Cruise control Good karma and tiny portions: how Tom stays fit at 56
Forget midlife spread – at 56, the star is defying the laws of ageing. What is his secret, asks Guy Kelly
In any sane world, Tom Cruise Mapother IV would not be looking this good. The actor, producer, triple divorcee and father of three should look a bit like Tom Cruise – albeit a slightly melted version, like how John Travolta now looks like John Travolta dredged from a canal. He should have a paunch, possibly a limp, and certainly be greying. In short (very short, at 5ft 7in), he should look less Hollywood action hero, more Paul Hollywood, bread hero.
At the time of writing, Cruise is 56 years, three months and one week old: two years younger than Prince Andrew, two years older than Nigel Farage, and precisely 2,514 days older than Jacob Rees-mogg.
And yet just look at him. On the set of Top Gun: Maverick – the sequel to the iconic shirtless volleyball film he made 32 years ago – this week, Cruise has been photographed looking as if he’s spent the past three decades preserved in amber.
Now, cryogenically freezing himself since the mid-eighties may sound like something Tom Cruise would do, yet we have some evidence that he’s been working during that period. So what are his secrets? Here are six possible reasons Tom
Cruise has defeated the very process of ageing:
A fanatical fitness regime
Cruise is roughly the same height as fellow Cuban heel fanatic Simon Cowell, yet you will notice that he looks in marginally finer fettle. To keep himself in the same shape as he was at 25 – around 11 stone, with a 50 ins chest, 30 ins waist and biceps the size of thighs – he takes a gym everywhere he goes. Literally. It is called “the pain cave”, and can be assembled anywhere. Cruise also enjoys “Sea-kayaking, caving, fencing, treadmill, weights, rockclimbing, hiking… I jog.”
A religious focus
It’s often claimed the calm and discipline of religion keeps people healthy. Cruise is certainly spiritual: raised in a devout Catholic household, he attended a Franciscan seminary in Cincinnati, then considered the priesthood in his teens. According to his first wife, Mimi Rogers, he was also “seriously thinking of becoming a monk” when she turned him onto Scientology in the Eighties. He is now an avid follower of the shadowy cult/ religion, and firm friend of its leader, the equally controversial David Miscavige.
“I think it’s a privilege to call yourself a Scientologist,” Cruise once said, in an entirely terrifying interview, “he or she has the ability to create new and better realities.”
A nip here, a tuck there?
Scientology may have enabled Cruise to make new and better realities, but has he also got a new and better face? The Cruise mug is now smooth and unlined, but it has been suspiciously puffy in the past – a period that briefly made him look like Sandi Toksvig.
Aside from adult braces, Cruise has never admitted to having had any work done. “I haven’t and I never would,” he told Playboy in 2012.
A few years later, however, his Jerry Maguire castmate Cuba Gooding Jr was also asked whether Cruise had gone under the knife: “Absolutely!” Gooding Jr said. “I don’t know what he’s had done, but I remember I surprised him at his house one day and he had all of these dots all over his face and I was like, ‘You all right?’ and he goes, ‘I didn’t know you were coming,’ and I was like, ‘I can see why!’”
Being quite eerily nice
There are a lot of odd things about Tom Cruise. (Here’s one: he split from all three of his wives – Rogers, Nicole Kidman and Katie Holmes – when they turned 33, and each woman was 11 years younger than the last.) But according to almost everybody he’s worked with, he’s famously, unsettlingly generous, too. He has saved lives, arranged private planes for people in need and never forgets a birthday. So could that be his elixir of youth: good karma?
Tiny little Tom-sized portions
According to sources in New Zealand, where some of the most recent Mission: Impossible movie was shot, three meals a day are not enough for Cruise. Instead, it was reported that he prefers “a daily diet of 15 snacks”, all prepared by a pair of personal chefs.
Nuts and blueberries play their part; sugar absolutely does not. It has been revealed that Cruise’s favourite dishes include everything from sashimi to rigatoni. So perhaps eat what you want, but cut it into 15 pieces.
Gobs and gobs of money
OK, being worth a reported $550 million might help, too.