What Really Happened To Tom Cruise & Katie Holmes?

Tom Cruise Is Hollywood’s Daredevil-in-Chief
HOME
MOVIES
TELEVISION
ACTORS
MUSIC
Thrilling Facts About Tom Cruise, Hollywood Maverick
June 18, 2025 |
Miles Brucker
Thrilling Facts About Tom Cruise, Hollywood Maverick
Hollywood's Maverick
No one says “blockbuster” like Cruise, and no one gives their all the way that he does—after all, who else has scaled the Burj Khalifa for a part? But behind the scenes, Cruise’s legacy is a lot more complicated.
Advertisement
1. He’s Not Really A Cruise
We know him as Tom Cruise, but he was born Thomas Cruise Mapother IV—the only brother to three sisters. His parents were Mary Lee, a special education teacher, and his father and namesake, Thomas Cruise Mapother III, was an electrical engineer. Sadly, the name wasn’t the only thing that Cruise’s father gave him.
Getty Images, Getty Images
Advertisement
2. His Home Life Was Unbearable
Cruise’s family didn’t have it easy in those early years. His father found it difficult to hold down a job, and with four mouths to feed, they didn’t have much money— but that wasn’t the only reason for their struggle.  Cruise confessed that his father would regularly beat him, and that he rarely felt safe around the man, calling him an “merchant of chaos” and a “bully.”
Gage Skidmore, Flickr
Advertisement
3. Things Weren’t Much Better Outside
Cruise’s father should have been a source of support and stability, but he provided neither. If he wasn’t emotionally or physically abusing his kids, he was uprooting the family in search of the next job. This had a dire effect on Cruise—without routine in his life or consistency in his education, he fell behind.
He was doing poorly in school, was small for his age, and had few friends. It was not  an easy time for Cruise.
Bart Sherkow, Shutterstock
Advertisement
4. He Was Always The Outcast
As a result of his father constantly moving the family, Tom Cruise actually went to 15 different schools in 12 years. Imagine the difficulty of being the new kid in school 15 times over. Other kids cruelly preyed on Cruise, and being in remedial classes certainly didn’t help. He was a victim both at home and at school—and things would get worse before they got better.
Vicki L. Miller, Shutterstock
Advertisement
5. He Got Answers He Didn’t Want To Hear
When Cruise was 7 years old, a school psychiatrist diagnosed him with dyslexia. Knowing the reason why he was doing so poorly in school should’ve been a relief, but instead, Cruise took a dark turn . The diagnosis enraged him, and he began to question what it all meant. It’s likely that this moment in his life greatly influenced Cruise’s lifelong grudge against psychiatry. It’s something that would come back to haunt him years later.
Alan Light, Flickr
Advertisement
6. She Finally Ended It
Despite all the difficulty that Cruise faced both at home and at school, there was a bright side to it all: his mother Mary Lee. At different times, she worked three jobs to support the family. Still, she was a caring and warm force in her kid’s lives. When Tom Cruise was in sixth grade, his parents finally divorced. While for many kids, this would be a tragedy, it was a relief for their family.
Carlo Allegri, Getty Images
Advertisement
7. He’s A Daredevil
Cruise loves to do his own stunts for his films, and this penchant for danger didn’t just come out of nowhere. He began trying out risky endeavors when he was barely out of diapers—sometimes, with disastrous results. When he was just three or four years old, he took the sheets from his bed and tried to use them to parachute off the garage roof.
Young Cruise woke up on the ground, dazed. Luckily, since then, his stunts have tended to have less dangerous results—although there have been a handful of very  close calls.
Paramount Pictures, Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation (2015)
Advertisement
8. They Escaped In The Middle Of The Night
Drama and turmoil filled Cruise’s parents’ final moments together, and it culminated in a chilling late-night flight from the family home. Mary Lee meticulously planned how she would leave her husband. She had the kids pack their bags at night and sleep with them beside their beds. They silently packed the car and headed for Kentucky the next morning at 4:30 AM.
There were no goodbyes, and for the next decade, Cruise only saw his father a handful of times.
Dick Thomas Johnson, CC BY 2.0, Wikimedia Commons
Advertisement
9. The Family Was In A Dark Place
The Cruise family went down to his mother’s hometown of Louisville, KY, and began a new life there, without their abusive father. Once again, without a two-income household, they struggled, with each sibling doing their best to chip in. His sisters waitresses, and Cruise did odd jobs for his neighbors. At the same time, he began to exhibit a disturbing dark side.
4kclips, Shutterstock
Advertisement
10. His Fury Knew No Bounds
Cruise’s difficult childhood had left him full of anger and resentment, and he had trouble knowing what to do with the boiling rage that bubbled beneath the surface. He was fiercely protective of his family, and often threatened his sister’s boyfriends. Cruise was boisterous and became the leader of the pack with his rebellious group of friends. He had a chip on his shoulder—and his father was the reason why.
Alan Light, Flickr
Advertisement
11. It Finally Ended
He’d followed the family back to Kentucky. At one point, the two Toms ran into each other, with Sr. inviting the kids to go see a movie together. Cruise outright refused him and told him to stay away from the family. He did. Soon after the divorce was final, Thomas Cruise Mapother III married a widow with four children of her own. The newlyweds then abandoned those children and took off to Florida.
The situation appalled Cruise. For his relationship with his father, it was the final nail in the coffin.
Featureflash Photo Agency, Shutterstock
Advertisement
12. He Couldn’t Cut It
Cruise’s mother had raised him in the Catholic church, and despite his rebellious nature and penchant for fighting, he spent a year in a Franciscan seminary as a teen. There were a few things holding him back from dedicating his life to the church, however, and one of them was girls. Cruise had been a playboy before he even entered high school, racking up girlfriends in Ottawa and Louisville.
At the same time, he was developing a passion for acting—and before long, it would come to change his life.
Georges Biard, CC BY-SA 3.0, Wikimedia Commons
Advertisement
13. He Left The Nest
As soon as Cruise graduated high school, he moved to New York City to begin his career as an actor, with the full support of his mother and her new husband, Jack South. However, it wasn’t always so warm. Cruise had been the man of the house. His relationship with South had a rocky start, but they ultimately bonded. In NYC, Cruise waited tables while looking for acting jobs.
After a few months of that, he decided to give Los Angeles a try. It was a decision he wouldn’t regret.
Frankie Fouganthin, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons
Advertisement
14. He Hit The Ground Running
The phrase “overnight star” is something of a cliché, but it definitely applies to Tom Cruise. First he got a bit part in a film, then two supporting roles. All of a sudden, it happened. Producers were lining up to throw lead roles at him—including the one that cemented his status as a star, Risky Business . Cruise had swagger, youth, good looks, and charisma. He was the total package—but his early years as a star were still filled with ups and downs.
Twentieth Century, Taps (1981)
Advertisement
15. He Was A Ladies’ Man
Cruise’s new lifestyle as an in-demand young star was a 180-degree turn from his modest upbringing— and he definitely took advantage of his newfound fame. He’d always been popular with the ladies, and now, flocks of adoring female fans followed him everywhere he went. In a tell-all memoir, his Risky Business  co-star Curtis Armstrong told a tale of a line-up of women who waited outside Cru…

Text scraped from the landing page for research purposes. © respective owners. This text is sourced from the advertiser's public landing page; for removal, contact dmca@luba.media.