Tom Cruise: my father was a bully and a coward

As he’s set to become a father again, Tom Cruise has spoken about his own dad.

“He was a bully and a coward … the kind of person where if something goes wrong, they kick,” Cruise told Parade magazine.

“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. Be careful around him’. There’s [always] that anxiety.”

Tom’s parents split up when he was 12 and it was ten years before he saw his father again - when the man was dying of cancer.

“He would only meet me on the basis that I didn’t ask him anything about the past.”

“When I saw him in pain I thought, ‘Wow, what a lonely life’. He was in his late 40s. It was sad.”