As Tom Cruise prepares to become a biological father, the 43-year-old superstar has finally opened up about his own troubled childhood, telling how his father bullied and beat him as a child.

In an interview with Parade magazine reported by the Evening Standard, Cruise discusses his father saying, “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!” Cruise, 43, says, “For me it was like, ‘There’s something wrong with this guy. Don’t trust him. Be careful around him.’ There’s that anxiety.”

When Cruise was only 12-years-old, his mother took the children and left her husband. The only time he saw his father again was 10 years later when he was dying of cancer.

When Cruise was 12, his mother left his father, taking Cruise and his sister Lee Anne with her. The actor tried for a reconciliation 10 years later, when his father “was in the hospital dying of cancer, and he would only meet me on the basis that I didn’t ask him anything about the past.”
Cruise sums up the experience as a life lesson. “When I saw him in pain, I thought, ‘What a lonely life.’ He was in his late 40s. It was sad.”

According to the report, Cruise’s father died soon after the reunion.
(All Headline News.com, People)