The Passion of the Cruise

Cruise shows me the powerful Triumph bike I will be riding -- the brake, the clutch, the gearshift and the wheelie bar added to the back of the bike. If a line could be drawn between comfortable personal space and invasive personal space, Cruise would always be just a centimeter over the line. His behavior is not meant to be rude, only sincere and attentive. "Look at this," he says, rapping on the wheelie bar, which trails behind the bike and stabilizes it when the front wheel lifts off the ground. "It's gauged to make sure you don't go too high."

Cruise is a dedicated student of the action-hero disciplines: He wants to gain competence, he says, at rock-climbing and flying; he is loath to use a stunt double, preferring instead to spend months training in swordplay, Nascar racing and bike-riding for films. As he talks about his adventuring skills, one gets the feeling that in the event of an apocalypse, an action hero would have a more likely chance of survival than most ordinary folk.

Cruise considers the idea. In fact, there's nothing that you can say that he won't seriously consider. He pays attention, almost to a fault. "I can live out in the woods," he begins. "I would eat bugs. I can use a sword and a pistol and stuff."

Cruise, ultimately, is a survivor. "There's a confidence that comes from knowing you can work, no matter what," he says. "I can deliver papers. I can take care of myself."

Cruise's dogged work ethic is one reason directors love him. He has worked with some of the best: Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, Oliver Stone, Francis Ford Coppola, Stanley Kubrick. And he rarely limits his involvement in a film to just acting -- he has helped produce, write, even scout locations. Even rarer for an actor, he is a team player. In movie after movie, he has played the straight man in order to enable great performances by his co-stars, whether it be Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, Cuba Gooding Jr. in Jerry Maguire, Paul Newman in The Color of Money or Jack Nicholson in A Few Good Men.

When we return to the riding lesson, there are two words that seem to recur over and over in Cruise's stories and instructions: competence -- his goal in learning anything new -- and gradient, which is a step in the process of learning. Days later, when he supplies me with materials written by L. Ron Hubbard, I will learn that they are concepts that come from his pamphlet The Way to Happiness (Step 17: Be Competent) and his Study Tech manuals (Barrier 2 to Study: Too Steep a Gradient).

We drink some water and pop a couple of salt tablets to prevent dehydration, then get on our bikes. While Cruise races around the track on his back wheel, I inch along at 10 mph on his 955cc Triumph. Afterward, we adjourn to his trailer for lunch. Nearly every available inch of wall space is filled with photos and montages of Cruise and his family: his mother, his children, his sisters and his nieces and nephews. Even the dashboard is covered with framed photos of the younger generation of Cruises. Cruise currently lives in Los Angeles with his sister Cass, her three children and, when they are with him, the two children he adopted with Nicole Kidman, Isabella, 12, and Connor, 9.