Cruise condemns harsh dad

Tom Cruise says his father, who died in 1984, was abusive. "He was a bully and a coward," the 43-year-old actor says of Thomas Cruise Mapother III. "He was the kind of person where, if something goes wrong, they kick you. He'd lull you in, make you feel safe, then - bang."

When Cruise was 12, his mother, Mary Lee, left his father, taking Tom and his sister, Lee Anne. His parents divorced in 1974. Ten years later Cruise reunited with his father, who was dying of cancer and "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."