A Hollywood staple since the ’80s, Tom Cruise is a leading man both on and off the screen.
The “Top Gun” actor, 63, has been in and out of high-profile relationships since his rise to fame. His storied romantic history includes marriages to A-list actresses Nicole Kidman and Katie Holmes, as well as nearly a dozen other entanglements over the years. And a rumored tie to actress Ana De Armas has reignited an interest in Cruise‘s love life.
Though he has spoken very little about his relationships over the years (aside from one notable exception on Oprah’s couch), speculation continues to fuel public fascination.
As Cruise’s public outings with “Knives Out” star Armas, 37, keep the internet abuzz, here’s a look back at his dating history.
Tom Cruise’s first marriage: Mimi Rogers, 1987-90
Cruise wed “The Rapture” actress Mimi Rogers in 1987, the first of his three marriages.
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Rogers reportedly introduced Cruise to the Church of Scientology, of which he is still a member and has long been an advocate. When they married, Rogers was 32 while Cruise was 24.
The two dated in the ’80s after meeting at a dinner party. In an interview with the Sun Sentinel, Rogers implied that friends had set them up, while Cruise recalled to Rolling Stone in June 1986 that his future wife “was dating a friend” when they met. He added, “I thought she was extremely bright.”
Their wedding, which they referred to using the codeword “The Project,” was a “very small, very private and completely normal” ceremony on May 9, 1987, Rogers told the Sun Sentinel.
In another Rolling Stone interview, Cruise was effusive in expressing his love for Rogers.
“Since I’ve been with her, it’s opened me up a lot. I think it’s helped me be a better actor. We live a lot of life together. We share everything,” he told the outlet in 1990. “I care about my wife more than anything in the world. She’s my best friend. I just really like being with her, you know? I love her.”
Less than a week after the Rolling Stone cover story was published, Rogers and Cruise announced they were divorcing. “While there have been very positive aspects to our marriage, there were some issues which could not be resolved even after working on them for a period of time,” the pair said in a joint statement at the time.
Second marriage: Nicole Kidman, 1990-2001
By the end of 1990, Cruise had thrown himself into a new marriage: this time with fellow A-lister Nicole Kidman. The two married on Dec. 24, 1990, months after meeting on the set of “Days of Thunder.” Kidman was 23 and Cruise was 28.
“I thought he was the sexiest man I’d ever seen in my life,” Kidman told Vanity Fair in a 1995 interview. “So it started on lust.”
Cruise agreed the relationship started with “instant lust,” but added that marrying the “Moulin Rouge!” actress was “the best decision I ever made.”
“I thought she was amazingly sexy and stunning. It grew into love and respect,” he told the magazine. “I knew she was it for me. I absolutely knew — I just knew it. I thought, ‘This is the person to be able to share all of who I am with, and her with me.'”
In that same interview, Kidman confirmed she was a Scientologist but declined to elaborate on it because “it gets misinterpreted and misrepresented.”
Over their decade-long marriage, the two welcomed two children – Isabella, 32, and Connor, 30, before announcing their split in Feb. 2001.
Kidman shared later in a 2007 Marie Claire interview that at the beginning of their union, she’d experienced an ectopic pregnancy, a dangerous condition that occurs when a fertilized egg implants outside of the uterus. She then had a miscarriage at the end of their marriage.
“It was incredibly traumatic for me,” she told the magazine.
A few years later, Kidman mused that her age had factored into the split with Cruise, telling Vanity Fair in 2013: “I was a child, really, when I got married. And I needed to grow up.”
Third marriage: Katie Holmes, 2006-2012
Cruise made his debut with “Dawson’s Creek” star Katie Holmes in 2005, getting engaged in front of the Eiffel Tower that summer and welcoming their daughter, Suri Cruise, now 19, in April 2006.
They married in November 2006, at a medieval castle in the town of Bracciano, located outside of Rome. Holmes was 27. Cruise was 44. The ceremony reportedly had a star-studded guest list, with attendees that included Steven Spielberg, Will and Jada Pinkett-Smith, Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony, and Jim Carrey.
This was the romance that inspired Cruise, who was promoting “War of the Worlds” at the time, to hop atop a couch during a bizarre “Oprah Winfrey Show” sit-down. The stunt had Winfrey declaring, “We’ve never seen you behave this way before.”
The couple’s five-year relationship provided ample fodder for tabloids, as Cruise and Holmes developed the couple name “TomKat.” As such, their 2012 divorce was met with a media frenzy.
Announcing their divorce in a joint statement at the time, the pair wrote: “We are committed to working together as parents to accomplishing what is in our daughter Suri’s best interests. We want to keep matters affecting our family private and express our respect for each other’s commitment to each of our respective beliefs and support each other’s roles as parents.”
Reports at the time noted that one of the reasons for the split was that Holmes wanted to raise their daughter outside the Church of Scientology.
Tom Cruise dated Penélope Cruz, was also linked to Cher and Melissa Gilbert
During an appearance on “Watch What Happens Live with Andy Cohen” in 2017, Melissa Gilbert confirmed she dated Cruise (at the time known as Tom Mapother) at “16 or 17,” which would put Cruise around 18 or 19 years old. “We made out, but honestly, there was no sex,” she told Cohen.
Cher, who reportedly also dated Cruise in the 1980s, told Cohen in 2013 that Cruise was among her top five best lovers.
Cruise has also been linked to singer-songwriter Patti Scialfa, who is now married to Bruce Springsteen, and his “Risky Business” co-star Rebecca De Mornay.
In the early 2000s, Cruise dated his “Vanilla Sky” co-star Penélope Cruz
for a few years.
Now, fans have begun to speculate that Armas is his latest leading lady, as photographers have caught the pair globe-trotting in recent times.
