Tom Cruise on Path to Be a Priest Til Booze Got in Way

Tom Cruise wanted to be a Catholic priest when he was a teen—so why did he give up on that dream and become a Scientologist instead? Blame booze. A friend who attended Cincinnati's St. Francis Seminary School with Cruise explains to the New York Daily News that the two stole liquor from the Franciscan fathers who taught them and squirreled it away in the woods; some of their classmates got drunk off it, and got caught, he says.

Though priests have apparently said Cruise left the school because of a family move to New Jersey, his friend says it wasn't that simple: "The school wrote a letter to our parents saying they liked us both, but would prefer if we didn't return." Teachers remember him as a mediocre student. "He was very unremarkable," says one. "You would never have thought he’d make it [in Hollywood], although he did have a really neat smile." (More Tom Cruise stories.)