Risky Business had garnered a young Tom Cruise some notice (a key scene in the 1983 film involving a fan-charming dance in his underpants) but it was 1986’s Top Gun that made the actor a star. The best bit came when Cruise, as a trainee fighter pilot nicknamed “Maverick”, faced up to his academy rival “Iceman”, played by Val Kilmer – an unapologetically macho confrontation, all snarls and sneers and clenched teeth, Cruise deploying memorably bizarre pauses to deliver one of the film’s stand-out lines: “That’s right... Ice... man... I am dangerous.” Here was a hero we could get behind Photograph: Paramount/Allstar
By 1992, Tom had padded his danger-man credentials (The Color of Money, Days of Thunder), firmed up a sideline as an urbane ladykiller (Cocktail, Rain Man) and for good measure contributed to the canon his entirely unique interpretation of an Irish accent (Far and Away). Busy as he was, he then went on to feature in one of cinema’s most famous duologues. “You want answers?” asked Jack Nicholson’s slippery colonel in the military drama A Few Good Men. “I want the truth!” squawked Tom – and Nicholson’s celebrated reply after that needs no recount Photograph: Columbia/Allstar
He grew his hair, he tanned an eye‑catching bronze, he flounced about in a leather waistcoat and he used the C word. Cruise’s appearance as a pick-up expert in Paul Thomas Anderson’s ensemble film Magnolia was a bold professional move: here was a career goodie playing a baddie for the first time. He did it brilliantly, Cruise’s Frank Mackey an apparently irredeemable sleaze who lectured other men on ways to trick women into bed (“Fake like you are nice and caring...”), later revealing a brittleness at odds with his sneering professional persona. A high point for the actor Photograph: Cinetext Collection/Allstar
It is an unremovable part of the Tom Cruise equation: the guy does his own film stunts and as an audience member you are bloody made to know about it. Cruise’s mania for taking risks where other actors would summon a body double peaked with 2000’s Mission: Impossible II, one of its early scenes an extended climbing sequence on a red-rock cliff face in Utah. The star (his director, John Woo, repeatedly told the world) “insisted” on doing much of the dangerous climbing himself. So there are lots of close-ups of him precariously hanging, doing a “Yeah, what?” face. Vintage Cruise Photograph: PR
Following a run of unlikely events, including a murder, a kidnapping, a seduction and a full-scale lifestyle conversion, Cruise’s character in this 2003 film has found himself a member of the last samurai tribe in 19th-century Japan. Movies! The ending is stunningly silly (look away now to avoid a spoiler), involving lots of slow-mo heroism as Tom leads his new tribe of noble but outmoded swordsmen against an invading army with guns and cannons. Dozens are massacred but not Tom, the only one of his number apparently immune to machine-gun fire Photograph: Warner Bros/Allstar
Was this the moment Cruise’s religious life loomed too large to ignore? In 2003, he co-founded a treatment centre near Ground Zero, titled the New York Rescue Workers Detoxification Project, which drew criticism from civic chiefs wary of an attempt to lure firemen into the Church of Scientology. Cruise, a Scientologist since the 90s, later said the clinic was necessary because “doctors do not know how to diagnose chemical exposures”. His alternative treatment, incidentally, involved sauna sessions and the colour analysis of participants’ bowel movements. In 2004, the church awarded Cruise a “medal of valor” for his work. Photograph: Paul Hanna/Reuters/Corbis
“That’s how I feel about it!” shouted Cruise, waving his arms about on The Oprah Winfrey Show, having just declared his love for the actress Katie Holmes. But that wasn’t all he felt about it. Next, Cruise knelt down, pumping his fist; then he pounded the studio floor. “We’ve never seen you behave this way before!” said Winfrey. “I know!” said Cruise, hopping on to their shared couch to pose like a champion boxer. Winfrey seemed to enjoy it, though she did at one point glance off camera as if pondering summoning security. The public was less impressed, Cruise’s outburst quickly and efficiently ridiculed the world over Photograph: Internet grab
Now officially coupled with Holmes, the summer of 2005 became an extended tour of the globe’s red carpets for the pair, both of them promoting blockbuster films at the time. Cruise and Holmes smooched at the War of the Worlds premiere in London, then adopted elaborate ballroom-dancing positions on the red carpet in New York. Later, in Los Angeles, events induced atrocious levels of nausea when the couple arrived at a screening together aboard a giant Honda superbike, wearing co-ordinated leather outfits. They married the following year, in a walled medieval village in Italy, a mercifully private event Photograph: Mario Anzuoni/Reuters
Already a bad year for Cruise’s public profile, this might have been 2005’s most damaging moment. Appearing on the Today show in the US, Cruise embarked on a lengthy repudiation of psychiatry (“a pseudo science”) and antidepressant medicine (“very dangerous”), inviting stern questions from Today host Matt Lauer. The debate seemed fair, but a frowning Cruise leaned forward to lambast Lauer when he was challenged, jabbing a finger and patronising the host something awful. (He used the word “Matt” more than 20 times.) It was a glimpse behind the actor’s silky public facade and not a very pleasant one. Photograph: Virginia Sherwood/AP
It made a nice change, in 2008’s Tropic Thunder, to see Cruise having fun, his cameo as a kettle-bellied film exec called Les Grossman earning him a Golden Globe nomination. Somebody, inevitably, sniffed a business opportunity and Cruise will reportedly soon appear as Grossman in a stand-alone movie. But before that, in summer 2010, there was time for another playful outing with the character at the MTV awards. Cruise took part in a dance routine in full Grossman gear, writhing next to Jennifer Lopez and pulling lots of dad-at-the-disco moves – even, at one point, wielding a mic stand as if it were a penis extension. Thomas! Photograph: Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic
