The family lived in Syracuse, New York, where Cruise was born, and Ottawa, Canada. When Cruise was young, his mother encouraged him to participate in a local theatre group. “I guess I was his greatest audience,” she said. “He had it in him then.” But Cruise’s love of sports took precedence as he grew up.
Her marriage to Mapother was tumultuous. Cruise told WHO in 2006 that his father was “a bully.” Mary Lee ended the marriage in 1974.
She returned to the United States, and worked a series of jobs to keep her family out of poverty. Cruise helped with money from a paper route. He even massaged his mother’s sore feet after she came home from long days at work.
That close relationship continued when the family relocated to Glen Ridge, New Jersey, and Mary Lee wed Jack South in 1978, when Cruise was 16. “He loved my mother so much that he took us all in, all four young people,” Cruise later recalled.
After a knee injury sidelined his varsity wrestling career, Mary Lee encouraged him to try out for a high school production of Guys and Dolls. After the play, Cruise surprised his mother by asking if he could have 10 years to give show business a try. She approved, and with her support, he waited tables in New York City before breaking into the movies.
The close mother-son relationship continued as he became a box office star.
As for South, she never doubted her son would be a success. When Cruise asked her and her second husband if he could be an actor, “We both wholeheartedly agreed,” she told Rolling Stone. “Because we both felt it was a God-given talent … So to make a long story short, we gave him our blessing — and the rest is history.”