Like his mother, a teacher and amateur actress, and his three sisters, Cruise suffered from dyslexia, which made academic success difficult for him. He excelled in athletics, however, and had considered pursuing a career in professional wrestling until a knee injury sidelined him during high school in Glen Ridge. At age 14, Cruise enrolled in a Franciscan seminary with thoughts of becoming a priest, but he left after a year. When he was 16, a teacher encouraged him to participate in the school's production of the musical Guys and Dolls. After Cruise won the lead of Nathan Detroit, he found himself surprisingly at home on the stage, and a career was born.
Cruise set a 10-year deadline for himself in which to build an acting career. He left school and moved to New York, struggling through audition after audition before landing an appearance in 1981's Endless Love, starring Brooke Shields, and a small role in the military school drama Taps, also released in 1981 and costarring Sean Penn. His role in Taps was upgraded after director Harold Becker saw Cruise's potential, and his performance caught the attention of a number of critics and filmmakers. In 1983, Cruise appeared in The Outsiders, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, alongside Emilio Estevez, Matt Dillon, Rob Lowe, all prominent members of a group of young actors that the entertainment press had dubbed the "Brat Pack." The film was not well received, but it allowed Cruise to work with an acclaimed director in a high-profile project. His next film, Risky Business (1983), grossed $65 million and immediately made Cruise a highly recognizable actor, thanks in no small part to a memorable scene of the young actor dancing in his underwear.

In 1986, after a nearly two-year hiatus, the budding film star released the big-budget fantasy film Legend, which did poorly at the box office. That same year, however, Cruise's A-list status was confirmed with the release of Top Gun, a testoterone-fueled action-romance set against the backdrop of an elite naval flight school, and costarring Kelly McGillis, Anthony Edwards, and Meg Ryan. The film became the biggest-grossing film of 1986. Cruise followed up on the tremendous success of Top Gun with a string of both critically acclaimed and commercially successful films, including The Color of Money (1986), costarring Paul Newman, Rain Man (1988), costarring Dustin Hoffman, and director Oliver Stone's Born on the Fourth of July (1989), for which Cruise received an Academy Award nomination and a Golden Globe for Best Actor.

Cruise married the actress Mimi Rogers in 1987; the couple divorced in 1990, the same year in which Cruise made the race-car drama Days of Thunder with a young Australian actress named Nicole Kidman. Though the movie was formulaic and a relative failure among critics and at the box office, the two lead actors had real chemistry. On Christmas Eve, 1990, Cruise and Kidman were married in Telluride, Colorado, after a whirlwind courtship.

In 1992, Cruise proved once more that he could hold his own opposite a screen legend, in this case his heavy-hitting costar was Jack Nicholson, in the military courtroom drama, A Few Good Men. Demi Moore also starred. Over the next several years, Cruise made a few moderately well received movies, including The Firm (1993) and Interview with a Vampire (1994), costarring Brad Pitt, before breaking out again in 1996 with two huge hits, the $64 million blockbuster, Mission: Impossible, which Cruise also produced, and the highly acclaimed Jerry McGuire, directed by Cameron Crowe. For the latter, Cruise earned a second Academy Award nomination and a second Golden Globe for Best Actor.

Cruise and Kidman spent much of 1997 and 1998 in England, shooting Eyes Wide Shut, an erotic thriller that would be acclaimed director Stanley Kubrick's final film before his death in 1999. The movie was released in the summer of 1999 to mixed reviews. In 1999, Cruise appeared in the critically acclaimed ensemble film Magnolia, turning in a much-talked-about performance as a self-confident sex guru that earned him a Golden Globe award and an Academy Award nomination for Best Supporting Actor. In 2000, Cruise starred in the long-awaited smash hit Mission: Impossible 2, alongside Anthony Hopkins, Thandie Newton, and Ving Rhames. In 2002, projects included Vanilla Sky, his second collaboration with director Cameron Crowe, and Minority Report directed by Steven Spielberg. Cruise began 2003 with a trip to Australia to shoot the $100 million The Last Samurai. In 2005, he teamed with Steven Spielberg for the mega-hit War of the Worlds.

Over the years, Cruise has fiercely defended the happiness and the legitimacy of his marriage, and with Kidman has filed two different lawsuits against tabloid publications for stories he considered libelous. In each case the couple received a published retraction and apology, along with a large monetary settlement, which they donated to charity.

On February 5, 2001, Cruise and Kidman announced their separation after 11 years of marriage. The couple cited the difficulties involved with two acting careers and the amount of time spent apart while both are working. Cruise filed for divorce shortly thereafter. The publicity surrounding the surprising breakup continued throughout the spring, as Kidman's publicist confirmed in late March that the actress suffered a miscarriage roughly one month after the separation was announced. The Cruise-Kidman divorce was finalized in August 2001. The couple have two adopted children, Isabella and Connor.

Following the divorce, Cruise dated his Vanilla Sky costar, Spanish actress Penelope Cruz, followed by a much-publicized relationship with actress Katie Holmes. He and Holmes announced their engagement in June 2005 and their first  child, Suri,  was born in April 2006.