Tom Cruise: Age, Biography, Career and Facts

Tom Cruise (born July 3, 1962) is an American actor and producer, the star of Top Gun and the Mission: Impossible franchise, and one of the most commercially successful movie stars in history. This profile covers his biography, all major movies in order, Mission: Impossible, awards including his 2025 Honorary Oscar, marriages and his latest and upcoming films as of October 2026.

Age

Tom Cruise was born on July 3, 1962 and is 64 years old.

Who is Tom Cruise

Thomas Cruise Mapother IV, known professionally as Tom Cruise, has been a leading man in Hollywood for more than four decades. He became a star in the 1980s with Risky Business and Top Gun, earned four competitive Oscar nominations, and spent nearly 30 years playing IMF agent Ethan Hunt in eight Mission: Impossible films. His honors include three Golden Globes, an Honorary Palme d'Or from the Cannes Film Festival (2022) and an Honorary Academy Award presented at the Governors Awards in November 2025.

Cruise is equally known for insisting on performing his own stunts: climbing the Burj Khalifa, hanging off the side of a military transport plane during takeoff, riding a motorcycle off a Norwegian cliff and, in 2025, setting a Guinness World Record for burning parachute jumps.

Tom Cruise in numbers

Metric	Value
Real name	Thomas Cruise Mapother IV
Birth date and place	July 3, 1962, Syracuse, New York, USA
Golden Globes	3: Born on the Fourth of July, Jerry Maguire, Magnolia
Oscars	4 competitive nominations; Honorary Award (November 16, 2025)
Mission: Impossible films	8 (1996–2025)
Highest-grossing film	Top Gun: Maverick (2022), more than $1 billion worldwide
Guinness World Record	Most burning parachute jumps by an individual: 16 (verified June 4, 2025)
Children	3: Isabella, Connor, Suri

Childhood and early years

Cruise was born in Syracuse, New York, to Thomas Cruise Mapother III, an electrical engineer, and Mary Lee Pfeiffer, a special education teacher. He grew up with three sisters in a family that moved frequently; he has said he attended around 15 schools by the time he was 14, including a period in Ottawa, Canada, where he first acted in a school production. He was diagnosed with dyslexia as a child and has spoken about the difficulties it caused him at school. His parents divorced when he was about 12, and his father, whom he has described as abusive, died in 1984.

As a teenager he briefly attended a Franciscan seminary in Cincinnati with thoughts of becoming a priest. After a high school production of Guys and Dolls in Glen Ridge, New Jersey, he decided to pursue acting, and at 18 he moved to New York.

Breakthrough (1981–1989)

Cruise made his film debut with a small part in Endless Love (1981), followed by Taps (1981) and Francis Ford Coppola's The Outsiders (1983). His dance in socks and a shirt to Bob Seger's "Old Time Rock and Roll" in Risky Business (1983) made him a star, and Tony Scott's Top Gun (1986), in which he played naval aviator Pete "Maverick" Mitchell, made him the biggest young actor in the world.

He then sought out serious directors. He played a pool hustler opposite Paul Newman in Martin Scorsese's The Color of Money (1986), Dustin Hoffman's brother in Barry Levinson's Rain Man (1988), which won Best Picture, and paralyzed Vietnam veteran Ron Kovic in Oliver Stone's Born on the Fourth of July (1989), which brought his first Golden Globe and first Oscar nomination for Best Actor.

Hollywood's biggest star (1990–2009)

In the 1990s Cruise starred in Days of Thunder (1990), Far and Away (1992), Rob Reiner's courtroom drama A Few Good Men (1992), the legal thriller The Firm (1993) and Interview with the Vampire (1994), opposite Brad Pitt. Cameron Crowe's Jerry Maguire (1996), with its lines "Show me the money!" and "You complete me," earned him a second Golden Globe and a second Best Actor nomination. He won his third Golden Globe and a Best Supporting Actor nomination for Paul Thomas Anderson's Magnolia (1999), after working with Stanley Kubrick on Eyes Wide Shut (1999).

The 2000s brought Vanilla Sky (2001), Steven Spielberg's Minority Report (2002), The Last Samurai (2003), Michael Mann's Collateral (2004), in which he played a hitman, and Spielberg's War of the Worlds (2005), a modern retelling of H.G. Wells' novel that became one of the biggest hits of his career. He also made a widely praised comic turn as foul-mouthed studio boss Les Grossman in Tropic Thunder (2008).

Tom Cruise in War of the Worlds

War of the Worlds (2005) was Cruise's second collaboration with Steven Spielberg after Minority Report. Instead of a heroic agent or pilot, he played Ray Ferrier, a divorced New Jersey dock worker who is a poor father to his two children, played by Dakota Fanning and Justin Chatwin, and who has to keep them alive during an alien invasion. The film updated H.G. Wells' 1898 novel for a post-9/11 audience, with tripod machines rising out of the ground and scenes of fleeing crowds that critics compared to news footage. It was one of the highest-grossing films of 2005 and remains one of the most-watched Tom Cruise movies.

Tom Cruise and Mission: Impossible

In 1996 Cruise launched Mission: Impossible, a film adaptation of the 1960s television series, which was also the first film he produced. Directed by Brian De Palma, it introduced Ethan Hunt and the famous wire-suspended vault heist. The franchise grew more ambitious with each entry, and from the fifth film onward Cruise worked closely with writer-director Christopher McQuarrie.

Year	Film	Director	Signature stunt
1996	Mission: Impossible	Brian De Palma	CIA vault break-in; Channel Tunnel train finale
2000	Mission: Impossible 2	John Woo	Free solo climb in Utah
2006	Mission: Impossible III	J.J. Abrams	Bridge attack sequence
2011	Ghost Protocol	Brad Bird	Climbing the Burj Khalifa in Dubai
2015	Rogue Nation	Christopher McQuarrie	Hanging from an Airbus A400M during takeoff
2018	Fallout	Christopher McQuarrie	HALO skydive; helicopter chase
2023	Dead Reckoning	Christopher McQuarrie	Motorcycle jump off a cliff in Norway
2025	The Final Reckoning	Christopher McQuarrie	Biplane wing-walking; burning parachute jumps

Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in May 2025 and was presented as the culmination of the series. During its production Cruise completed 16 jumps with a burning parachute, which Guinness World Records verified on June 4, 2025, as the most by an individual.

Top Gun: Maverick and later work (2010–2025)

Between Mission films Cruise starred in Knight and Day (2010), Jack Reacher (2012) and its sequel (2016), Oblivion (2013), the time-loop science fiction film Edge of Tomorrow (2014) with Emily Blunt, The Mummy (2017) and American Made (2017).

In 2022 he returned as Maverick in Joseph Kosinski's Top Gun: Maverick, which he also produced. Delayed for two years by the pandemic, it grossed more than $1 billion worldwide, became the highest-grossing film of his career and earned a Best Picture nomination. The Cannes Film Festival gave him an Honorary Palme d'Or at its premiere in May 2022. On August 11, 2024, he rappelled from the roof of the Stade de France during the Paris Olympics closing ceremony to carry the Olympic flag toward Los Angeles 2028.

Tom Cruise latest movie: Digger (2026)

Cruise's latest film is Digger, a Warner Bros. release directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu, in which he plays a powerful oil tycoon facing an ecological disaster. It opened in North America on October 2, 2026, with about $8 million, which Deadline described as his lowest opening in 19 years. Variety reported in October 2026 that the studio stood to lose heavily on the film. Before the release Cruise said he does not make movies "for opening weekend."

Tom Cruise upcoming movies

Cruise has said he is developing sequels to Top Gun: Maverick and Days of Thunder with collaborator Christopher McQuarrie, and Variety reported in 2026 that Top Gun 3 was officially in the works at Paramount with Cruise returning. No release dates had been announced as of October 2026.

Tom Cruise movies in order

Year	Movie	Role
1981	Taps	David Shawn
1983	The Outsiders	Steve Randle
1983	Risky Business	Joel Goodsen
1986	Top Gun	Pete "Maverick" Mitchell
1986	The Color of Money	Vincent Lauria
1988	Cocktail	Brian Flanagan
1988	Rain Man	Charlie Babbitt
1989	Born on the Fourth of July	Ron Kovic
1990	Days of Thunder	Cole Trickle
1992	Far and Away	Joseph Donnelly
1992	A Few Good Men	Lt. Daniel Kaffee
1993	The Firm	Mitch McDeere
1994	Interview with the Vampire	Lestat de Lioncourt
1996	Mission: Impossible	Ethan Hunt
1996	Jerry Maguire	Jerry Maguire
1999	Eyes Wide Shut	Dr. Bill Harford
1999	Magnolia	Frank T.J. Mackey
2001	Vanilla Sky	David Aames
2002	Minority Report	John Anderton
2003	The Last Samurai	Nathan Algren
2004	Collateral	Vincent
2005	War of the Worlds	Ray Ferrier
2008	Valkyrie	Claus von Stauffenberg
2008	Tropic Thunder	Les Grossman
2010	Knight and Day	Roy Miller
2012	Jack Reacher	Jack Reacher
2013	Oblivion	Jack Harper
2014	Edge of Tomorrow	William Cage
2017	American Made	Barry Seal
2022	Top Gun: Maverick	Pete "Maverick" Mitchell
2025	Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning	Ethan Hunt
2026	Digger	Lead role

Romantic leads are a smaller but popular part of his work: Top Gun, Cocktail, Far and Away, Jerry Maguire, Vanilla Sky and Knight and Day are the titles most often named as Tom Cruise romantic movies.

Producer

In 1993 Cruise and his former agent Paula Wagner founded Cruise/Wagner Productions, which produced the Mission: Impossible films as well as projects without him, such as Alejandro Amenábar's The Others (2001), starring Nicole Kidman, and Cameron Crowe's Elizabethtown (2005). In 2006 the pair took over the historic United Artists studio in partnership with MGM. Cruise has produced all of his major franchise films since.

Awards

Year	Award	Work
1990	Golden Globe, Best Actor – Drama	Born on the Fourth of July
1997	Golden Globe, Best Actor – Musical or Comedy	Jerry Maguire
2000	Golden Globe, Best Supporting Actor	Magnolia
2022	Honorary Palme d'Or, Cannes Film Festival	Career
2024	U.S. Navy Distinguished Public Service Award	Contribution to the Navy
2025	Honorary Academy Award (Governors Awards, November 16)	Career

His four competitive Oscar nominations are for Born on the Fourth of July, Jerry Maguire and Magnolia as an actor, and for Top Gun: Maverick as a producer in the Best Picture category.

Wives, children and personal life

Cruise has been married three times. His first wife was actress Mimi Rogers (1987–1990). He met Nicole Kidman on the set of Days of Thunder; they married in December 1990, adopted two children, Isabella and Connor, and divorced in 2001. He married actress Katie Holmes in November 2006 in Italy, and their daughter Suri was born in April 2006; the couple divorced in 2012. He was also in a relationship with Penélope Cruz after Vanilla Sky.

Cruise is a longtime and outspoken member of the Church of Scientology, which has drawn significant public debate. He is a licensed pilot and owns several aircraft, a passion that fed directly into the flying sequences of Top Gun: Maverick.

Quick facts

Real name	Thomas Cruise Mapother IV
Born	July 3, 1962
Birthplace	Syracuse, New York, USA
Profession	Actor, film producer
Most famous movies	Top Gun, Rain Man, Mission: Impossible, Jerry Maguire, Top Gun: Maverick
Awards	Honorary Oscar, Honorary Palme d'Or, 3 Golden Globes
Spouses	Mimi Rogers, Nicole Kidman, Katie Holmes
Children	Isabella, Connor, Suri

Timeline

• July 3, 1962: Born in Syracuse, New York
• 1983: Starred in Risky Business
• 1986: Starred in Top Gun
• 1988: Starred in Rain Man
• 1990: Golden Globe for Born on the Fourth of July; married Nicole Kidman
• 1993: Founded Cruise/Wagner Productions
• 1996: First Mission: Impossible film; Jerry Maguire
• 2005: War of the Worlds released
• 2006: Daughter Suri born; married Katie Holmes
• May 2022: Top Gun: Maverick released; Honorary Palme d'Or at Cannes
• August 11, 2024: Stade de France stunt at the Paris Olympics closing ceremony
• December 2024: U.S. Navy Distinguished Public Service Award
• May 2025: Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning released
• June 4, 2025: Guinness World Record for burning parachute jumps
• November 16, 2025: Received an Honorary Oscar
• October 2, 2026: Digger released

Photo: Harald Krichel, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons