Apparently Tom Cruise chose to reveal that his father beat him to the cheesy weekend paper companion magazine, Parade:

"He was a bully and a coward. He was the kind of person where, if something goes wrong, they kick. It was a great lesson in my life - how he'd lull you in, make you feel safe and then, bang!

For me it was like, 'There's something wrong with this guy. Don't trust him.' " His mother left her husband, taking the children, when the actor was 12. The only time he saw his father again was was 10 years later when he was dying of cancer.

"He would only meet me on the basis that I didn't ask him anything about the past," recalls Cruise about visiting his father in hospital.

He added: "When I saw him in pain, I thought, 'Wow, what a lonely life.' He was in his late forties. It was sad." Soon after the reunion, his father died. [London Evening Standard]

Now I understand two things about Tom Cruise. It makes sense why he was so good in the movie Magnolia. He was playing a character that he could relate to because of the abusive father and the father who died from cancer parallel. I can also sort of understand why Tom became a Scientologist. I doubt that people with happy childhoods join the Church of Scientology, but I could be wrong.