About Tom

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Cruise doesn't seem to need much help of any kind these days. The man who was struggling to read 15 years ago is now regarded as having a keen eye for scripts. He is a tightly programmed individual. Not robotic--Cruise likes to laugh, and he laughs a lot--but he does seem to be remarkably free of the kind of negative emotions that tend to plague mere mortals. And it is playing mere mortals that seems to give him the hardest time. In Eyes Wide Shut, where Stanley Kubrick put a camera on his face to capture inner turmoil, Cruise appears uneasy rather than tormented. He seems most comfortable, onscreen and off, when he is taking action. He describes himself as a pragmatist. He is, above all, organized. "I've always admired the guys who schedule their lives," says Cameron Crowe, who directed him in Jerry Maguire and Vanilla Sky. "To a person who's not that way, it's something grand to watch. Cruise is that way."

"I don't like dragging things on or having a lot of unfinished projects sitting around," says Cruise. "That drives me insane." He deals with adversity swiftly and without mercy. Last year Kidman told TIME that Cruise's filing for divorce "was a big shock for me." Though both of them have refused to offer reasons for the breakup, it's characteristic of Cruise to make a firm decision, keep his own counsel and move on quickly. Asked why he didn't have the braces put on the back side of his teeth, he replies, "Because it's faster this way, and I really don't care."

With the same deliberateness, he has set out in recent years to eradicate persistent rumors that he is gay. In 1998 he won libel damages against a newspaper that called his marriage a sham. Last year he filed two $100 million lawsuits against men who, according to Cruise, spread lies about his sexuality. "I'm not anti-gay," he says, "but how would you feel if someone said your relationship was a sham?" And yet the lawsuits raise a question: Does he protest too much, inviting even more speculation? "If it made it bigger, so what?" he says. "They've got to be held accountable for what they print."

Twenty-four hours after his visit to H.E.L.P., Cruise is at work, standing in the middle of his tennis court, brandishing a sword. In his next movie, The Last Samurai, he will star as a 19th century American mercenary in Japan. He has been training with Nick Powell, the film's stunt coordinator, who taught Russell Crowe how to use a sword for Gladiator. Cruise is ambidextrous, and he is already able to wield two weapons at once.

"The samurai would test their blades on cadavers," says Cruise, who pauses to apply sunscreen to his face and catch his breath after a series of lunge-and-chop moves across the court. He's starting to sweat in his long sleeves, black Adidas pants and spanking-new Adidas sneakers. "I admire the samurai spirit. Your honor is more important than your body."

After Powell leaves, Cruise sits on the deck overlooking the tennis court and pours himself a glass of lemonade. He signed a lease on this well-manicured west L.A. estate a year ago, right after his split with Kidman. Since moving in, he has ripped the net out of the tennis court; a basketball hoop sits at one end for his kids and their cousins and friends. "They bring bikes down here and scooters," says Cruise. "It's always a party."