\n\i a candid conversation with the hottest superstar of his generation about going from top gun to vietnam vet in the risky business of show business \p
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\f1\fs16\b PLAYBOY: \n Where did all this seriousness come from? Why are you so different from a Hollywood brat who just wants to get famous?\p
\b CRUISE: \n It didn't just start when I decided to become an actor. I was always a very serious person. I was never very frivolous. I did things I wanted to do well and took pride in them.\p
\b PLAYBOY: \n How early on?\p
\b CRUISE: \n I hear stories about when I was four years old. When I wanted to learn how to hit a baseball, I would stay out in that yard until I could hit that baseball. I guess I always had a great sense of adventure. My mother tells me a story I don't remember myself. When I was two and a half years old, I used to just leave the house. I wouldn't come back for hours, and they would have the police out looking for me. I kind of remember the police picking me up and my mother being very nervous. Finally, one day, she said, "Where did you go?" I told her, "I went on an adventure." She said, "Next time you want to go on an adventure, why don't you get me and we'll go together."\p
\t So one day, my mother was scrubbing the floor and she saw these two little feet walk up to her. She tells me that I said, "It's time." My mother got up, got my three sisters dressed and we all walked down the street. I took them into these woods. There was this pond there and my mother says her heart began to beat fast because she realized I'd been going there alone and could have drowned. So she said, "What do you do here, Tom?" I said, "Oh, I just sit and think and throw rocks in the water." She tried to explain to me that it wasn't a good idea to go there without her. She emphasized that if I ever wanted to go there again, I should go with her so we could share the experience. \p
