Tom Cruise, who was born in 1962, has been a leading man for almost 40 years. His movies have grossed billions and billions of dollars, and have made him one of the highest-paid actors and biggest box office stars of all time.

Cruise’s breakout role came in the 1983 teen comedy “Risky Business,” and he achieved superstar status with the 1986 action film “Top Gun,” in which he played a naval aviator known as “Maverick.” (These are the movie roles that launched Hollywood’s biggest stars.)

As well as his star turn in a series of “Mission: Impossible” thrillers, Cruise has proved his acting chops in such serious movies as “Rain Man” and “A Few Good Men.” He has been nominated for three Academy Awards and garnered seven Golden Globe nominations for Best Actor or Best Supporting Actor, winning three times — including a Best Actor honor for his role as Ron Kovic, a real-life disabled Vietnam War veteran who became an anti-war activist.

Sequels to two of Cruise’s biggest hits are in the works. “Top Gun: Maverick” will be out soon and “Mission: Impossible 7” is due in 2022. These are the best movie sequels you can stream right now.

Click here to see Tom Cruise’s best movies, ranked

Cruise’s celebrity status means he often makes the headlines for reasons other than his movie roles. He has been married successively to actresses Mimi Rogers, Nicole Kidman, and Katie Holmes, and has been a prominent advocate for the Church of Scientology, which he credits with helping him deal with dyslexia.

24/7 Tempo has assembled a list of Tom Cruise’s 20 best movie performances, based on an index of IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes movie ratings.

Methodology

The ranking is based on an index of IMDb and Rotten Tomatoes movie ratings. (IMdb is an online movie database owned by Amazon. Rotten Tomatoes is an online movie and TV review aggregator.) Only films with 25,000 reviews or more on IMDb were considered for this analysis. Each movie’s domestic box office was obtained from The Numbers, an online movie database owned by consulting firm Nash Information Services.