Tom Cruise Early Life

Cruise was born to Thomas Mapother III and Mary Lee Peiffer in Syracuse, New York. Cruise has German ancestry from his paternal great-grandparents, William Reibert and Charlotta Louise Voelker; and Welsh ancestry from his all-paternal great-great-grandfather, Dylan Henry Mapother, who emigrated from Flint, Wales to Louisville, Kentucky in 1850. His maternal ancestry is half Irish and half German (including Alsatian). Cruise had a transient existence as a child with his family residing throughout various locations in the United States and Canada. Cities where he lived included Ottawa, Canada, Louisville, Glen Ridge, New Jersey (where he graduated from Glen Ridge High School) and Wayne, New Jersey. In all, Cruise attended eight elementary schools and three high schools. He briefly attended a Franciscan seminary in Cincinnati and aspired to become a Catholic priest. It was recently brought forth that Cruise had suffered from child abuse when he was younger. He stated that when something went wrong, his father came down hard on him. He told Parade Magazine that his father was "a bully and a coward" and "a merchant of chaos". Cruise said he learned early on that his father was not to be trusted.. Cruise became interested in acting after being sidelined from his high school's wrestling team due to a knee injury. While injured, he successfully auditioned for a lead role in his high school's production of Guys and Dolls and decided to become an actor after his success in the role.