douglas Fairbanks , Mary Pickford, Charlie Chaplin and D.W. Griffith. In 2009 he was nominated for an Oscar for his supporting role in the comedy Tropic Thunder (2008). He has also won acclaim for his work in the WWII-era drama Valkyrie (2008).

Next, he chose to play a super spy opposite Cameron Diaz in the hilarious comedy Knight and Day (2010) before reprising his role as Agent Ethan Hawke for a third time in Mission: Impossible - Ghost Protocol (2011). Tom also landed a supporting role in Adam Shankman's highly-anticipated musical film Rock of Ages (2012), based on the successful Broadway production. He then starred in Edge of Tomorrow (2014) and reprised his role as Ethan Hunt in Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015), which went on to earn over $700 million at the box office.

Tom also reprised his role as Jack Reacher in Jack Reacher: Never Go Back (2016) and played the lead part in Alex Kurtzman 's action fantasy flick The Mummy (2017) alongside Sofia Boutella . He went on to reprise his role as Ethan Hunt for the sixth time in Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018). He also reprised his Top Gun role 34 years after the original hit theaters, in a sequel titled Top Gun: Maverick (2022), which earned over $718.7 million at the domestic box office and close to $1.5 billion worldwide. The film, which was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, won for Best Sound.

Although delayed by the Covid-19 pandemic, Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One (2023) was finally released and opened at the top of the box office charts, prompting much anticipation for the second part.

Despite being in his fifties now, crowds are still flocking to see Tom Cruise , who is very much at the top of the Hollywood A-list. However, it's been reported that his role in the Church of Scientology is a major reason behind Katie filing for divorce from Tom in July 2012. The divorce was finalized in August 2012 and she has full custody of their daughter, Suri.

OTTAWA REWIND

Join me as we wind back the time in ottawa., beacon hill named after lost lighthouse.

A concept sketch of how the lighthouse in the Ottawa River may have looked based on a photo taken by Lou Bouchard and aerial images from the 1960s.

The east-Ottawa community of Beacon Hill has a history of celebrity upbringing since the early 1970s when the suburban neighbourhood was originally developed. Tom Cruise, then known as Thomas Mapother, lived in Beacon Hill in the early 1970s along with another Hollywood Tom, the home-grown comedian Tom Green. Bryan Adams and former Saturday Night Live cast member and Weekend Update anchor Norm MacDonald also spent their youth in this east end suburb located a few kilometers downstream from the Nation’s Capital.

Having attracted a number of celebrities, the area also has a history of keeping people away from its shores with the construction of a warning beacon, the very beacon that gave the community its name.

This old 1880 map clearly shows a lighthouse in between the Duck Islands on the Ottawa River. (Gloucester Township Map 1880)

A few hundred metres north of the shore near Beacon Hill lie the remains of one of the Ottawa River’s lost lighthouses. Constructed in 1860 between the gaps of the the Ducks Islands near the provincial border, the lighthouse structure was built as a navigational aid to warn sailors of the dangerous reef of rocks known as “Green Shoal”. Navigating ships on the Ottawa River was a relatively new adventure in the mid-19th century, but with the construction of the Rideau Canal in 1832 and the Carillon Canal in 1833, the Ottawa River became a busy shipping and tourist route between Ottawa, Lake Ontario and Montreal before the advent of area rail travel. The waterway was busy with steamships plying the waves between cities, but a number of shoals and islands created hazards for the vessels and required the need for warning lights to mark their location. The government at the time gave the order for the construction of approximately 30 lighthouses on the Ottawa River to assist in the safe passage of growing river traffic. Pre-Confederation Canadian lighthouses were usually built of stone or brick, but with the need to build so many new structures in time, the newly formed Department of Marine and Fisheries required cheaper and faster lighthouse construction techniques.

A 1904 map shows lighthouses in red, a number of which were on the Ottawa River. The Beacon Hill lighthouse, on Green Shoal, is the furthest red dot on the left. (bytown.net -Department of the Interior, Atlas of Canada 1904)

Built as four sided tapering wooden clapboard towers, these structures had the advantage of being cheap to build, and in some cases could be relocated if the site needed attention. The water hazard known as Green Shoal would seen see the construction of such a beacon structure in 1860 on a conical pedestal sheathed in iron boiler plates, riveted together like some kind of Jules Verne rocket to withstand the strong river current and sheets of crushing ice carried downstream. Atop this iron clad pedestal was placed a 4 sided white wooden pyramidal tower 21 feet in height. Using a standard design used for many of the Ottawa River lighthouses, the structure housed a fixed light that was initially fueled by Kerosene, a fuel invented by the Canadian geologist Abraham Gesner in 1846. The Green Shoal light was visible to passing ships from a distance of nine miles and eventually was rebuilt in 1900 when it was most likely converted to using an electric lamp.

In 1862 the Sessional Papers of the Province of Canada reveal a house was requested to be built for the keeper of the lighthouse, yet its location or fate is unknown. In 1891 the lighthouse keeper by the name of A. Laberge earned an annual salary of $250 for his duties maintaining the light at Green Shoal.

A close-up of a 1965 aerial image shows that the beacon was still in place on its pedestal on the Ottawa River. (geoOttawa)

The beacon remained in operation for more than a hundred years, being dismantled and replaced by an automated light marker sometime in the 1970s. It was at this time that a new suburb was being developed nearby, and from atop the hill on what is now Naskapi Drive, the neighbourhood got its name from the old beacon that was visible on the river below.

The location of the ruins of the lost lighthouse that gave Beacon Hill its name. (Google Maps)

Today Beacon Hill residents and those on the Quebec side of the river can catch a glimpse of the iron-clad lighthouse ruins sitting in the Ottawa River. Bashed by years of crushing river ice, the rusty remnants now list to one side, a forgotten sentinel literally frozen in time during the winter months.

All that remains of the lighthouse are the iron-clad rusty remnants of the beacon’s pedestal. (Bing Maps)

The rusting beacon ruins, literally frozen in time, encased in ice on the Ottawa River. The neighbourhood of Beacon Hill, which got its name from this very lighthouse, is in the background.

Beacon Hill, a neighbourhood that could also be called “Celebrity Hill”, continues to carry the name of the structure that once warned sailors to keep away. What’s left of this namesake slowly slips under the waves from where it emerged.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beacon_Hill,_Ottawa

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Cruise

http://www.bytown.net/lighthouses.htm

Lighthouse Digest Magazine Database http://www.lighthousedigest.com/Digest/database/uniquelighthouse.cfm?value=2998BING MAPS

1891 Sessional Papers Canadian Parliament -Report Of Dominion Fisheries Canada

1862 Sessional Papers Of The Province Of Canada

GOOGLE MAPS

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Very cool. Of course, the name makes sense! You answer questions I never even thought of! Keep up the good work!

I am very fond of lighthouses; as usual, this was a fascinating read.

Thanks! I love lighthouses also!

I love lighthouses. Thanks for this fascinating post.

So do I! they are beacons of history and a mariners way of life.

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The Stunning Transformation Of Tom Cruise

Tom Cruise has undergone a stunning transformation, going from an awkward kid who had trouble in school to becoming one of the most famous faces on the planet. His 40 years in Hollywood have spawned countless catchphrases ("Show me the money!"), he's continued to helm one of the most popular movie franchises ("Mission: Impossible"), and his net worth is estimated to be $600 million. And while it seems as if he became a big-name actor overnight, that isn't exactly true. Tom Cruise faced childhood hardships — and even as an adult, it hasn't been all smooth sailing.

What has always set the star apart though is a clear vision for his future. "I've wanted to make movies since I was 4 years old," Tom Cruise told People . He noted, "To be able to entertain an audience, that was my dream. And here I am." Read on for the biggest twists in Tom Cruise's stunning transformation into one of Hollywood's true superstars.

Tom Cruise endured several hardships growing up

Born in Syracuse, New York on July 3, 1962, Thomas Cruise Mapother IV had a rough start to life. The family moved often, noted  Syracuse.com , spending time in Ontario, Ohio, and New Jersey before he graduated high school. His mother, Mary Lee, eventually left his electrical engineer father, and his parents divorced when Tom Cruise was 12. 

Cruise's father does not hold a special place in his heart, and the two had presumably been estranged for a decade when the elder Mapother died in 1984. "He was a bully and a coward –- the person where, if something goes wrong, they kick you," the star told Parade (via People ). "It was a great lesson in my life, how he'd lull you in, make you feel safe and then, bang!" 

After the separation, the family struggled to make ends meet, and young Cruise did what he could to support his mom and three siblings, telling Playboy (via CNBC ): "I've had paying jobs since I was about 8 years old — cutting grass, raking leaves, paper routes, selling Easter cards and Christmas cards."

Tom Cruise once described himself as 'a functional illiterate'

At age 7, Tom Cruise was diagnosed with dyslexia, a neurobiological condition "characterized by difficulties with accurate and/or fluent word recognition and by poor spelling and decoding abilities," according to the International Dyslexia Association . As a student, he would dictate his assignments to his mother, who would write them out for him so he could then copy the words in his own hand. 

Cruise told People , "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." Regarding his high school years, he described himself as a "functional illiterate." Even after graduating high school, he had issues, and as a young actor, he would ask questions about his character at auditions and then mostly improvise the dialogue. 

Cruise said he has overcome the disability, crediting Scientology's "Study Technology," and he is a founding board member of the Hollywood Education and Literacy Project (H.E.L.P.), which aims to provide free tutoring.

Tom Cruise discovered his love of acting while in Ottawa, Canada

While Tom Cruise's parents were still married, his father got a job with the Canadian military and the family moved to Ottawa in 1971. It was there that the would-be superstar got his first taste of acting.

Just a year after the move, Cruise represented his school, Robert Hopkins, at a local drama festival. "He had good raw energy that had to be channeled," drama teacher George Steinburg recalled in Andrew Morton's book " Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography ." "You could tell there was some talent." 

Cruise appeared in multiple roles during his time there, which spanned from age 8 to 11, and made a memorable impression with each one. "He played the Sun," teacher Wendy Santo shared with the Ottawa Citizen . She added, "I do remember that when that child got up on the stage, there was something in his presentation and the way he posed. You knew he was different."

Risky Business made Tom Cruise a star at age 21

By the summer of 1983, Tom Cruise had appeared in four movies, but he was about to be catapulted into superstardom. In "Risky Business," Cruise played Joel Goodsen, a teen who starts to run a brothel out of his home while his parents are away. But before those shenanigans start, he drinks a Chivas Regal and Coke, attempts to eat a frozen TV dinner ... and then performs one of cinema's most famous dance routines . Wearing a button-down shirt, tighty-whities, and basic gym socks, he lip-synced to Bob Seger's "Old Time Rock & Roll" — and an icon was born. Rolling Stone called it a "sequence of sexy air-guitar strutting and mock-macho hilarity that endeared Cruise to film audiences." 

The film made a significant $65 million at the box office and allowed Cruise to start demanding $1 million per film. Co-star Curtis Armstrong wrote in his memoir "Revenge of the Nerd" (via The Hollywood Reporter ), "I think I'm safe in saying that 'Risky Business' was the last time he was just 'Tom.'" Talk about a transformation.

Tom Cruise went from the seminary to Scientology

Second to being a movie star, Tom Cruise is famous for his devotion to Scientology . He was introduced to the controversial religion by his first wife, Mimi Rogers, and over the decades, he has become its most high-profile follower. "It's something that has helped me incredibly in my life," he told ITV (via E! Online ). "I've been a Scientologist for over 30 years. ... Without it, I wouldn't be where I am." He called it a "beautiful religion," noting he is "incredibly proud" of his faith. 

Hard as it is to believe, Cruise was once a devout Christian who was raised Roman Catholic. This shift is one of his most stunning transformations: He was even on the track to potential priesthood, attending St. Francis Seminary in Ohio, Newsweek reported. "He had a very strong Catholic faith," classmate Shane Dempler told the New York Daily News . "We went to Mass, spent time in the chapel and enjoyed hearing stories from the priests. We thought the priests had a great lifestyle and we were really interested in priesthood." 

A life in the church was clearly not to be, however, as Tom Cruise seemed to have partying more than priesthood on his mind. Dempler claims the two were asked not to return to the school after they stole alcohol from some of the friars!

In the 1990s, Tom Cruise was arguably Hollywood's biggest star

Tom Cruise literally roared into the 1990s with "Days of Thunder," a film about stock car racing he conceived of and starred in. The production was fraught with problems and delays, but it still went on to find success. As the deadline to wrap approached, he told Rolling Stone : "We always felt the pressure from the beginning, in August. It's been pedal to the floor from that point on." 

The same can be said of his career. After the movie's release, there was no catching Tom Cruise, as he went on to be the hottest star of the decade. His string of successful films spanned genres, including drama ("A Few Good Men"), romantic comedy ("Jerry Maguire"), action ("Mission: Impossible"), and erotic thriller ("Eyes Wide Shut"). 

The films were box office successes — all the more remarkable because, as Forbes pointed out, the majority were rated R. Several of the movies were also critically applauded, with Tom Cruise earning his three Academy Award nominations for work released between 1989 and 1999.

Tom Cruise combined love and work while married to Nicole Kidman

While filming "Days of Thunder," as  Today  recounted, Tom Cruise fell in love with his co-star, a then up-and-coming Australian actress named Nicole Kidman . "It was that special connection when you recognize your soul mate," he told Vanity Fair . "She is a person who understands. It was as if a whole new life had started for me." The two married in 1990 (via Hello! ). It was her first and his second, as he'd previously married and divorced first wife Mimi Rogers. 

The couple adopted two children, Isabella and Connor , and acted together twice more in 1992's "Far and Away" and 1999's "Eyes Wide Shut," the final film by legendary director Stanley Kubrick. That last movie, about a couple's indiscretions, was plagued by rumors, the Independent reported, including those of troubles within their marriage. But years later, Kidman brushed them aside, telling The New York Times , "We were happily married through that. We would go go-kart racing after those scenes. ... I don't know what else to say." 

Eventually though, the real-life couple would crumble, with Tom Cruise filing for divorce in 2001.

In the age of CGI, Tom Cruise raised the bar on action stunts

When the CGI blockbuster rose to prominence in the 1990s, Tom Cruise didn't jump on the trend. Instead he jumped off things  — becoming even more famous for performing the majority of his own stunts. "It has to do with storytelling ... It allows us to put cameras in places that you're not normally able to do," he explained on "The Graham Norton Show" (via Screen Rant ). Over the years, he has hung off a flying jet plane, held his breath underwater for more than six minutes, and more. 

Director Christopher McQuarrie told The New York Times he considers the helicopter chase in "Mission: Impossible — Fallout" to be Tom Cruise's "hairiest" stunt. "Tom is weaving in and out of canyons and gullies," he explained. "There was one where his rotor blades were just a few feet away from the rock walls on either side. It was like flying through a broom closet." Ironically the star broke his ankle while performing what he told Jimmy Fallon was an "easy" jump during filming.

For Cruise, it's all in good fun. "The first time of any stunt is nerve wracking but it [is] also exhilarating," he told Graham Norton (via NME ). "I have been told a few times during shooting a stunt to stop smiling."

Tom Cruise's relationship with Katie Holmes made headlines

"TomKat," as the couple was known in the tabloids, began in April 2005, recounted The Washington Post , when Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes were seen together in Rome. The relationship raised eyebrows from the get-go. For starters, the actress, who had kept a fairly low profile after starring in the teen TV drama "Dawson's Creek," was 26, notably younger than her 43-year-old beau. According to Vulture , it was a whirlwind romance worthy of a "Bachelor" episode, complete with first-day motorcycle rides, spontaneous trips to Italy and, ultimately, a proposal at the Eiffel Tower. Before they tied the knot in 2006, she gave birth to their daughter, Suri. 

After her arrival, things settled down a bit. Tom Cruise later told Oprah Winfrey (via MTV News ), "Saturday night we have dinner, and then it's games. We play Quick Scrabble, and then it's usually movie night." 

Still, despite all the public displays of affection and talk of domestic bliss, the marriage was not built to last. In 2012, the actress filed for divorce. The actor's Scientology religion was said to have played a role in her leaving, according to The Hollywood Reporter , but both parties have remained tight-lipped about what really happened .

In a series of disastrous interviews, Tom Cruise almost destroyed his career

In 2005, Tom Cruise was in love with actress Katie Holmes and, according to many, out of his mind. First, there was the couch jump seen around the world in May. Appearing on " The Oprah Winfrey Show ," Tom Cruise pumped his fists in the air, knelt down and, of course, hopped onto the sofa multiple times. "I'm in love," he sighed, as Oprah Winfrey kept repeating, "I've never seen you like this." Eventually her astonished response was simply, "You're gone." And that's how it felt for people watching at home. 

Subsequent interviews didn't help dispel that idea. In June, he chatted with Matt Lauer on the " Today " show and doubled-down on comments he had made criticizing actress Brooke Shields ' use of anti-depressants after she gave birth. "There's misinformation, and she doesn't understand the history of psychiatry," Cruise said, noting , "Psychiatry is a pseudoscience." He also got short with a " 60 Minutes Australia " reporter over personal questions, telling him to "put your manners back in." 

The actor's image was quickly being tarnished. As The Guardian reported, Paramount even considered stopping work on the third "Mission: Impossible" movie. Ultimately, Cruise bounced back — but his star never shone quite so brightly.

In the late 2000s, Tom Cruise revealed a side we'd never seen

After his reputation took a hit, Tom Cruise seemed willing to take some risks to win back audiences. And to that end, he said yes to two outrageous roles that let him show off his not-so-serious and downright goofy side. 

First up was the part of Les Grossman in the action comedy "Tropic Thunder." The character was a loud, unattractive, disgusting movie studio executive. It was a small role, not the kind such a superstar would normally take on. But, as the Observer noted, it got people talking — in a good way. 

Then, in 2012, Cruise appeared in, of all things, a musical. He played Stacee Jaxx, a womanizing hair-metal singer in "Rock of Ages." "It was so different. I'm always looking for different things to do and to work with [director Adam] Shankman on a musical, he just really knows these musicals," Cruise said at the movie's premiere, as reported by  MTV News . The performance was ridiculous and over the top, but that was the point. "Tom Cruise as a bandanna-headed Axl Rose type will hit you as the purest bit of genius in the man's entire film career," raved SFGate .

People have spoken out about Tom Cruise's generosity

Tom Cruise doesn't just play a hero in the movies: He often goes above and beyond for friends and strangers.

At a gala in New York, for example, actor Bill Hader told the story of how the star arranged for him to have safe transport home from Los Angeles to his wife and baby in Manhattan after an attempted bombing in New York. The two were filming promos for the 2010 MTV Awards, but after hearing the news, Hader said he had a "full-on panic attack" and Tom Cruise made sure they wrapped days ahead of schedule and got him a plane ticket (via Vulture ).

And director Cameron Crowe told Deadline how the star kept in touch with the child actor originally cast to appear in "Jerry Maguire": "I thought, wow, I had no idea Tom Cruise was doing that."

The most delicious Cruise story, though, is truly sweet. He reportedly often sends a  white chocolate coconut bundt cake from Doan's Bakery in California to celebrity friends. Recipients, Yahoo! reported, include Jimmy Fallon, Kirsten Dunst, and Henry Cavill.

Over the years, Tom Cruise developed a reputation for being intense on set

In December 2020, Tom Cruise once again made headlines for losing his cool. While filming "Mission: Impossible 7" in the United Kingdom, the actor chewed out crew members for breaking COVID-19 safety protocols. "They're back there in Hollywood making movies right now because of us. We are creating thousands of jobs," he can be heard yelling, hurling profanities and threatening jobs, in an audio recording that was leaked from the set, as  The U.S. Sun  reported.

While filming during a pandemic is definitely a recipe for stress, it wasn't the first time Cruise has been intense while on set. Actress Thandiwe Newton, one of his co-stars in "Mission: Impossible II," referred to a difficult day filming with him as a "nightmare." She told Harper's Bazaar , "I was so scared of Tom. He was a very dominant individual. He tries super hard to be a nice person. But the pressure. He takes on a lot. And I think he has this sense that only he can do everything as best as it can be done."

Is Tom Cruise trying to reclaim some of the glory from his younger days?

Tom Cruise's latest projects are all highly anticipated ... but also seem rather familiar. Up first is "Top Gun: Maverick," a sequel to the 1986 hit "Top Gun." "There's never been an aerial sequence shot this way," the actor told  Empire , teasing the cool stunts being filmed for the movie. "I don't know if there ever will be again, to be honest." Then appearing next on his IMDb  page are the seventh and eighth installments of the ever-popular "Mission: Impossible" franchise.

There are also rumors of a sequel for his 2014 sci-fi flick "Edge of Tomorrow." "It's one of these things where if Tom, Emily and I were to say, 'We're ready to pull the trigger on this script,' it's Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt , the film gets made," director Doug Liman told Collider in early 2021.

Then again, as Cruise's stunning transformation makes clear, he's never been one to rest on his laurels. In May 2020, it was confirmed that the star will work in conjunction with NASA to film a movie aboard the International Space Station. Elon Musk's Space X program is also involved, CNET reported. The big question now is: Can he run in outer space?

Where Did Tom Cruise Grow Up?

Though he would eventually become one of the biggest movie stars in history, Tom Cruise had a complicated and busy life long before he was a big-screen superstar. He grew up in multiple locations and never called just one city his home. 

Tom Cruise was born in the city of Syracuse, New York on July 3, 1962. Cruise grew up in different cities across North America. After his childhood in New York, Cruise and his family moved to Canada then eventually back to the U.S. in various cities.

Cruise’s journey through his youth was winding and often troubled but it eventually led to the fame and fortune that made him a Hollywood legend. 

Cruise’s Early Years

Thomas Cruise Mapother IV was the son of Mary Lee, a special education teacher, and Thomas Cruise Mapother III, an electrical engineer. Born in Syracuse, New York, Cruise was just one of four children; he has three sisters named Lee Anne, Cass, and Marian. 

Aside from his sisters, Cruise also has a cousin, William Mapother . William is an accomplished actor who has appeared in Lost , In the Bedroom, and other projects. 

How Tall Is Tom Cruise? Exact Height Revealed

What is tom cruise’s daily routine, where does tom cruise live.

Growing up, Cruise’s family didn’t have it easy and the actor has stated that they lived in near-poverty for much of his youth. 

His home life was also hard because of his abusive dad. The actor has repeatedly referred to his late father as a “bully” and “coward.” Their relationship was incredibly strained right from the beginning. 

Because of his low income and constant relocating, Cruise was frequently bullied as a kid. The actor has said he grew up without friends and was ridiculed for everything from his choice of shoes to his accent. 

His father took a job as a defense consultant with the Canadian Armed Forces in 1971 so nine-year-old Cruise and his sisters and mother moved to Beacon Hill, Ottawa. He attended Robert Hopkins Public School for elementary school and it was in fourth grade that he first became involved in theater, thanks to his drama teacher George Steinburg. 

Cruise attended several other schools in Canada around that age, including Henry Munro Middle school in Ottawa. His interest in acting continued to grow throughout this time in his life. 

Cruise was also becoming a budding athlete at that young age and excelled at floor hockey. Sadly, during a hockey game Cruise fell hard and chipped a front tooth, something that is quite noticeable in early photos of the star. 

Return to the U.S. 

In 1974, when Tom was in sixth grade, his mother Mary Lee left his father and took Tom and his sisters back to the United States. It was there she would remarry after meeting Cruise’s stepfather Jack South. 

Tom would have little-to-no contact with his dad until his death years later.  

After his mother remarried, Cruise’s family wound up moving around America a lot without ever fully settling. His family lived in various locations, including his mother’s home state of Kentucky . All told, Tom was enrolled in 15 schools during this time in his life. 

Eventually, Cruise planted roots in Cincinnati, Ohio, where he received a church scholarship and attended a seminary school while briefly considering a career as a priest. He left Ohio, however, and his family traveled to the east coast. 

Tom ended his schooling career in Glen Ridge, New Jersey where he graduated from Glen Ridge High School. 

As Tom graduated from high school, his interest in acting had blossomed even more. His final years saw him starring in multiple high school productions including Guys and Dolls .

Growing Up and Moving On

After high school, Cruise was intent on pursuing his career in acting. At the young age of 18, he moved from his family in New Jersey and started his acting quest across the river in New York . 

Cruise worked hard to achieve his goals and would soon relocate across the country to Los Angeles where he secured an agent and began to land bit parts. In just a few short years, Cruise went from small roles in films like Endless Love to career-making turns in Risky Business and All the Right Moves. 

After that, Tom Cruise’s career skyrocketed to heights that few have reached. From Mission: Impossible to Top Gun and War of the Worlds , Cruise is certifiably one of the largest names in Hollywood history. 

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61 Fascinating Facts About Tom Cruise

1. Thomas Cruise Mapother IV  was born on July 3, 1962, in Syracuse, N.Y., to  Thomas Cruise Mapother III , an electrical engineer, and Mary Lee Pfeiffer , both of Louisville, Ky. (His grandfather and great-grandfather were both Thomas Cruise Mapother, as well.)

2. He has two older sisters, Lee Anne and Marian , and one younger sister, Catherine , nicknamed Cass. 

3. Cruise wanted to act from around the time he was 4 and started doing impressions of everyone from Donald Duck to Humphrey Bogart and Elvis Presley .

4. In 1974, when the family was living in Ottawa, Mary Lee packed up and took the kids back to Louisville. She officially divorced Tom III in August 1975 and, six weeks later, he remarried, briefly. Joan Lebendiger , recently widowed, had four kids, one of whom later told biographer Andrew Morton that they never saw their stepbrother Tom again after the wedding.

"As a kid, I had a lot of hidden anger about that. I'd get hit, and I didn't understand it," Cruise  recalled to  Vanity Fair  in 1994.

"He was the kind of guy who really got picked on a lot at school himself when he was growing up," he said of his father. "He had also been small, though he ended up being six foot two. People had been quite brutal to him. Inside, I believe he was a really sensitive individual." Tom III could also "actually be quite loving." 

But in 2006 he told Parade  that his dad 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 visited his father in the hospital before he died of cancer in 1984 and Tom III said he'd get better and they would "'talk about the whole thing,'" the actor told  VF , but that never came to pass.

5. Tom was very close to his mother, whom he described to James Lipton on Inside the Actors Studio   as "a very warm, charismatic woman, very kind, very generous." She worked four jobs at any given time to take care of them, and Tom had a paper route to pitch in. "Every night I'd come home, bathe my feet and sit in the family room, and Tom would massage my feet for a half-hour," Mary Lee recalled to Rolling Stone . (She died at 80 in 2017.)

6. He was also protective of his sisters and, as the man of the house, took on the role of scrutinizing their boyfriends when they'd come by to meet the family.

7. Cruise was raised Catholic and he spent his freshman year of high school at St. Francis Seminary in Cincinnati, after a priest named Father Ric Schneider gave a talk at his (also Catholic) school in Louisville. "He was a typical teenager, trying to find his way in life," Schneider told the New York Daily News in 2013. "We would give them an IQ test, and he just about made the cut. The cutoff is 110, and he scored exactly 110."

It's been rumored that Cruise considered entering the priesthood, but he doesn't it remember it that way. "We didn't have the money back then, and I went for the education for a year, and it was free," Cruise has explained.

8. Mary Lee got remarried to Jack South in 1978 and the whole family moved to New Jersey when Tom was 16.

"In the beginning, I felt threatened by my stepfather," Cruise told Rolling Stone . "There's a part of you that's in love with your mother. But he is such a wise, smart man. He loved my mother so much that he took us all in, four young people. We'd bet on football games, and he was a terrible bettor, so I'd make lots of money."

As for his dad, Tom III, who had recently passed away, "I think that he felt remorse for a lot that had happened. He was a person who did not have a huge influence on me in my teens; the values and motivation really came from my stepfather. But he was important. Really important. It's all sort of complex. There wasn't one thing I felt."

9. He was always a daredevil, jumping off things, riding his bike too fast, sometimes into walls and, here and there, breaking bones. In high school he joined the glee club and did plays. He was also an athlete, over the years dabbling in soccer, baseball, basketball, football and ice hockey, and he wrestled. Sports and acting were where he really stood out and, shocker, the ladies have loved him since grammar school.

"I was a wild kid," Cruise admitted. "I'd cut school. Everything had to do with my wanting always to push the envelope to see: where do I stand with myself? How far can I go?"

10. Cruise has been open about his battle with dyslexia, calling himself "a functional illiterate" in school, though he "loved learning. I wanted to learn, but I knew I had failed in the system."

"My energy was always all over the place. Reading was not at the top of my list, because it took me so long," he told Cameron Crowe for Interview in 1986. "When I wrote a paper, my mother would help me with it. I would take a test and get very nervous. I would skip questions and skip lines. I've gotten better. I've learned to control my eyes. I used to have to use my finger all the time. I just wasn't relaxed about it."

11. Senior year of high school he got kicked off the football team after he was caught drinking, according to Morton, but that left him time to audition for the school musical, Guys and Dolls . He played Nathan Detroit, and a commercial director who happened to catch a performance told him he should pursue acting professionally. So, he started going to New York on weekends to audition for musicals—and he missed his graduation ceremony while performing in an amateur production of Godspell .

12. Cruise made his movie debut in the 1981 drama Taps , in a role that was bigger than the one he was originally cast in "because you could see right away that he had a giant talent," former Paramount head Sherry Lansing said in Stephen Galloway 's 2017 biography Leading Lady . "He was always extremely focused and exceptionally polite."

13. On the set of Francis Ford Coppola 's The Outsiders , featuring a veritable who's-who of '80s-era heartthrobs , prankster Cruise scrawled "Helter Skelter" on co-star Diane Lane 's mirror and put honey on her toilet seat.

14. The only direction Cruise received for his iconic Risky Business dance to "Old Time Rock and Roll" was one line in the script: "Joel dances in underwear through the house." He ad-libbed the rest, grabbing the candlestick, "using it as a guitar, jumping on the table. I waxed half the floor and kept the other half dirty, so I could slide in on my socks. As we went along, I threw more stuff in," he shared with Crowe in 1986.

15. Cruise dated his Risky Business co-star Rebecca De Mornay , who called him a "pure person." She told Rolling Stone in 1986, "There's something earnest and virtuous about him that's quite rare." According to Taps co-star Sean Penn , they were out at a club in New York one night and after realizing that a girl he was talking to was trying to pick him up, Cruise "screamed at her, 'I have a girlfriend I'm in love with!'" (Perhaps at the time readers thought Penn might be exaggerating.) He and De Mornay started dating in the summer of 1983 and maintained a long-distance relationship while he shot Ridley Scott 's Legend in London, but broke up when he returned to the U.S. to start making Top Gun .

16. Top Gun producers Jerry Bruckheimer and Don Simpson envisioned no one other than Cruise playing Maverick after they saw a magazine story about the elite flying school at San Diego's Miramar Naval Air Station and went down to see the hot shots in person. "From the first time we went down to Miramar—even before the script was written—we said, 'These guys are Tom Cruises,'" Bruckheimer told Rolling Stone .

17. Although Cruise also told Rolling Stone in 1986 that he wasn't sure he would be able to get married in his "present state of mind," he tied the knot with  Mimi Rogers on May 9, 1987, two years after meeting her at a dinner party. Emilio Estevez  was Cruise's best man.

18. Paul Newman , his co-star in 1987's The Color of Money , turned him on to race car driving and Cruise has been feeling the need for speed on land and in the air (and sometimes on the water) ever since. Years later the student became the teacher when, in 2010, Cruise taught Zac Efron  about motorcycles. "I don't know," Efron told Details when asked why Cruise offered to do that. "I don't even want to know. It's just so cool that he gave a s--t, the fact that he cared at all."

19. Mimi and her first husband, Jim Rogers , were both members of the Church of Scientology (Jim was a high-level auditor) and she's said to have introduced Cruise to the organization, giving him L. Ron Hubbard 's Dianetics and other literature. His immersion in Scientology coincided with the release of Top Gun and the actor becoming one of the biggest stars in the world, and to this day Cruise remains the most famous member of the church.

20. Despite being critically panned, 1988's Cocktail , starring Cruise as a playboy bartender, gave Disney its biggest opening weekend ever at the time: $11.8 million.

21. According to Morton's 2008 biography  Tom Cruise , director Oliver Stone wanted Tom to be injected with a chemical that would have rendered him temporarily paralyzed so he could better identify with the role of real-life Vietnam War veteran and activist Ron Kovic in 1989's  Born on the Fourth of July . The insurance company understandably shut that idea down. The film still won two Oscars, best editing and best director for Stone, so it worked out.

22. People named Cruise its "Sexiest Man Alive" in 1990. Soon after, he and Rogers divorced. When Vanity Fair  asked about his first marriage in 1994, Cruise replied tersely , "It was a long time ago. I really don't think about it."

23. Cruise met Nicole Kidman  during casting for the racing drama Days of Thunder and they tied the knot on Dec. 24, 1990. They adopted two children, Isabella and Connor , and starred in two more movies together, Far and Away and Eyes Wide Shut .

After Isabella arrived, Cruise told Vanity Fair in 1994 , "We talked about children from time to time, but there was always the work. But then we went, When is it ever going to be the right time? That's how the conversation started. You're lying in bed at night and you're trying to sleep, so you roll over and you go, What would happen if we had this in our life?

"One of the things that Nic and I talk about is that now suddenly we're a family. We're at that point where we're trying to define where we are. Can we still party? Are we really boring? Oh, my God . . . we're old!"

24. Disney had Cruise in mind when they created the look of the title character in 1992's Aladdin . "There's a confidence with all of his attitudes and his poses," lead animator Glen Keane said in a DVD extras feature.

25. An old tabloid go-to back in the 1980s and '90s was to claim that this or that star was gay, and Cruise was aware that the rumor was out there.

"First of all, I don't think it's an indictment," Cruise told Vanity Fair in 1994. "But I hadn't heard those rumors till about three months ago myself… I don't know why they say it. I've heard everything from I've cheated on my wife to my wife was there on the set of  The Firm  because she was pissed off about my love scene on the beach. It's not true, but people are going to say what they want to say."

26. Cruise wanted Brian De Palma to direct Mission: Impossible , which would mark his debut as a producer with his agent turned partner Paula Wagner , even though De Palma was in movie jail following several flops. Cruise even deferred his $20 million salary (not including his back-end deal) so they could raise the movie's budget. Mission accomplished: M:I made almost $500 million worldwide and spawned a franchise . De Palma, however, didn't attend the film's premiere in May 1996, reportedly because he and Cruise didn't always see eye to eye during production.

27. Shooting M:I , Cruise insisted they use a fan big enough to create the 120 mile-per-hour wind he'd be facing if he was really clinging to a bullet train while a helicopter exploded behind him. A crew member told Galloway, "He said, 'I want the wind blowing in my face and I want my jaws to be blowing.' That's Tom. He's a guy's guy."

28. The intense Eyes Wide Shut shoot was scheduled to last four months but ended up keeping Tom and Nicole in London for 18 months. Also during their time in England, as fate would have it, they attended Princess Diana 's funeral in September 1997, as did with Tom Hanks  and Steven Spielberg , who were in town making Saving Private Ryan .

29. "All I can say is that I hope we are together when we are 80," Nicole Kidman told  Talk  in 2000. "I can't say we will be, but I will be so devastated if we are not." Alas, they announced their separation on Feb. 5, 2001. "She knows why, and I know why," Cruise cryptically told Vanity Fair later that year. "She's the mother of my children, and I wish her well. And I think that you just move on. And I don't say that lightly. I don't say that with anything."

30. Penélope Cruz  successfully sued an Australian tabloid in June 2003, winning damages and a retraction over a story claiming she and then-boyfriend Cruise had postponed their impending marriage because she had cheated on him. They broke up in January 2004 after more than two years of dating, a source telling People the relationship "just ran its course."

31. The Church of Scientology denied a 2012 Vanity Fair report that Homeland actress Nazanin Boniadi , then a church member, had basically been recruited to date Cruise for a few months, starting in October 2004 with a group outing that included renting the skating rink at Rockefeller Center and dinner at Nobu. "I'd rather not talk about that," Boniadi told the New York Post in 2013.

32. Cruise specifically held out for J.J. Abrams to direct Mission: Impossible III —Abrams' feature film debut—after watching some episodes of Alias . Paramount was freaking out, wanting M:I3 for a summer 2005 tentpole release, which wasn't going to happen if Cruise and Abrams—busy at the moment with a show called Lost —got their way, but it turned out Cruise had an ace up his sleeve. Spielberg was ready to roll with War of the Worlds in time to give Paramount the summer blockbuster it needed while they waited for Abrams to become available.

33. On May 23, 2005, a giddy Cruise raised his arms in victory, got down on one knee and did a couple of fist pumps, and then jumped up on Oprah Winfrey 's couch (also twice), fueled by love for his new girlfriend, Katie Holmes . "You're gone," the talk show host observed.

"I've got so much energy, I can't help it," Cruise said.

They were both laughing hysterically and the studio audience was cheering, but… maybe you had to be there?

Lest anyone forget, Holmes was at the taping and Winfrey led a chant for her to come out. "She's gonna run!" Cruise exclaimed. "She is freaking out ." Then he took off for backstage to go get her, the camera trailing him, and once they had emerged Cruise enveloped the Dawson's Creek star in a hug.

That moment unwittingly set the tone for Cruise and Holmes' entire relationship, romantic to many but to everyone… just a lot .

34. A month later, Cruise accused Matt Lauer  of being "glib" when the Today host questioned his take on mental health care—specifically, his dismissal of psychiatry and his criticism of Brooke Shields ' "irresponsible" use of medication to treat postpartum depression.

35. Cruise and Holmes' daughter, Suri Cruise , was born on April 18, 2006.

36. Mission: Impossible III came out on May 5, 2006, and did… fine. It was (and remains) the lowest-grossing installment of the franchise, making $134 million domestically, but more memorably it marked the moment where folks started wondering if Cruise had lost his movie-star mojo, if his unadulterated zeal had turned off audiences for good. Not making it better: Paramount severed its 14-year relationship with Cruise's production company that August, and then-Viacom Chairman Sumner Redstone actually told the Wall Street Journal , "We don't think that someone who effectuates creative suicide and costs the company revenue should be on the lot. His recent conduct has not been acceptable to Paramount."

37. Suri was introduced to the world on the September 2006 cover of Vanity Fair , zipped up in her father's leather jacket akin to how Paul McCartney   snuggled daughter Mary on the cover of his 1970 solo album McCartney . The first glimpse at the cover was a huge get for Katie Couric 's first night as lead anchor of the CBS Evening News .

38. Cruise and Holmes' wedding at the 15th-century Castello Orsini-Odescalchi in Rome on Nov. 18, 2016, reportedly cost upward of $3 million . Guest Giorgio Armani designed the bride's ceremony and reception dresses and attendees included Will Smith  and Jada Pinkett Smith , John Travolta  and Kelly Preston , David  and Victoria Beckham , Jim Carrey  and Jenny McCarthy , Leah Remini  and Angelo Pagan , and Jennifer Lopez  and Marc Anthony . Andrea Bocelli performed.

39. Church of Scientology leader David Miscavige was Cruise's best man. According to Remini, who left the church in 2013, a traditional Scientology wedding ceremony includes the vow "to never close their eyes in sleep on a disagreement or an upset."

40. Shields and husband Chris Henchy were also in attendance, Cruise having apologized for publicly disparaging his Endless Love co-star's use of medication to treat postpartum depression. "If you get invited to that wedding, you go," Shields recalled on The Jenny McCarthy Show in 2016. The actress even provided the bride's "something old": an antique enamel compact.

41. 2010's Knight and Day with Cameron Diaz  was widely treated as some sort of "comeback" movie for Cruise, a test to see if he could still have a monster action movie hit after Mission: Impossible III underwhelmed.

"I don't understand why people think that," he marveled to the U.K.'s Telegraph . "I've been working the whole time."

42. His roles in the interim had included his unrecognizable—and hilarious—surprise turn as crass, bullying, bald and fat studio exec Les Grossman in Ben Stiller 's Tropic Thunder , for which he earned a Golden Globe nomination.

"I had about a dozen people making the silicone prosthetics for his head, neck, chest, and hands," makeup designer Barney Burman recalled to Grantland . "We made him special gloves. I did the sculpting, someone else did the molds, someone else was casting them. I had six different people punching hairs into the scalp piece, so his entire head was one-at-a-time, hand-punched hairs; his arms were hand-punched one at a time; his chest was hand-punched."

Added Aida Caefer , "I made the fat suits for Tom Cruise. He was all for  the more ridiculous, the better . The suit went from his neck all the way down to his ankles…The character moved around a lot and he was so soaked in sweat that we had rotating suits for him—one in the morning and one after lunch."

"Tom choreographed all his own moves," Stiller said. "I remember watching him do this stuff and thinking this is so frigging funny."

43. The rumor that Cruise turned down the role of Iron Man, which would have changed the whole vibe of the Marvel Universe, is not true, he says. "Not close," he told ComicBook.com in 2018 when asked if he was really almost Tony Stark. "Not close, and I love Robert Downey Jr. I can't imagine anyone else in that role, and I think it's perfect for him."

44. For 2011's Mission: Impossible—Ghost Protocol , Cruise hung off the edge of the Burj Khalifa in Dubai—the world's tallest building—without a double (though with the appropriate wires). And while he'd been doing as much of his own physical laboring as possible for decades, this reinvigorated Cruise's reputation as the guy who does all the death-defying stunts the insurance companies will allow. The film's $695 million worldwide box office also signaled that Cruise's reputation had preceded him—in a good way.

45. Holmes filed for divorce in June 2012. Her father, attorney Martin Holmes , had helped draft their prenuptial agreement and all was remarkably settled within weeks. And neither of them have ever talked about what happened . They've acknowledged that they were once married to each other, but why it ended has remained anyone's guess. And, oh, how the people have guessed.

46. Eyebrows were raised when the 5-foot-7 Cruise was tapped to play 6-foot-5 vigilante Jack Reacher from Lee Childs ' best-selling novel series.

"Size in my books is a metaphor for an unstoppable force," Childs explained. "Cruise portrays that in his own way."

47. Not as initially OK with the creative license was Interview With the Vampire   author Ann Rice , who according to Vanity Fair was livid in the early '90s when Cruise was cast to play Lestat, having written the character with Rutger Hauer in mind.

"It always helps if one is controversial in casting a movie," director Neil Jordan said. "I just thought that if Tom was willing to go the distance this character demands—and he was—then we could end up with something quite extraordinary, and we did."

48. Mission: Impossible—Rogue Nation was legendary before it hit theaters in 2015 for Cruise's viral airplane stunt, in which he hung onto the door of an Airbus A400M as it took off. For real. He also did his own motorcycle chase and learned how to hold his breath for six and a half minutes for the underwater document swap.

49. He was back on the bike for Mission: Impossible—Fallout and "when the [safety] rigs didn't work, we just went for it," director Christopher McQuarrie told the New York Times . "Everything that you're seeing Tom doing, he's doing free riding on cold cobblestones. Sometimes there was rain; sometimes there was morning dew. There was always a danger of skidding and wiping out."

Cruise also did his own skydiving along with Henry Cavill 's stunt double, dangled from a rope attached to a flying helicopter, and piloted a helicopter for a mid-air chase scene, getting his certification in six weeks. It normally takes three months, McQuarrie said, but Cruise trained for 16 hours a day to cut the time in half.

"Tom was having the time of his life," the director said.

50. Cruise has social media accounts but they are strictly for un-risky business, and he prefers to not know everything that's happening online. "Sometimes I have to for work, but I keep it very limited," he told E! News in 2016. "I don't spend time doing that kind of stuff."

51. Cruise isn't one to let himself go in between physically taxing roles. "Sea-kayaking, caving, fencing, treadmill, weights, rock-climbing, hiking… I jog… I do so many different activities," he has said.

In fact, he refers to his personal workout space—a version of which he takes with him everywhere—as the "Pain Cave."

"Only the motivated can enter," he explained to the AP at the 2017 premiere of The Mummy . "All you got to do is just be motivated. Anyone can come in, we have the crew come in, and we just make it available to everyone."

As co-star Jake Johnson   revealed: "You start every morning with the daily challenge. So before work starts, you're in there. His hair and makeup team is in there, his crew is in there, so there's about 15, 20 people every day doing their squats and jumping jacks. And then I kinda got into it with him…I wanted to be in a Tom Cruise movie and do it the Tom Cruise way."

That includes, alas, avoiding sugar.

"I love sugar," Cruise assured James Corden  on The Late Late Show in 2018, "but I can't eat it because when I'm training, I'm doing all these movies—so I send it to everyone." And then, "I wait for the calls. Like, 'tell me about it.'"

52. Don't tell anyone, but Cruise is human: Aside from what he did to himself running around in childhood, he threw out his back making Legend ; developed an ulcer while shooting Eyes Wide Shut ; tore his labrum scaling a cliff at Dead Horse Point, Utah, for Mission: Impossible 2 ; and broke an ankle on Mission: Impossible—Fallout .

"It was the easy one where I'm running and I jump from one building to the next," Cruise later described the fateful stunt on  The Tonight Show .

53. But this guy commits . In addition to doing three months of helicopter pilot training in six weeks and learning how to hold his breath like he's David Blaine , he played pool for 12 hours a day to play Fast Eddie Felson's protegee in The Color of Money. He lost 18 pounds and read classic books out loud to work on his diction to play centuries-old Lestat in Interview With the Vampire. He learned German to better embody a World War II-era officer in Valkyrie . He actually spent a year and a half learning how to fly a helicopter for  Mission: Impossible—Fallout  (before his whirlwind certification).

54. "I haven't seen him in awhile, but he has sent me a birthday gift every year since I was 11 years old," Dakota Fanning  said on Watch What Happens Live in 2016 about her dad in 2005's War of the Worlds . "Beautiful gifts, it's really kind. I always think, 'Oh, when I'm 18, he'll probably stop. Oh, 21, he'll stop. But every year."

What does Team Cruise pick out? "It's usually shoes," the actress, then 22, shared.

55. In 1986, he told Cameron Crowe , "Let's face it, I'm not saving lives here. I feel fortunate, but this is just one aspect of my life. I love my work, but my family is very important to me, too. You pick up the paper and see that there are many things happening outside my little world."

Since then, the real-life heroics include, all within a few years in the '90s: He lifted two boys over a barricade to prevent them being crushed at the Mission: Impossible premiere in London; he sent his own yacht's skiff to rescue a family whose sailboat was on fire in the Mediterranean in 1996; he rushed to the aid of a woman who had been mugged in London; and he paid the $7,000 emergency room bill for an uninsured cashier who was injured in a hit and run—an accident Cruise witnessed.

"It's just an impulse," Cruise told People in 2000 about his spate of good deeds. "I was never a Boy Scout, so maybe I'm making up for it now."

Or, as he said in the video of an interview for his church that went viral in 2008, "You can't drive past an accident, because as a Scientologist you are the only one who can help"

56. Though he's the most famous face of Scientology, Cruise is incredibly protective of his beliefs and doesn't say too much about it publicly. But in October 2016, he told ITV at the London premiere of Jack Reacher: Never Go Back , "It's something that has helped me incredibly in my life. I've been a Scientologist for over 30 years. It's something that is, you know...without it, I wouldn't be where I am. So, it's a beautiful religion. I'm incredibly proud."

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Time to level up your local game with narcity pro., you'll never believe that these 10 celebrities were born or raised in ottawa.

Just thinking about it, Ottawa doesn't have the amount of born celebrities that Toronto has.   That is, until you do your research. We sometimes get so caught up in what Ottawa doesn't have, we forget what it does. I mean, in my opinion, Chandler Bing is one of the greatest characters on any TV show. And even though Matthew Perry technically isn't a born Ottawian (did I just make that up?), knowing he walked around these streets just like any normal person makes me feel pretty damn cool.

Some of these people you may not know, nor care about.  However, it's always cool to see which celebrities were born in your own hometown, or even lived here for a short period of time. I mean, who knew Tom Cruise was strutting around Ottawa at one point? I definitely didn't! So here are 10 celebrities you didn't know were born or raised in Ottawa, or maybe you did know. But here's a refresher anyways.

1. Kelly Rowan

Known for:  The O.C.

Kelly Rowan was born and raised in Ottawa before moving to Toronto. She studied at the University of Western Ontario before leaving to pursue acting. She is best known for playing Kirsten Cohen in the TV drama The O.C..

2. Matthew Perry

Known for:  Friends

Although Matthew Perry was born in Massachusetts,  he was raised in Ottawa by his mom and studied at Ashbury College. He is best known for portraying Chandler Bing n the T.V. comedy Friends. He is also known to be a huge Ottawa Senators fan, and can be spotted at some of the games.

3. Tom Cruise

Known for:  Mission: Impossible, Jerry Maguire, Vanilla Sky

Tom Cruise lived in Ottawa from grades 4 - 6 when his father took a job here.  He found his love for acting while improvising at a Carleton Elementary School drama festival. I could tell you what Tom Cruise is famous for, but I think we're all pretty much aware of that.

4. Sandra Oh

Known for:  Grey's Anatomy

Sandra Oh was born and raised in Nepean and studied ballet and acting growing up.  She had her high school experience at Sir Robert Borden, where she discovered her true love for acting. She turned down a 4-year scholarship to Carleton, and decided to study at the National Theatre School of Canada. She is best known for her sarcastic character, Cristina Yang, on Grey's Anatomy.

5. Alanis Morrisette

Known for:  You Oughta Know, Thank U, Hand In My Pocket (Songs)

Alanis Morrisette was born and raised in Ottawa.  She started playing the piano at age six, and studied at Immaculata High School for grade 7 and 8. She's known for her real and raw alternative rock music.

6. Tom Green

Known for:  Road Trip, and the MTV show 'The Tom Green Show'

Tom Green was born in Pembroke, but later moved to Gloucester.  He studied television broadcasting at Algonquin College. He's best known for being a comedian, as well as an actor.

7. Sarah Chalke

Known for:  Roseanne, Scrubs, How I Met Your Mother

Sarah Chalke was born in Ottawa, but was raised in Vancouver.  She began acting at age 8 and was a TV host for a Canadian kids show called KidZone at age 12. She's best known for playing Dr. Elliot Reid on Scrubs and Stella on How I Met Your Mother.

8. Melinda Shankar

Known for: Degrassi

Melinda Shankar was born in Ottawa and raised in Orleans until moving to Toronto in grade 11.  She then booked the role of Alli Bhandari on Degrassi, which she played for 6 seasons.

9. Jay Baruchel

Known for:  Knocked Up, This Is The End, How To Train Your Dragon

Jay Baruchel was born in Ottawa before being raised in Montreal.  He co-hosted Popular Mechanics for Kids with fellow Canadian actress Elisha Cuthbert. He's best known for his comedic acting in This Is The End and Knocked Up.

10. Simon Huck

Known for:  Keeping Up With The Kardashians

Simon Huck was born in Ottawa, and moved to New York City in 2003 to start up a PR company.  He is best known for being a family friend to the Kardashians, and is frequently shown on Kim's Instagram as well as Keeping Up With The Kardashians.

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Canadian celeb news: dan levy's 'barbie' regret & jared leto's big sequel in vancouver, canadian celeb news: michelle yeoh is all over toronto & avril lavigne's going on tour, 14 celebrities who have spent the holidays in canada & where you may spot them this christmas, these celebs will be in vancouver in april and these are the films and shows they're working on, 10 films & shows are filming in vancouver in march & here's which celebs will be in town, canadian celeb news: an nba star visits toronto & chelsea handler hits the slopes in whistler, torontonians are sharing their celeb encounters around the city and one athlete is a 'gem', justin bieber: 10 facts you might not know about the singer's life growing up in ontario, these 9 celebs are big nhl fans & here's who you might bump into at the next home game, canadian celeb news: justin bieber showing his canuck roots, 'the last of us' updates & more, these celebrities will be filming in toronto in february & here's where you can spot them, celeb sightings toronto: alexander skarsgard at pai & canadian stars show up for hockey.

Tom Cruise and Warner Bros. Discovery announce partnership to develop new movies

Tom Cruise has entered the next phase of his personal mission to save the movie theater industry.

The “Top Gun” star and Warner Bros. Discovery are teaming up to develop and produce original and franchise theatrical films starting this year, according to a news release on Tuesday. (Warner Bros. Discovery is the parent company of CNN.)

“Excited to share this news. I look forward to making great movies together!” Cruise wrote on his Instagram Tuesday, alongside a photo of the studio’s announcement.

• Top entertainment headlines, all in one place

“We are thrilled to be working with Tom, an absolute legend in the film industry. Our vision, from day one, has been to rebuild this iconic studio to the heights of its glory days,” Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group co-chairs and CEOs Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy said in a statement on Tuesday.

Their statement went on to say that Warner Bros. Discovery CEO and president David Zaslav encouraged a partnership with Cruise as the studio continues its “mission to bring Warner Bros. back.”

Tuesday’s announcement did not elaborate on specific projects they’re developing together, but Cruise has a storied history with Warner Bros., having previously starred in iconic films produced and distributed by the studio such as “Edge of Tomorrow,” “Rock of Ages,” “Magnolia,” “Eyes Wide Shut” and “Risky Business,” among others.

Cruise has been an outspoken advocate for audiences seeing films in the movie theater amid the pandemic and rise of at-home streaming platforms, taking to his own social media to encourage moviegoers to head to the theater to see some of 2023’s biggest blockbusters like “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer.”

He was also praised by director Steven Spielberg last year, who said 2022’s “Top Gun: Maverick” – the long-awaited sequel of the 1986 original “Top Gun” film in which he starred – “might have saved the entire theatrical industry.”

The sequel brought in nearly US$1.5 billion worldwide since its September 2022 theatrical release, making it the fifth highest-grossing film in North American history.

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Actor trained for a year to pull off most death-defying stunt yet in the ‘Mission: Impossible’ movies

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NEW YORK CITY — After Tom Cruise dangled off the Burj Khalifa, clung to the side of a plane and performed a dangerous HALO jump stunt — all as part of his ongoing Mission: Impossible series — the action star didn’t have to think long about what was going to come next.

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Tom cruise reveals why he shot crazy ‘mission: impossible 7’ stunt on first day of filming back to video.

He wanted to try a motorcycle jump off the face of a cliff 1,200-feet above sea level before opening his parachute just 500-feet from the ground where he would then speed fly the rest of the way down.

Cruise, 61, rehearsed for a year before performing the stunt off Norway’s Helsetkopen mountain on the first day of principle filming on Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One , which opens in theatres today.

On the day he shot the stunt, he had a lot on his mind. “I was thinking about opening my chute at the last possible moment. I was thinking about the cameras on the edge of the cliff. I’m hoping I’m not going to get blown off the ramp by the helicopter. I’m hoping I don’t tumble. There was a lot of things going on with the performance,” Cruise said breaking into a smile Monday night at the New York premiere of Dead Reckoning . “There was a lot going on that day.”

The jaw-dropping manoeuvre was declared by Cruise’s Mission castmates on the winding red carpet as the series’ best.

It was a sequence he first started thinking about as a child, in love with the movies. So he wanted to get it out of the way when filming on the sequel started in September 2020.

“I trained very hard,” Cruise told Postmedia of taking on something so daunting on the first day of production. “I don’t want that hanging over my head. I trained, so let’s get it done … let’s get it over with.”

”Doing that on the first day was Tom’s idea,” writer-director Christopher McQuarrie, 54, told Postmedia. “That motorcycle jump — we spent months rehearsing it and when we got out there on the day, nothing we planned really applied and we had to start from scratch.”

But it’s not just a death-defying motorcycle jump. Cruise races through the streets of Rome in a tiny Fiat (while handcuffed to co-star Hayley Atwell), fights atop a speeding train, and speed flies down a mountainside.

”They were all challenging in their own way,” McQuarrie says of Dead Reckoning’s edge-of-your-seat thrills. “The desert sequence was extremely difficult, creating that sandstorm. The airport scene had so many logistical challenges since we were at the height of the pandemic. Drifting in Rome on those cobblestone streets gave the car a mind of its own.”

McQuarrie and his production team also crash a full-size train in the film’s gasp-inducing finale.

”The train sequence was probably the most complicated one we’ve ever shot,” he said.

Then there was the pandemic. Dead Reckoning was the first Hollywood blockbuster to go before cameras in the fall of 2020 as Cruise and his producing partners tried to restart the filmmaking industry.

“There was a tremendous amount of pressure and I kept saying, ‘This is going to work. We’re going to do this.’ You just have to take everything else out and just be present and be in the moment,” Cruise said.

Cruise’s return this week as Impossible Mission Force agent Ethan Hunt in Dead Reckoning finds him and his team of spies — which includes Rebecca Ferguson, Ving Rhames and Simon Pegg — going after a world-ending artificial intelligence threat known as the Entity.

His pursuit brings him into conflict with old adversaries played by newcomer Esai Morales and franchise vets Henry Czerny  and Vanessa Kirby. Along the way, Hunt finds himself allied with a fast-talking pickpocket (played by Atwell).

McQuarrie, who has enjoyed a creative partnership with Cruise that dates back to 2008 when they worked on the Hitler assassination thriller Valkyrie together , said he knew right after the last Mission that his next story would need to be split into two.

”I knew from Fallout , which was nearly two-and-a-half hours, that we had a bigger movie this time. So I said, ‘Let’s give ourselves the space by making a two-part movie.’ The action was there, but I wanted to spend more time with the characters.”

The Mission: Impossible series is now entering its 27th year after the 1996 original, which was directed by Brian De Palma.

McQuarrie credit’s the franchise’s enduring popularity to Cruise’s commitment to finding new ways to thrill moviegoers.

”That’s all down to Tom. He’s all about entertaining the audience. He’s all about big-screen emotional shared experience. We take things from all the movies we’ve previously done, whether it’s movies we’ve done together or separately, and we just put it into the next thing and we’re all in.”

Cruise said he hasn’t tired of the series because he and McQuarrie — who has been with the franchise since writing 2010’s Ghost Protocol — keep coming up with new ways to challenge his hero.

”There’s constant adventures that we can take this character on,” he said. “To be able to expand it with the cast that we have, McQ and I really wanted to blow this one out and make it a big, big epic adventure. And I get to travel the world. I always wanted to go make movies and travel the world. I wanted to be in other cultures, and not just visit. You get to know people by working with them, and then to be able celebrate and show people things that we love in different countries and every time there’s always something new. To be able to have something that we can share and make for the big screen I think today it’s important to do that for audiences. That’s what I love doing.”

After Cruise screens each new Mission film, he famously turns to McQuarrie and says, “We can do better.”

But with Dead Reckoning Part Two already deep in production, McQuarrie stopped him before he could finish that sentence this time around.

”At the end of Part One , he turned to me and he was about to say it, and I said, ‘We already did.’ Wait until you see Part Two .”

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Tom Cruise broke up with Elsina Khayrova over his team’s concerns about her chatty ex-hubby: sources

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Tom Cruise split from his Russian socialite girlfriend in order to avoid issues with her outspoken oligarch ex, a source tells Page Six.

Following news that Cruise and Elsina Khayrova were dating , her ex-husband — the colorful international diamond trader, Dmitry Tsvetkov — gave a long interview to the Daily Mail detailing their marriage and warning Cruise to “keep his eyes and wallet wide open.” 

A source tells us that the article worried the very private star’s team.

“He’s filming and can’t be shooting and have her husband saying stuff every time he is mentioned in the press,” a source told us. “They just didn’t want to deal with the ex husband coming up with something nasty to say every few weeks.” 

Tsetkov — who reportedly prefers the term “tycoon” over oligarch — also somewhat unusually continuously fanned over Cruise during the interview, calling him his “favorite actor,” stating he has seen “Eyes Wide Shut” a whopping 30 times (and also loves “Rain Man” and “The Firm”), and added that he talked with a Hollywood producer pal about having Cruise play him in a movie about his life.

“I told the producer that the only actor who could play me is Tom Cruise,” quipped Tsetkov to the UK outlet. “We’re about the same height and weight and I would be honored if that could happen. I couldn’t think of anyone better to play me than Tom. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to meet him one day to discuss this project.”

Cruise has been making headlines as he currently films his eighth “Mission: Impossible” movie. The actor, 61, who known for doing his own stunts, was most recently seen sprinting through London for a scene.

The Sun reported that Cruise and Khayrova had split in late February with a source telling the outlet, “There are no hard feelings between them and, for Tom, their relationship simply ran its course.”

The wealthy Russian socialite is the daughter of a Vladamir Putin ally, Russian politician Rinat Khayrova. 

Tsetkov, who has British citizenship and was reportedly on the Kremlin’s most wanted list in 2020, claims to have survived assassination attempts .

In the Daily Mail article, he also said he spent over $12 million on clothes and approximately $2.5 million on handbags for his ex during their 11 year marriage. He also claimed he lost nearly $200 million in the divorce. 

Their  split made international headlines  as millions were in dispute, including a mansion in Surrey, England, five London apartments, a Bentley and a Ferrari, plus Cartier jewelry and artwork by Renoir and Chagall.

“Irrespective of whoever she’s with, Tom Cruise or anybody else, they should be aware that she likes the finer things in life and has expensive and luxurious tastes,” he told the publication.

But we hear that Khayrova, 36, is still hopeful she and Cruise could rekindle their romance. “She didn’t do anything wrong,” says our source. 

However, she doesn’t seem to be taking the breakup too badly. She has been Instagramming from the luxe Amara hotel in Cyprus this week.

On Thursday, she posted an image on Instagram Stories of herself saying: “A woman’s energy is reflected in her daily practice of loving, appreciating, and accepting herself, as well as recognizing her own worth,” with a heart emoji.

In another, a caption read, “Always in love,” with a heart emoji.

Khayrova and Cruise were first spotted together publicly at a party in December in London’s Grosvenor Square, and Page Six exclusively reported that they had met when a friend of Khayrova’s brought her to one of his exclusive Sunday tea parties at his Hyde Park penthouse.

“He has butlers and homemade cakes, and it’s all very British,” said our source at the time.

In June 2022, Page Six  exclusively reported  that Cruise was shopping for apartments in the UK after falling in love with London.

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CP24 BREAKING NEWS IN TORONTO AND BEYOND

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'What's up with the traffic in Toronto?': Tom Cruise asks in recent interview, Chow responds

Phil Tsekouras , CTVNewsToronto.ca Journalist

Ahead of the release of his latest summer blockbuster, Tom Cruise was asked if he would accept what some Toronto residents might consider a truly impossible mission: Can you keep a cool head in the city’s traffic?

ETalk’s Sonia Mangat sat down with the action movie star in Rome before “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One” hits theatres next week.

“I say, you sneak in a stunt in Part Two and you come to Toronto. And you take on the traffic in Toronto for two hours. Without road rage,” Mangat challenged Cruise in an exclusive interview.

Not one to refuse a mission, Cruise accepted, and added he has driven in Toronto in the past and shares the frustrations with motorists in the city.

“You know what, I have done that challenge and I have been in that traffic. I’ve made movies in Toronto, I’ve visited Toronto, I have friends in Toronto,” Cruise said with a laugh.

Though it’s been some time since Cruise was last in the city shooting a movie – his 1988 rom-com ‘Cocktail” was largely filmed in Toronto – Toronto’s grid-lock has obviously left a lasting impression.

“What’s up with the traffic in Toronto? Have they figured this out?” Cruise added.

Earlier this year, Toronto made headlines for being among the worst cities in the world for congestion.

In a report published in January, traffic analytics company INRIX said commuters in the city lost an average 118 hours on Greater Toronto Area roads and highways to congestion in 2022.

At peak traffic times that year, the report said, the average speed for drivers in the GTA was a sluggish 20 km/h.

In North America, Toronto was only outdone by Chicago and Boston, where on-peak traffic times saw drivers in those cities lose 155 hours and 134 hours to congestion in 2022, respectively.

The traffic in Toronto has likely not gotten much better in the months since that report was released.

On May 1, a busy section of Queen Street from Bay Street to Yonge Street, was closed for an expected four-and-a-half years as construction on the Ontario Line gets underway.

As well, on Tuesday, the city began construction in the east end on Broadview Avenue where crews are working to replace tracks and resurface roads between Gerrard Street and Danforth Avenue. That project is expected to last five months.

'TRAFFIC IS A PROBLEM': CHOW AGREES WITH CRUISE

In an unrelated news conference Thursday, mayor-elect Olivia Chow responded to Cruise’s comments.

“Well, you know what Tom Cruise says is always right, right?” she joked.

Chow seemed to agree with the movie star and said improved transit could help clear the congestion and pointed to the city’s lack of reliable service as part of the issue.

“Traffic is a problem. [Cruise’s comment] echoes the report we saw from the Board of Trade yesterday to say that our public transit system could be so much better if it was more reliable,” Chow said.

That report showed that Toronto had the least reliable transit service in 2022 compared to other municipalities in the region. Of the transit options in the GTA, Toronto had the lowest score for reliability with only 58 per cent of trips being on time.

Chow added that better coordination on city construction projects would also go a long way in freeing up laneways and advocated for the increased use of alternative modes of transportation like walking and cycling.

You can catch more of Mangat’s interviews with Cruise and the rest of the cast of "Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One" as Etalk counts down to the film’s release on July 12th, weeknights at 7 p.m. ET on CTV

With files from Abby O'Brien 

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Tom Cruise Seen Sprinting Down Street in London as He Shoots Next Mission: Impossible Movie

The eighth 'Mission: Impossible' film, which does not yet have a title, is expected in theaters May 23, 2025

Mega / Dean - Click News And Media / SplashNews.com

Tom Cruise is showing no signs of slowing down in the next Mission: Impossible movie.

On Sunday, Cruise, 61, was seen sprinting down a street in London while filming a scene for the upcoming eighth film in his signature action franchise. The actor could be seen wearing a black suit with a white shirt opened at the top, with fake blood drenched over his chest while filming the sequence.

Cruise most recently appeared as his Mission: Impossible character Ethan Hunt in last year's Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning , which made $172 million at the  domestic box office . Dead Reckoning also earned the franchise its first-ever Academy Award nominations when it received nods for Best Visual Effects and Best Sound at the recent 96th Oscars ceremony.

A title for the upcoming eighth Mission: Impossible movie has not yet been announced. The next film was originally set for release on June 28, but production delays related to 2023's SAG-AFTRA strike forced the film to restart production in the fall and delay its release until May 23, 2025, as Deadline reported back in October.

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Dead Reckoning left Cruise's character Ethan Hunt and series regulars Luther (Ving Rhames) and Benji (Simon Pegg) at odds with villain Gabriel (Esai Morales) and forging new alliances with characters like Grace (Hayley Atwell) over a battle for control over a sentient artificial intelligence.

James Gourley/Getty Images for Paramount Pictures

The eighth Mission: Impossible film is just one movie among a number of projects Cruise has in development. In February, PEOPLE confirmed Cruise will star in the next movie from The Revenant filmmaker  Alejandro G. Iñárritu , while The Hollywood Reporter  reported in January that Paramount is developing Top Gun 3 as a sequel to Cruise's major 2022 success Top Gun: Maverick .

Cruise, known for his penchant for performing his own stunts, was recently seen climbing the iconic Hollywood Sign in Los Angeles' Hollywood Hills on March 16 accompanied by a film crew. A representative for Cruise did not respond to PEOPLE's request for comment Monday. While it's unclear what Cruise was filming on Saturday, the stunt did not appear related to the next Mission: Impossible film.

Mission: Impossible 8 is expected in theaters May 23, 2025.

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