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.

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.