Day 4 (Tom Cruise - Dyslexia)

TOM CRUISE

It may be hard to believe that one of the world's most famous actors was once just as average as everyone else, but such was the case with Tom Cruise. Tom was born on July 3, 1962 in Syracuse, New York. He was the third of four children, and the only son of Mary Lee and Thomas Mapother IV. He's father, an electrical engineer, was constantly looking for work during Tom's childhood. As a result, Tom and the rest of his family never had the opportunity to settle down in one place. Their constantly moving around was hard on the family, and especially hard to Tom. Tom never spent a lot of time any one school because the family moved around a lot. Not long after settling into Glen Ridge, NJ, Tom's parents divorced. Tom's mother was given custody of the children and the tight economic situation became even tighter for the family. With no older brothers, Tom was now the oldest man in the house, although still only a 12 year old boy.

In addition to problems at home, Tom like his mother, suffered from dyslexia. Tom is right handed when writing, but does most things left handed. Being dyslexic was yet another obstacle standing in the way of Tom's education. He was into the remedial classes at school. Not excelling in school, Tom entered a seminary for the priesthood at the age of 14. Tom left not long afterwards, and enrolled in Glen Ridge High School. Tom continued to struggle academically during his high school years. Tom joined the wristling team however, after suffering a serious injury he decided to do something else. That something else was acting.

He was diagnosed as dyslexic at seven, and tired to hide his learning disability from the other children at school. He has described his younger self as "a functional illiterate", through high school and his first several films. Explaining how such a functionally illiterate man can possibly make a good impression at auditions, he said, "I'd get the director and producer to talk about the characters and the film. I'd glean information from them and I'd use that... I got preety good at ad-libbing".

According to Spanish magazine XL Semanal, Cruise was frustrated and bored as a youth and coudn't concentrate in class. He was functionally illiterate when he graduated from school in 1980.