Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography Read Free Page A

long to learn his lines.” Certainly his performances always left an impression—although sometimes for the wrong reasons. Fellow pupil Louise Giannoccaro (née Funke) recalls the day when the “really cool” Tom Mapother appeared in a school play about Indians and cheekily played to the gallery to get a laugh. “He was supposed to pick an apple and say, ‘An apple, what’s an apple?’ but he was eating the apple and couldn’t say the line.” As his teacher Marilyn Richardson recalls, “He was a joker who liked to kid around. Everything was a bit of a laugh.”
    While his acting garnered attention, his sporting prowess was more notable for tough, unbridled aggression than for any natural ability. He scraped into the school’s second team for hockey and earned a reputation for spunk and determination, flinging himself into “impossible situations” where the sticks were flying. “He was rough in floor hockey,” recalled his school friend Glen Gobel. “He was hardheaded but not talented.” For his pains, he ended up chipping a front tooth in one game. His belligerent streak got him into more trouble during a robust game of British Bulldogs—a rough version of “Piggy in the Middle”—in the school playground that left him writhing on the floor in agony. He was taken tothe hospital in an ambulance with a busted knee, prompting headmaster Jim Brown to ban the game.
    Doubtless it was an incident that made his father proud. Tom Senior’s robust approach to teaching his son sports emphasized taking the knocks without complaint. When they played catch with a baseball glove in their backyard, Tom’s father would throw the hardball violently and fast at the head and body of his nine-year-old son. “Sometimes if it hit my head, my nose would bleed and some tears would come up,” he later recalled. “He wasn’t very comforting.” Noticeably, it was Tom’s mother rather than his father who took him to his first ball game. This tough training did help Tom win a place on the North Gloucester baseball team, and as he adapted to local sports, he became much more proficient. When neighbor Scott Lawrie played against him in an ice hockey match, he couldn’t believe how good Tom was. “I just couldn’t get the puck by him,” he recalls. “He became a good hockey player, always ready to try new things.”
    It should not have come as too much of a surprise. Tom and his gang, which included Scott and Alan Lawrie, Lionel Aucoin, Scott Miller, Glen Gobel, and Tom Gray, spent endless hours playing street hockey or baseball in the summer and ice hockey in the winter. For a change they played pool on a miniature table given to Tom by his sister Lee Anne’s boyfriend, rode their bikes to nearby Ottawa River, or went fishing in Green’s Creek.
    The same reckless daring he showed on the sports field was evident when his gang was out having fun. Tom was the acknowledged tough guy, a thrill seeker who pushed the edge of the envelope when his friends cried chicken. “He was cocky, confident, and cool,” recalls Alan Lawrie. “When the kids got together, he set the agenda.” At Tom’s prompting, the boys became blood brothers, pricking their fingers with a pin and then mixing their blood together. When they went bike riding, he was the one who constructed rickety ramps to perform Evel Knievel–style stunts, the one who used a hockey net hung on a frame or a tree to perform Tarzan tricks, and the one who performed a daring back flip from the roof of hishouse but missed the soft landing of a snowbank and broke his foot when he landed on the sidewalk. This experience failed to curb his daredevil antics. At a nearby building site, he climbed on the roof or started the builder’s tractor while the rest of his friends ran off. “He was pushing limits all the time,” recalls Alan Lawrie. “I never thought of him ever becoming an actor. He was more of an Al Capone character, a maverick, the kind of kid who wouldn’t back