Cruise Control: 40 Lesser-Known Facts About Tom Cruise

Tom Cruise was diagnosed with dyslexia at the age of 6 and graduated high school as a functional illiterate, relying on his sister for help with schoolwork. He was in movies like Taps and Risky Business before learning to read in 1986. This was when he became a Scientologist. It was the same year Top Gun was released. He caused quite a stir in the medical community in 1992 when he claimed, in an interview, that Scientology cured him of his dyslexia.

2. Tom Cruise enjoyed wrestling on his high school’s team. A knee injury left him unable to play, which sent him looking for another way to spend his time and it inevitably led him to audition for the school’s production of Guys and Dolls.

3. In his senior year, Tom Cruise played football for the varsity team as a linebacker, but he was cut from the squad after getting caught drinking beer before a game.

4. As a teen, Tom Cruise was infatuated with Catholic Church. He even briefly attended a Franciscan seminary in Cincinnati on a church scholarship and aspired to become a Catholic priest.

5. During the making of “Interview With The Vampire,” Tom Cruise was the only person that read that entire Ann Rice’s "The Vampire Chronicles" series. The director was too lazy to read the book and Brad Pitt stopped after one chapter because he thought the book was stupid.

In the Disney adaptation of Aladdin, the main character was originally drawn to look like Michael J. Fox but it was decided that it looked “too boyish” and was redesigned to look like Tom Cruise and Calvin Klein Models.

7. Tom Cruise had expressed an interest in playing the character of Jack in Titanic (1997). However, because of his very high asking price, he was never taken seriously.

8. Stanley Kubrick’s ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ (2000) holds the Guinness World Record for ‘longest continuous film shoot.’ Filming lasted over 15 months. Kubrick’s notoriously-obsessive demand for perfection would wear-down actors. He reportedly filmed 95 takes of Tom Cruise walking through a door.

9. Tom Cruise did the rock climbing scene in Mission Impossible 2 himself without a stunt double using only a thin safety cable.

10. Tom Cruise hung 8 times outside of Airbus A400 for the filming of his stunt sequence for Mission Impossible 5.

Tom Cruise trained for an entire year to perform the HALO (High Altitude Low Opening) stunt in Mission Impossible 6. It took Tom Cruise, Henry Cavill, the skydiving camera operator (who was instructed to keep a distance of three feet from Cruise while filming) and others involved a total of 106 jumps to get three possible takes.

12. Tom Cruise suffered an injury while filming a stunt for Mission Impossible: Fallout, jumping from one building to another. He was able to grab onto the other building thanks to a harness strapped onto him. However, his ankle fractured upon the impact of the jump. Cruise then got up and attempted to run it off, as this was in the middle of a chase scene, before he and the crew decided to stop filming. The shooting was delayed for eight weeks following the injury. The footage of the stunt used in the film and its trailers just so happens to be the actual injury.

13. Tom Cruise is a qualified pilot. He did all of his own flying scenes during filming the 2017 movie ‘American Made.’

14. Tom Cruise himself actually created the character (and the dance) of Les Grossman for the movie Tropic Thunder. He suggested, “What about some greedy pig studio executive who really represents the gross part of Hollywood?” because of how much he enjoyed the script of the movie and wanted to be in it.

15. A Bible museum in Ohio saved money on its displays by using a discarded Tom Cruise wax figure as Jesus.

October 10th is celebrated as “Tom Cruise Day” in Japan because he has visited the country more times than any other Hollywood Star.

17. Before she married Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes’ father negotiated a prenuptial agreement for her that reportedly filled five bankers’ boxes. Because of it, when Katie Holmes made her bombshell announcement that she was divorcing Tom Cruise, the case was able to be resolved in a mere 11 days.

18. Tom Cruise divorced all three of his ex-wives when they turned 33 (Mimi Rogers, Nicole Kidman, Katie Holmes) and each is 11 years younger than the last.

19. Tom Cruise vandalized the world’s tallest building in 2010. During the filming of Mission: Impossible 4, he climbed to the top of the Burj Khalifa (without safety equipment) and etched Katie Holmes’ name into the spire.

20. At the age of 40, just after his split from Nicole Kidman, Tom Cruise got braces to address his overbite and misalignment problems. After this procedure, it has been noted that his right front tooth is just a tad askew, and has been widely referred to as his “middle tooth” for quite a while now.

Tom Cruise is obsessed with sending his co-stars cakes, even the ones he worked with decades ago. Documentary maker Louis Theroux went to his grandmother’s 100th birthday party to find 100 cupcakes from Tom Cruise after Tom worked with his cousin.

22. Actress Nazanin Boniadi (Nora from How I Met Your Mother) was hand-picked and groomed to become Tom Cruise’s girlfriend by the members of the Church of Scientology. She was then forced to break up with her boyfriend, got swept off her feet by Tom Cruise, left by Tom Cruise, and punished for telling a friend about the experience.

23. While attending the London premiere of War of the Worlds (2005), Tom Cruise was squirted in the face with water during a prank interview. His reaction on camera was stern but not livid. The culprit was charged with assault.

24. Tom Cruise didn’t know about internet porn until Seth Rogen told him in 2007.

25. When David Miscavige heard that Tom Cruise had a fantasy of running with Nicole Kidman through a meadow full of wildflowers he ordered Scientology’s Sea Org members to plant an area of the desert. It failed to meet expectations and he held the entire base responsible for ruining the romantic idyll.