Tom Cruise’s mother, Mary Lee South, has died at the age of 80.
The 54-year-old actor’s rep has confirmed the sad news to ET Canada, saying South passed away “peacefully in her sleep” last week.
After coping with health issues recently, Cruise’s mom was put to rest in a memorial service at her local Church of Scientology over the weekend. Cruise and his sisters, Lee Ann DeVette, 57, Cass Mapother, 55, and Marian Henry, 52, all attended the service.
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Born Mary Lee Pfeiffer in Louisville, Kentucky, she was a special-education teacher before she married Cruise’s father, Thomas Cruise Mapother III, who was an electrical engineer. Cruise’s parents divorced in 1974 after a rocky marriage.
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Following her split from Tom’s father, his mother wed Jack South in New Jersey when Tom was 16. “He loved my mother so much that he took us all in, all four young people,” he told Rolling Stone magazine.
“I was always interested in theater, but I never did anything with it. When I was growing up, if you went to Hollywood, that was really risqué,” she told Rolling Stone.
When Cruise was a child, South always encouraged him to take part in acting groups in school: “I guess I was his greatest audience. He had it in him then.”
TMZ last caught up with South in 2013, when she told the outlet her favourite Tom Cruise film is Mission Impossible.
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