Saturdays with the Stars: Tom Cruise

Each month of 2026 we are looking at an actor or actress who found their fame in action films, fighting bad guys & saving the day.  Last month, we discussed Sylvester Stallone, a man who made equal parts celebrated action blockbusters alongside a string of films that would have the Razzies call him "the Worst Actor of the Century."  This month, we'll talk about a man a couple decades Stallone's junior, but who was his peer in action films throughout the 1980's & early 1990's.  That might be the only thing that Stallone and our October star have in common, though.  Our star this month would have considerably more success in films outside of the explosion-heavy genre that was Stallone's trapping, would be recognized as a superior actor, and would become a far more fascinating tabloid celebrity, with his romantic relationships, and controversial religion nearly throwing apart his career before being reclaimed in recent years as "the last movie star."  This month's star is Tom Cruise.

Despite being born with the seemingly stodgy moniker of Thomas Cruise Mapother IV, the future Jerry Maguire grew up extremely poor, with an abusive father and a deeply Catholic mother.  When his parents divorced when Cruise was a teenager, he aspired to become a priest, even attending seminary in Cincinnati (reports differ on why he ultimately abandoned this dream).  After high school, while he briefly went to New York to pursue acting, he found far better luck in Hollywood, almost instantly getting movie work in Endless Love, and then his breakout role in Taps.  This was followed by All the Right Moves, Risky Business, and in 1986, he appeared in Top Gun.  At the age of only 24, Tom Cruise had become one of the most famous men in America...

...a position he's never really given up.  Cruise's career has had setbacks, but by-and-large he's never really had a long period of time where he wasn't making massive blockbusters.  Unlike some of the men we've talked about this year, he wasn't always getting into them through action franchises, though his work in the Mission Impossible, Top Gun, & Jack Reacher series all helped him immensely.  Cruise at his peak could launch courtroom dramas, romantic comedies, pretty much everything but a musical (sorry Rock of Ages).  He also, despite a surface-level squeaky clean persona (very few of his costars have anything but good things to say about him) was involved in two extremely high-profile divorces from famous actresses who have largely avoided the type of tell-all books that typically follow such splits, and has been the face of the 20th Century's most controversial religious movement.  We'll get into all of that, as well as some of the biggest movies of Cruise's career (which I've inexplicably missed) this month.