Tom Cruise in pictures as he turns 60 – from teenage actor to Hollywood heavyweight

It’s a big weekend if your name is Tom Cruise and you’re a massive Hollywood heavyweight as the action hero celebrates his 60th birthday today.

He has much to celebrate at the moment as the top gun sequel Maverick is currently flying high at the box office, easily breaking the $1 billion mark worldwide.

That is definitely a huge gift in itself.

There’s no denying he’s still at the top of his game, but how does he do it?

In honor of Tom’s big day, we took a walk down memory lane to refresh some of his best moments and see what makes the cruiser the last of Hollywood’s icons.

1962: Cruise was born in Syracuse, New York. His full name was Thomas Cruise Mapother IV, but he was smart enough to shorten it.

Suddenly he stopped sounding like a distracted uncle in a Dickens novel and started sounding like a super cool movie star.

1983: Risky business. You may not remember much of this teen comedy, but everyone remembers Cruise being goofy and sexy at the same time as he danced around in his shirt, pants and socks. A star was born!

1989: Born July 4th. Cruise proved he was more than just a pair of shiny teeth by playing Ron Kovic, a Vietnam veteran turned anti-war activist.

He received the first of his three Oscar nominations, the last of which for Magnolia in 2000. The last for the time being, that is …

1999: Eyes Wide Closed. Cruise and Nicole Kidman signed on for six months of work on Stanley Kubrick’s erotic psychodrama, but they stuck it out for 15 months, which is why Eyes Wide Shut holds the Guinness World Record for longest uninterrupted film shoot of all time.

Cruise is no slacker — though his marriage to Kidman broke up soon after.

2000: Mission: Impossible 2. Cruise was dangling by one hand off a cliff 2,000 feet above the Utah desert.

And that’s really him, dangling, even if he had a safety rope that was digitally erased.

Of course, the scene was hardly essential to the story, but it gave the Mission: Impossible series its raison d’être: showing audiences a Hollywood legend pulling off his own insanely challenging stunts. A risky business indeed.

2005: The Sofa Incident. Something went wrong here. Cruise was on the Oprah Winfrey Show to promote War Of The Worlds, but he gushed about Katie Holmes and jumped on Oprah’s sofa instead.

Between that beloved gymnastics performance and his attacks on psychiatry, Cruise earned the unfortunate reputation of being a mad Scientologist.

Lesson learned; Since then, he has been much quieter in his private life.

2007: Lions for Lambs. This smug political drama isn’t great, but it’s directed by Robert Redford, and it remains the latest example of Cruise’s collaboration with a truly great director.

Young Cruise literally ticks them off: Kubrick, Steven Spielberg, Oliver Stone, Michael Mann etc. But now he prefers to be the boss himself.

Whoever the director may be, it’s Cruise’s vision that makes an efficiently entertaining film. Fair enough. Without this control mania, he probably wouldn’t have maintained his megastar status.

But wouldn’t it be exciting if he worked again with a challenging author?

2012: JackReacher. Cruise didn’t make many dubious career decisions, but deciding that he was the man to play Lee Child’s 6ft 5in tall blonde vigilante was one of them.

2017: The Mummy. Okay, so that’s another dubious choice. Let’s move on quickly.

Still, the film was written and directed by Christopher McQuarrie, who has directed every part of Mission: Impossible since then, giving Cruise at least one dependable new creative partner from the business.

2022: Top Gun: Maverick. A sequel to the most 1980s-ish of all 1980s movies, released 36 years after the original?

It should have been a disaster, but Cruise’s obsessive quality control paid off — and the fact that he hadn’t aged a day since the first film probably helped.

2022: Cannes Film Festival. During a question and answer session on stage, a French journalist asks Cruise why he does his own stunts.

Cruise’s response: “No one asks Gene Kelly why are you dancing? Why are you dancing yourself?’

Yes, he’s passionate about what he does, alright.

TG:M has grossed over $1 billion at the box office, making it the year’s biggest hit and Cruise’s own highest-grossing film.

Don’t bet against him winning the long-awaited Oscar for Best Actor next year.

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