Tom Cruise (born Thomas Cruise Mapother IV; July 3, 1962) is an American actor and filmmaker. Cruise has been nominated for three Academy Awards and has won three Golden Globe Awards. He started his career at age 19 in the 1981 film Endless Love. After portraying supporting roles in Taps (1981) and The Outsiders (1983), his first leading role was in the romantic comedy Risky Business, released in August 1983. Cruise became a full-fledged movie star after starring as Pete "Maverick" Mitchell in the action drama Top Gun (1986). Since 1996 he has been well known for his role as secret agent Ethan Hunt in the Mission: Impossible film series, which has a fifth film set for release in 2015.
One of the biggest movie stars in Hollywood,Cruise starred in several more successful films in the 1980s, including the dramas The Color of Money (1986), Cocktail (1988), Rain Man (1988), and Born on the Fourth of July (1989). In the 1990s, he starred in a number of hit films, including the romance Far and Away (1992), the drama A Few Good Men (1992), the legal thriller The Firm (1993), the romantic horror film Interview with the Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994), the romantic comedy-drama sports film Jerry Maguire (1996), the erotic thriller Eyes Wide Shut, directed by Stanley Kubrick, and the drama Magnolia (both 1999).
In the 2000s, Cruise starred in a number of successful films, including the science fiction thrillers Vanilla Sky (2001) and Minority Report (2002), the epic war film The Last Samurai (2003), the crime film Collateral (2004), in which he portrays a hitman, the science fiction disaster thriller film War of the Worlds (2005), the war drama Lions for Lambs (2007), the historical thriller Valkyrie (2008), the action comedy Knight and Day (2010), the thriller Jack Reacher (2012), the post-apocalyptic science fiction film Oblivion (2013), and the military science fiction film Edge of Tomorrow (2014). In 2012, Cruise was Hollywood's highest-paid actor.Fifteen of his films grossed over $100 million domestically; twenty-one have grossed in excess of $200 million worldwide.
He won Golden Globes for Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture in Drama in 1990 for Born on the Fourth of July; Best Performance by an Actor in a Motion Picture in Comedy/Musical in 1997 for Jerry Maguire; and Best Performance by an Actor in a Supporting Role in a Motion Picture in 2000 for Magnolia. In 2002, the Academy of Science Fiction, Fantasy & Horror Films named Cruise Best Actor for Vanilla Sky. In 2003, he won an AFI Movie of the Year Award for The Last Samurai and an Empire Award for Best Actor for Minority Report.
Cruise is an outspoken advocate for the Church of Scientology and its associated social programs, and credits it with helping him overcome dyslexia. His criticisms of psychiatry and anti-depressant drugs, particularly therapy for 9/11 rescue workers, and efforts to promote Scientology as a religion in Europe sparked controversies, as did a leaked video interview of him discussing Scientology.