Cruisin' For Love: All About Tom Cruise's Three Wives and Many Famous Girlfriends

Tom Cruise is one of the biggest movie stars in the world, fronting globally beloved action franchises like Mission: Impossible and Top Gun and earning a reputation as the kind of guy who does his own stunts—for example, hanging off the world’s tallest building in a harness so tight it could have cut off his circulation.

Cruise’s love life isn’t quite as hair-raising, but his famous relationships have still attracted plenty of attention over the years. Except for one notable exception involving Oprah Winfrey and a couch, however, he’s usually much more likely to jump out of a fighter plane than he is to offer up details about his private life.

“This is something I learned growing up, moving and always being the new kid," Cruise told Playboy in 2012. "There's what people say, and there's reality, and you can't worry about stuff like that. Do you wish they wouldn't say certain things? Yeah, you wish. Does refuting things help? Not really. There comes a point when you just have to go, 'You know what? Here's how I've lived my life: I've never been late to set. I make films I believe in. I feel privileged to be able to do what I love.' You just have to keep going and remember that. The other stuff? I hear it, I read it, I get it. But life is not a matter of trying to prove anything to anybody."

Despite his fiercely private nature, though, some of his relationships were public enough that he couldn’t keep everything close to the vest. Keep reading for a look back at Cruise’s most notable romances through the years.

Related: Hayley Atwell Slams 'Upsetting' Tom Cruise Relationship Rumors

Is Tom Cruise in a relationship currently?

It would appear that Cruise is currently single. While he was previously dating Elsina Khayrova, the ex-wife of a Russian oligarch, it was reported that they split in March 2024. The couple were first linked in December 2023, with reports of Cruise renting out an entire eatery to wine and dine her.

Khayrova is an influencer, and sources told The Daily Mail that Cruise is "besotted" with her. 

Related: 25 Best Tom Cruise Movies, Ranked

How many times has Tom Cruise been married?

Tom Cruise has been married three times. Cruise wed Mimi Rogers on May 9, 1987. The couple divorced in February 1990 after less than three years of marriage. Less than one year after his split from Rogers, Cruise wed Nicole Kidman on Dec. 24, 1990. The pair called it quits in early 2001 and Cruise filed for divorce in February of that year. Cruise married his third wife, Katie Holmes, in November 2006. Holmes filed for divorce in June 2012 and the duo finalized their split less than one month later.

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Who are Tom Cruise's ex-wives?

Mimi Rogers

Cruise married Mimi Rogers in May 1987, one year after their first meeting, but they’ve told different stories about how they were introduced. Rogers claimed they met through mutual friends who set them up when they were both single, while Cruise has said that Rogers was in a relationship when he met her. “I’d never been in love before,” Cruise told Rolling Stone shortly before their 1990 split. “Since I’ve been with her, it’s opened me up a lot. I think it’s helped me be a better actor.”

Rogers—a second-generation member of Church of Scientology—is likely one of the first people who introduced Cruise to the controversial religion. Despite their shared interest in the church, the pair announced their split in early 1990. “While there have been positive aspects to our marriage, there were some issues which could not be resolved even after working on them for a period of time,” they said in a joint statement at the time.

Nicole Kidman

Less than one year after finalizing his divorce from Rogers, Cruise married Nicole Kidman after meeting her on the set of Days of Thunder. The couple tied the knot on Christmas Eve of 1990 after just a few months together and went on to collaborate on several more films: Far and Away, Eyes Wide Shut and The Others, the latter of which Cruise produced.

Cruise and Kidman were one of the biggest power couples of the 1990s, but their marriage ended in 2001. “Citing the difficulties inherent in divergent careers which constantly keep them apart, they concluded that an amicable separation seemed best for both of them at this time,” a representative for the pair said at the time.

Katie Holmes

Cruise’s last marriage is arguably his most famous. He began dating Katie Holmes in 2005, becoming one of the first celebrity couples to earn a portmanteau: TomKat. One month after they made their first public appearance together, Cruise famously jumped up and down on a couch on The Oprah Winfrey Show while gushing about his romance with Holmes. “He's gone,” Winfrey quipped. “He's gone. The boy is gone.”

Cruise and Holmes tied the knot in a lavish ceremony held in an Italian castle on Nov. 18, 2006. On June 29, 2012, Holmes filed for divorce. The couple settled their divorce less than two weeks later.

Related: The Truth About the Famous Tom Cruise Coconut Cake

Why did Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman get divorced?

Cruise and Kidman haven’t said much about what exactly caused their split, but Kidman has hinted that their ages had something to do with it. She was 23 and Cruise was 28 when they walked down the aisle. “I was so young when I got married,” Kidman told Red magazine in 2016. “I look back now and I’m like, ‘What?'”

She later clarified that she and Cruise were still “happily married” when they filmed Eyes Wide Shut, which premiered in 1999. “We would go go-kart racing after [intense] scenes,” she told The New York Times in 2020. “We’d rent out a place and go racing at three in the morning.”

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Why did Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes get divorced?

Neither Cruise nor Holmes have ever spoken about what led to their 2012 divorce, though reports circulated at the time that Holmes wanted to leave the Church of Scientology. Per New York state law, their divorce records are sealed, so the terms of their split are not publicly available.

During a 2013 deposition for his defamation lawsuit against Bauer Media, Cruise was asked whether Holmes said she wanted to leave the church to protect their daughter, Suri. Cruise initially called the question “offensive” and said "there is no need to protect my daughter from my religion.” When asked again, however, he replied, "Did she say that? That was one of the assertions, yes."

Does Tom Cruise have kids?

Cruise has three children. During his marriage to Kidman, they adopted a daughter named Isabella, who was born in 1992, and a son named Connor, who was born in 1995.

Cruise and Holmes later welcomed daughter Suri in April 2006. They famously shared the first photos of her in a cover story for Vanity Fair published in October 2006.

Related: Katie Holmes Talks About Suri Cruise

Who are Tom Cruise's famous girlfriends through the years?

Melissa Gilbert

Cruise and Melissa Gilbert briefly dated in the 1980s, but Gilbert later claimed that their romance wasn’t very serious. “I did not have sex with him,” she revealed during a 2014 interview on Watch What Happens Live With Andy Cohen. “We made out, but honestly, there was no sex. He was a good kisser, but you know, he was, like, a struggling, starving actor and I was working. I actually bought him his first set of dishes.”

Heather Locklear

Cruise and Heather Locklear went on just one date early in Cruise’s career—in part because Locklear wasn’t totally impressed by his dance moves. “You know in Risky Business where he does that dance in his underwear and does the splits? We were dancing at a club and he went into that,” she recalled during a 2013 appearance on Chelsea Lately. “He started doing the splits. You just kind of stand there and don’t know what to do. Do you dance around him?”