Life lessons from ‘Mission Impossible III’ star Tom Cruise

I’m passionate about learning. I’m passionate about life.–Tom Cruise

Why is Tom Cruise still one of the world’s highest-paid and most popular movie stars, despite attracting negative press with his fumbling antics in the past year, like jumping on a couch on Oprah proclaiming love for his girlfriend Katie Holmes, or his outspoken beliefs in Scientology like his disdain for prescription drugs? His May 2005 appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show was named the No. 1 Celebrity Meltdown Ever by TV Guide magazine.

The secret to Tom Cruise’s staying power lies in his being a great professional, a superb entertainer, on the silver screen. Passion, energy and hyper-intense commitment to his craft, he bristles, sizzles and personifies all these in the newest dynamite action thriller Mission Impossible III, which had its recent advance screening at Greenbelt 3 Makati, hosted by the world’s top express and logistics giant DHL.

There are some movie masterpieces which touch our hearts, challenge our minds or uplift our spirits, but not this film, which is unabashed escapism without remorse or pretensions. Forget about the literary merits of the script in terms of character development or plot; bring a date and order your popcorn for this is unadulterated and fun mindless mayhem! This blistering mega-budget film is a two-hour roller coaster ride of stunts and special effects ad infinitum. Cruise did his own stunts with so much grit and dazzle. Paramount Pictures tied up with global logistics leader DHL to air freight 50 tons of equipment, props and movie sets from Germany, America, the stately architectural past in the Vatican City in Italy to the ultra-modern skyscrapers of Shanghai, China, in order to overwhelm our senses with explosive scenes bursting in the most spectacular places.

I dare say this first film project of TV director J. J. Abrams is better than the previous two Mission Impossible films directed by Brian de Palma in 1996 and even by the stylish Hong Kong director John Woo in 2000. The two earlier flicks actually disappointed me as either confusing, too slow or bordering on corniness, but not this third movie. This franchise deserves a fourth installment.

Cruise plays super-agent Ethan Matthew Hawk of IMF or Impossible Missions Force, as he comes out of retirement and races against time to save his new wife from being murdered by the transnational rogue arms trader Owen Davian (played so menacingly well by the Oscar Award-winning Philip Seymour Hoffman). The super-agent’s earlier attempt to nab the super bad guy turns awry. He eventually needs to look for and retrieve the mysterious rabbit’s foot device the villain plans to sell to terrorists. Kudos to the musical score, which revs up and sustains the adrenaline rush of the scenes.

Mission Implausible? Tom’s Triumphs Over Crises

Not only does the terrific stunts of Tom Cruise defy the bounds of credibility in his newest reel project, what amazes me more is his real-life triumphs over seemingly insurmountable obstacles. He came from humble beginnings and was once a paper boy for the Louisville Courier-Journal. What his glamour smiles and now charmed life do not reveal were his painful struggles as a child with dyslexia, and by age 14, he already studied in 15 different schools across Canada and America. He comes from a broken family, with his mother remarrying another man. He once entered a Franciscan seminary and almost became a priest. He eventually dropped out of school to go into acting.

Cruise’s life can best be summarized in the quote "winners never quit, and quitters never win." He took up an interest in acting after losing his place on a high school wrestling team due to a knee injury, a mishap which would have demoralized most teenagers. But this unfortunate event led to a new and unexpected career, which would totally transform his future. Despite standing only five-feet, seven-inches tall, which is shorter than most Americans and not considered handsome in the traditional sense, he persevered in acting and hit it off well with both female and male audiences. He became a winner with several box office films such as Risky Business, Top Gun, Born on the Fourth of July, which was partially filmed in Ilocos Norte, and others.

Tom Cruise was chosen by People magazine as Sexiest Man Alive in 1990. By the 1990s, he was already raking in $15 million per year. He also became the first actor in Hollywood history to star in five consecutive films that grossed $100 million in the USA – A Few Good Men (1992), The Firm (1993), Interview with a Vampire: The Vampire Chronicles (1994), Mission: Impossible (1996), and Jerry Maguire (1996). He was also named the No. 1 top money-making box office star in Quigley Publications’ annual poll of movie exhibitors for a record six times from 1986 and 2001. Actors Bing Crosby and Burt Reynolds both ranked No. 1 for five consecutive years, while Clint Eastwood and Tom Hanks were also named No. 1 five times but non-consecutively like Tom Cruise.

The 1996 movie Mission Impossible gave him a total of $70 million with percentage of gross included. In 2000, Cruise earned roughly $75 million for Mission: Impossible II by turning down any upfront salary, but instead taking a back-end deal that landed him 30 percent of the film’s gross for both his producing and acting duties.

The only discordant note to his otherwise phenomenal rise to success was his early 1990s conversion to Scientology. His claim that it supposedly cured his lifelong struggle with dyslexia shocked the medical community and started his years of controversial media reports on this side of his private life.

A celebrity who shuns hedonistic lifestyle or scandals, Cruise maintains a wholesome public image and is known as a compassionate man. In 1996, he once stopped on the road to assist a hit-and-run victim and paid her hospital bills; she was aspiring Brazilian actress Heloisa Vinhas. He has donated to charities such as The Ashley Flint Fund, The Tsunami Relief Fund, Themoms.biz Diabetes Fund, and others.

Recently, the actor revealed to mass media details of his traumatic relationship with his father. A victim of child abuse, he said that whenever things didn’t turn out right, his dad would mistreat him. He described to Parade magazine that his father was "a bully and a coward" and "a merchant of chaos." The youth painfully realized that his father cannot be trusted. He recounted of his dad: "It was a roller-coaster ride with him. You know, there’s calm waters and there’s not calm waters. So you’re kind of looking going… well, I’m never on safe ground here." Tom Cruise didn’t see or talk to his father until the latter’s last days in his hospital deathbed.

Another major crisis in recent years was the collapse of his high-profile marriage to Australian mega-star Nicole Kidman. In 1988, he became the first actor to have the distinction of starring in both the year’s Oscar winner for Best Picture Rain Man and the year’s Razzie "winner" for Worst Picture, Cocktail. Also this year, Cruise earned the dubious distinction of receiving three Razzie nominations as "Worst Actor" for the film War of the Worlds and two of the five slots in a new Razzies category for the "Most Tiresome Tabloid Targets." Cruise got these negative nominations for his bizarre Church of Scientology anti-psychiatry public declarations and his very overly public displays of affection for Katie Holmes.

Like all of us, Tom Cruise isn’t superhuman; he has his human failings and failures. He doesn’t allow crises to destroy him, but psyches himself up to meet challenges head-on and with guts. Like in Mission Impossible III, Cruise in real life has been beaten up, battered, broken, bruised and mortally wounded by cruel fate or by his own mistakes, but the important thing is he never loses hope, he never gives up! Perhaps, the grit, passion, exuberance and uncommon reserves of stamina which make him such a world-class actor comes from his steely determination forged in the crucibles of crisis and in his belief that in this life "Nothing is impossible."

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