Cruise: My dad beat me

Tom Cruise has told how his father bullied and beat him as a child. As the 43-year-old star prepares to become a biological father himself, he spoke for the first time about his troubled childhood.

He told Parade magazine: "He was a bully and a coward. He was the kind of person where, if something goes wrong, they kick. It was a great lesson in my life - how he'd lull you in, make you feel safe and then, bang!

For me it was like, 'There's something wrong with this guy. Don't trust him.' " His mother left her husband, taking the children, when the actor was 12. The only time he saw his father again was was 10 years later when he was dying of cancer.

"He would only meet me on the basis that I didn't ask him anything about the past," recalls Cruise about visiting his father in hospital.

He added: "When I saw him in pain, I thought, 'Wow, what a lonely life.' He was in his late forties. It was sad." Soon after the reunion, his father died.