The antic teen famous for dancing in his underpants has morphed into a middle-aged enigma notorious for jumping on Oprah's couch. Along the way he took control of United Artists (disastrously) and inspired Christian Bale's performance as the unhinged title character in American Psycho.
In advance of next week's opening of Knight and Day, his first film since 2008, here is a look at Cruise's career in four acts.
• The contender (1981-86)
Tom Cruise has never been a great actor. Like the Cheshire Cat, his grin is his most distinctive characteristic.
But he's always had the makings of a good movie star: charisma, a strong work ethic and a nose for the kind of thrill-ride adventures, courtroom thrillers and paint-by-numbers redemption dramas audiences love.
His early roles were extraordinarily handsome ordinary guys. After minor roles in Taps and The Outsiders, he boogied to stardom in his briefs with the edgy loss-of-innocence comedy Risky Business, a surprise hit.
He became the name above the title in the standard-issue high school football drama All the Right Moves, using his new clout to branch out in exotic directions.
This is a recurring urge that has not served him well.
In Ridley Scott's outlandish Legend (a perfume-commercial version of Lord of the Rings) he plays the leader of an army of fairies. Cruise looked lost amid the showering rose petals, unicorns and sprites; Scott called the film "a bloody disaster".
Cruise returned to his comfort zone of Joe Cool all-American guy-ism in Top Gun, (below) a sugar-rush armed forces recruiting poster that became the biggest hit of his early career.
• Tom Terrific (1988-93)
Johnny Depp is indelible in every role. Cruise is generally interchangeable from one part to another ("it's Tom Cruise in a bomber jacket ... a business suit ... a Civil War uniform!").
To his credit, he seemed to realise this and spent the next few years in a pseudo-apprenticeship, partnering with wise mentor-actors (Paul Newman, Dustin Hoffman, Robert Duvall, Jack Nicholson, Gene Hackman) and directors (Martin Scorsese, Barry Levinson, Oliver Stone, Rob Reiner, Sydney Pollack).
As a pool shark (The Color of Money), juggling bartender (Cocktail), car dealer (Rain Man) and racing champ (Days of Thunder), his range extended from brash to cocky and back again. But he got the best reviews of his career as a bitter paraplegic Vietnam vet in Born on the Fourth of July, beginning a fascination with playing physically and psychically damaged characters.
With fame came notoriety. Mimi Rogers, the actor's wife from 1987 to 1990, said she divorced the guy People magazine named the sexiest man on Earth because he "thought he had to be celibate to maintain the purity of his instrument. My instrument needed tuning".
Extending himself in the period romance Far and Away, he adopted a leprechaun Irish accent so appalling the film's official trailer contained no dialogue whatever.
It was his first all-out love story, co-starring his new bride, Nicole Kidman, and it tanked.
He scampered back to safety with sure-fire legal dramas (A Few Good Men and The Firm). And then things started to get weird.
• Jumping the couch (1994-2007)
Cruise chased the part of the foppish bloodsucker Lestat in the screen version of Anne Rice's Interview With the Vampire, triggering a public feud with the novelist.
She recanted when she saw his performance, but mainstream audiences were disturbed to see the heretofore clean-cut star in lace, ruffles and long blond wig, sinking his teeth lustily into a rat. Or the neck of pretty young Brad Pitt.
Oprah Winfrey famously walked out of a screening of the R-rated chiller. The film was a sizeable hit, especially outside the United States, but spawned considerable stateside ridicule.
Cruise returned to his day job, this time with the formula super-spy actioner Mission: Impossible, where his character, Ethan Hunt, wears a bewildering variety of latex masks. (Cruise has a major false-face fetish, donning facial prosthetics or disfiguring makeup in all three Mission films, Eyes Wide Shut, Vanilla Sky, Minority Report, Tropic Thunder and Valkyrie.)
As he began to age out of the '80s young-blood roles that were his bread and butter, Cruise made Jerry Maguire, playing a hot-shot sports agent who gets the corporate guillotine when he loses his earning power.
Cruise was persuasive as a character who can't stand being alone, but is uncomfortable being close to anyone.
After a three-year hiatus, Cruise and Kidman starred in Eyes Wide Shut, (above) playing a sad, bored rich couple with a dysfunctional sex life.
Cruise spent much of the film at a swanky costume-ball orgy, his face hidden behind a Venetian mask.
Eyes Wide Shut described the faces of many viewers, wearied by the pretentious film, whose themes had an uneasy resonance with Cruise's off-screen life. His marriage to Kidman often was derided as a camera-ready show-business arrangement, and the pair divorced shortly after Eyes opened.
Cruise entered a phase of career rehab.
He took a small, showy role in an art-house ensemble piece (Magnolia) playing a woman-hating sex guru. The film cratered. He performed crowd-pleasing motorcycle-kung fu stunts in Mission: Impossible 2 (above, a massive hit).
He entered a showy, paparazzi-friendly dalliance with Penelope Cruz, his co-star in Vanilla Sky (another flop). He made a sci-fi movie with Spielberg, he donned Japanese imperial armour, he played a villain, he made another sci-fi movie with Spielberg.
But Colin Farrell acted him off the screen in Minority Report, The Last Samurai was Dances With Kimonos, Collateral was murky and depressing, and War of the Worlds (above) starred the special-effects crew.
Unlike George Clooney, Leonardo DiCaprio, Pitt and Will Smith, who rarely stumble and build their credibility from film to film, Cruise was entering a period when more of his films were disappointments than not.
Then came a fall from grace unparalleled since Ben Affleck's in his J-Lo period. Cruise entered a streak of weird self-destruction - not the kind of mug-shot misbehaviour associated with Mel Gibson, Mickey Rourke and Robert Downey jun, but an avalanche of tone-deaf PR gaffes.
Some men have embarrassment thrust upon them, but Cruise went out and seized embarrassment by the throat.
It began with his ostentatious courtship of Katie Holmes, his gyrations on Oprah's sofa, the implosion of Holmes' promising acting career and the perception that Cruise is bat-squeak crazy.
A tense Today Show turn as self-appointed drug counsellor to Brooke Shields, who shared her experiences taking postpartum antidepressants, further cemented Cruise's image as a spooky megalomaniac.
In 2006 Paramount owner Sumner Redstone severed the increasingly embarrassing Cruise's 14-year relationship with the studio, calling his eruptions "creative suicide" that cost Paramount $US150 million in lost ticket sales for the underperforming Mission: Impossible 3.
In a move that looked like sweet revenge, Cruise and his agent, Paula Wagner, promptly took over United Artists - and steered it into an iceberg. After two years in their hands UA released just two films, both starring Cruise.
Lions for Lambs, a prestige picture designed to put his career back on track, presented him as a dull, office-bound policy wonk US senator. It died unnoticed. He sported an eye patch as Nazi Claus von Stauffenberg in the Hitler-assassination-bungling adventure Valkyrie (a hit despite production delays, unsuccessful Oscar-fishing and negative reviews).
Wagner was sent packing, and UA's future is in doubt.
Rarely had a star of Cruise's calibre been so widely used as a punchline. Negative public perception of Cruise soared in the closely-watched Q Scores, which chart celebrity popularity. Unfavourable views of Cruise jumped 100% from 2005 to 2006; positive perceptions fell 40%.
His stock sank so low that Mary Harron, director of American Psycho, had no qualms about telling interviewers that Cruise was the inspiration for her film's unhinged yuppie axe murderer.
Even Terry Gilliam, desperate to recast the late Heath Ledger's half-filmed role in The Imaginarium of Dr Parnassus, refused Cruise's offer to step in as one of the replacement actors.
• The rebuilding years (2008-??)
Cruise rediscovered his sense of fun playing fat, bald, profane film mogul Les Grossman in Tropic Thunder.
Something about hiding behind extensive make-up and tinted shades freed him up; his loose, silly performance became his most animated screen appearance in years.
Cruise energetically showcased the pudgy tycoon's club-dancing antics on the MTV Movie Awards, and now the character will be the centrepiece of his own film.
An irreverent insider's look at Hollywood isn't exactly ground-breaking material, but a move into comedy gives Cruise a chance to explore uncharted territory.
He's also moving ahead with Mission: Impossible 4.
Feud over, both those films will be Paramount productions.
Cruise is about to launch another comeback bid with Knight and Day.
At 47, he's a bit long in the tooth for an action rom-com, so he loaded up on box-office insurance. His co-star is the likeable Cameron Diaz, one of the few actresses who can launch a project with her participation.
The film looks unambitious, like a remake of Killers, the Ashton Kutcher-Katherine Heigl guns-and-giggles paint-by-numbers everyone has already forgotten, but with bigger stunts and more star wattage.
Knight and Day also has an odd subtext. Cruise plays a renegade government agent who is allegedly nuts.
"They'll tell you I'm mentally unstable, violent, dangerous. It will all sound very convincing," Cruise warns Diaz.
"I'm already convinced," Diaz replies.
Cruise does nutty things (shooting a bystander in the leg for comic effect, making silly small talk while riding on the hood of a speeding car).
We can't say for sure whether he's loony or merely crazy like a fox, but there's one thing we know for sure: Tom Cruise loves a happy ending.
