From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Tiger Woods comes a definitive, revelatory, and cinematic biography of Tom Cruise—the most intensely ambitious, mysteriously private, and enduringly powerful star in Hollywood history.

Over the past fifty years, no actor has been more fiercely driven to reach the top of the entertainment world than Tom Cruise. After breaking out in Risky Business to soaring to stardom by age twenty-three in Top Gun, Cruise became the most bankable actor in the world. His forty-five movies have grossed upward of $13 billion. But his signature role as Ethan Hunt in the Mission: Impossible franchise defined him as Hollywood’s ultimate action star and shaped the modern blockbuster and what it means to be a global movie star.

Offscreen, his personal life is shrouded in mystery and misunderstanding. His marriages to actresses Mimi Rogers, Nicole Kidman, and Katie Holmes were catnip for the paparazzi and the subject of endless rumors and speculation. His spirited advocacy for the Church of Scientology and some of its controversial teachings sparked a flashpoint in his career and severed some of his closest personal and professional relationships. And his nomadic and solitary lifestyle has added to the mystique of a man who stands alone, both literally and figuratively.

This landmark biography by acclaimed author Jeff Benedict takes readers on a journey that begins in Kentucky with Thomas Cruise Mapother IV—“Tommy”—a Catholic boy whose estrangement from his father forms the launchpad for an origin story as dramatic, and at times as tragic, as any Hollywood epic. Poring through thousands of pages of genealogical records, court documents, and family history, Benedict gives readers an unprecedented view of the struggle of a young man who grew up yearning for acceptance and set out in his late teens to find it in the make-believe world of show business.

Drawing on hundreds of interviews and unprecedented access to those who knew Cruise across the critical stages of his life, Benedict uncovers the forces that shaped him and reveals the intense determination that has both fueled his global dominance and driven him into the shadows. The result is a vivid, intimate, and unflinching portrait of ambition, fame, power, hubris, belief, downfall, regret, and redemption in modern America.