Tom Cruise attended fifteen schools in fourteen years. Cruise spent part of his childhood in Canada; when his father took a job as a defence adviser for the Canadian Armed Forces, the family moved to Beacon Hill, Ottawa in late 1971.
He attended the new Robert Hopkins Public School for his fourth and fifth grades. His first exposure to drama was in fourth grade, under the guidance of drama teacher George Steinburg.
He and six other boys staged an improvisational musical play called IT at the Carleton Elementary School drama festival. Playwright Val Wright was in the audience and later said that “the movement and improvisation were amazing…a classic ensemble piece.”
In sixth grade, Cruise attended Henry Munro Secondary School in Ottawa. That year, his mother left his father, taking Cruise and his sisters back to the United States. In 1978, she married Jack South.
Cruise briefly received a scholarship from the Catholic Church and attended St. Francis Seminary in Cincinnati; he aspired to become a Franciscan priest before leaving after a year.
Priests at the seminary said Cruise chose to leave the school when his family moved again; however, a former classmate said both were asked to leave after being caught drinking.
In his senior year of high school, he played football for the college team as a linebacker, but was cut from the team after being caught drinking beer before a game. He then went on to star in the school play Guys and Dolls. In 1980, he graduated from Glen Ridge High School in Glen Ridge, New Jersey.