Tom Cruise told Parade (via the Irish Examiner) that his father, Thomas Cruise Mapother III was a “bully and coward” and “a merchant of chaos.” Cruise added that his father, who was an electrical engineer, caused him a great deal of anxiety during his formative years. He explained, “He was the kind of person where if something goes wrong they kick you. It was a great lesson in my life — how he’d lull you in, make you feel safe, and then, bang.”

Cruise states he grew up not trusting his father and treading extremely carefully around a guy he thought had something wrong with him. In 1974, when Cruise was 12, his mother Mary Lee divorced his dad. Cruise’s mother and her children left Canada and returned to the United States, where she married Cruise’s stepfather Jack South. Cruise didn’t see his father again until 10 years later, when the man was dying of cancer in the hospital. The elder Cruise would only meet his son on the provision that the younger Cruise didn’t ask him anything about the past. The actor agreed and recalled, “When I saw him in pain, I thought, ‘Wow, what a lonely life.’ He was in his late 40s. It was sad.”

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