Tom Cruise is one of the most famous braces cases in Hollywood

So did it negatively impact him? Let's analyze

The youtube version

Tom Cruise had excellent structure when he was younger.

He was known as one of Hollywood’s premier hunks after doing Top Gun, which came out in 1986.

But he has ‘fixed’ his teeth a number of times and now it’s really starting to show. Not just in his facial assymetry but also his body and in his neurology in my view.

Let’s take a closer look.

At the start of his career Tom had a bit of a mess in his mouth

When he played Steve Randle in 1983's The Outsiders, a young Tom voluntarily removed the cap from a front tooth that had been chipped by a flying puck in a hockey match.

So his teeth were a little bit better then in this pic above but not by much. They were discolored and misaligned.

He first did alignment in the 1980’s

He did something to align and whiten them giving them this assymetric, but white look that they had in Top Gun (1986).

It wasn’t braces and it’s not written about much exactly what he did.

But I don’t think it moved things too much, particularly not the back teeth.

Because he held up very well throughout the 90’s as you can see in this below pic from 1999.

Despite his assymetric teeth he still had a terrific skull and body symmetry.

In essence his decision not to straighten his teeth too much… probably kept him healthy.

Then he did braces in 2002… the shit’s on now

Tom did braces in 2002 at age 40 to correct an overbite.

Cruise joked to David Letterman later on, 'I couldn't close my mouth properly for years, so they finally said, 'please, shut your mouth.''

The actor explained he'd taken his children to a dentist to have their teeth checked out, but to his surprise the dentist instead told Cruise that he could benefit from braces.

You could see how before the braces his lower teeth were starting to get pretty crooked. It wasn’t the “Hollywood smile” and he was at the prime of his career.

He needed the ‘Hollywood smile’.

So he wore the braces starting in January 2002 until the October of that year before beginning work on his film at the time - The Last Samurai.

Tom speaking at an event in May 2010

He declined over the next decade (2002 - 2012)

This pic above is from 2010 and I can already see from the lines of his face that his skull had been pretty significantly damaged.

This is eight years following the start of the braces and so this is what i’d consider a pretty natural timeline for decline after an ‘average’ case of braces.

When folks do aggressive palate expansion things will typically decline much faster. When they only move the front teeth a little bit they will decline very little or not at all.

So Tom is somewhere in the middle.

Tom in the past 12 years (2012 - 2024)

By 2016 I can already pretty clearly start to see the assymetry in his face.

This type of assymetry will mean that cranial bones have been displaced and are probably already influencing the way he thinks and acts to some degree.

Which perhaps explains some ‘strange’ things in his personal life:

• A divorce from Katie Holmes that was rumored to be because she wanted to shield their daughter, Suri, from being heavily involved with Scientology, which allegedly played a central role in the breakdown of the marriage.

• Almost no contact with his daughter Suri following the divorce.

• COVID-19 set rant: While filming Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One in 2020, Cruise went viral for a leaked audio recording where he berated crew members for not following COVID-19 safety protocols.

Could I be reading too much into this stuff? Perhaps.

But the damage to personal relationships is something very familiar to me and is rooted in neurological decline in my experience.

How does Tom fair against some other peer ‘hunks’ of his era?

Well, this is what Tom looks like now at age 62. Quite a bit of facial assymetry. Let’s be honest… the guy looks old now.

Now compare to Brad Pitt, age 61, who to my understanding has never had braces or major orthodontic work.

To me, Brad is aging far far better. Much less assymetry in the skull and face.

And you can compare his body against Tom’s.

For me it’s not even close. Tom’s body has clearly twisted up while Brad’s is holding up tight.

And this despite the fact that Tom is rumored to be an absolute fitness buff whereas Brad Pitt is not known to not really do that much.

Closing thoughts

I think we’re only at the very beginning of Tom’s troubles.

As you can see in this above pic his profile, which was always very healthy, is very clearly starting to shorten and go. Showing that the cervical spine is starting to fold.

I expect him to decline much faster here on out. His skull is collapsing and his body is twisting.

Eventually organs get impacted and this takes its toll on his health.

I predict he will continue to shy away from the public eye more and more and we’ll see him in a lot less films within a few years.

Despite his best efforts to slow the aging process… Tom is going to lose. Because you don’t beat physics.

That is until…. Tom finds Reviv :)

Then it’s game on again!