Henry Sanchez – a civic leader in Bayonne – has had a host of house guests over the years, including mayors and senators. Lately, however, he has taken on a new cast of characters, most of them from Hollywood, with people like Director Steven Spielberg and movie star Tom Cruise coming and going from the house.
Last month, Spielberg stunned Sanchez by showing up at his door asking to use the home in filming a movie. Since then, Cruise has made regular appearances there.
Cruise, in fact, has been hanging out at local hot spots in Bayonne while looking over the sets of the new Spielberg movie based on H.G. Wells’ “War of the Worlds,” in which Cruise will star.
“He’s been around my house and other parts of town,” Sanchez said, “checking out the scenes for his upcoming movie.”
For Sanchez and many other residents of Bayonne, Cruises’ wandering among the “ordinary folks” has been a rare treat. While stars have come to Bayonne to film at the studios located on the Peninsula at Bayonne Harbor, few have been as visible as Cruise.
Perhaps this is because for Cruise, filming in Bayonne is like coming home. Although residents of Glen Ridge like to take credit for Tom Cruise – since he attended high school there and apparently discovered his career as a result of taking on parts in school plays – Cruise’s past seems more a model of the working class kids found in towns like Bayonne and Jersey City.
Born Syracuse in 1962 as Thomas Cruise Mapother IV, Cruise lived in a host of towns in Ottawa, New Jersey, Missouri and Kentucky, attending as many as 15 schools before he finally settled into Glen Ridge High School. Many of the teachers in Glen Ridge remembered him as “an intensely dedicated boy” who pushed himself to excel, even when competing against people with significantly more natural talent.
A shy kid, Cruise also suffered from dyslexia, creating for him learning difficulties that his earliest teachers in elementary schools did not know how to address. Sports became a vehicle of some self-satisfaction, and several Glen Ridge coaches recalled his grim determination to succeed in ice hockey, wresting, and racquetball. A wrestling injury sidelined him, giving an opportunity to play a role in a high school stage production. He threw himself into his part with the same vigor as he did sports, but, in this case, he appeared to have a natural talent.
Biographers speculated that his wandering as a kid had let him develop an acting ability, since he was always the new kid in school, putting on defensive fronts that allowed him to acclimate.
Cruise quit Glen Ridge High in his senior year and took off for the bright lights of New York City. He was hardly an instant success – and early on had to support himself as a bus boy or a porter. Yet he did not neglect his education, taking drama classes at night and auditioning for television advertising whenever he could. During that time, he dropped the last part of his name for the more appealing name recognized today on theater marquees.
Cruise broke through to become one of the true superstars of modern movies, starring in films like”Top Gun,” “Risky Business,” “All the Right Moves,” “The Color of Money,” “Rain Man,” “Born on the Fourth of July,” “Days of Thunder,” “A Few Good Men,” “The Firm,” “Interview with a Vampire,” “Mission: Impossible,” and “Jerry Maguire.”
But Cruise apparently never lost what people call “the common touch,” as his walking tour of Bayonne and his greeting of residents in various places like Chez Marie coffee bar seems to prove.
“He’s really down to earth,” said Sanchez. He described Cruise and Spielberg as “regular guys.”
