Tom Cruise is no stranger to publicity. There may have been some negative stories out there in the past, but overall, it is universally acknowledged that Tom Cruise is a fairly nice person. Actions do speak louder than words, and that is why we have compiled a list of actions that prove he's actually a nice person overall. You might have heard of him through his marriage to Katie Holmes, or about his fascination with Scientology, or maybe even the Mission: Impossible movies. Cruise was the first actor to appear in five consecutive movies that grossed more than $100m in America (A Few Good Men, The Firm, Interview with the Vampire, Mission: Impossible and Jerry Maguire). October 6th was officially named as ‘Tom Cruise Day’ in Japan and they love him because he’s made more visits to the country than any Hollywood star. It’s a progressive culture. Everyone in the world has been through negative experiences with someone, and sometimes, you just have to weigh the negative with the positive. With Cruise, it appears that the positive outweighs the negative. He even apparently gets to know people's names that he works with on set. He's very polite and professional and he seems to rarely (if ever) lose his temper on set. He also makes certain that the crew receives gifts from him at the end of the shoot. It's rare to hear a bad word about him from anyone who has worked with him or in any of the major film magazines or trade publications.

15. He taught Zac Efron how to ride a motorcycle

In 2010, a young Zac Efron sat down with the now-defunct Details magazine for a cover shoot. He was in his post High School Musical phase, trying to break out of the teen-star shell. Somewhere along the line, Tom Cruise asked him if he knew how to ride a motorcycle. “You wanna learn how?” Cruise asked, inviting young Efron to his house. According to Details, Cruise ”taught him how a motorcycle engine works, showed him the hangar with his dozens of pristine bikes — including the Triumphs he rode in the Mission: Impossible movies.” When Details asked him why he thought Tom Cruise would do such a nice thing, he had no idea. “I don’t know. I don’t even want to know,” he said. “It’s just so cool that he gave a care, the fact that he cared at all. No one else did that.” Not many people would do this!

14. He helped Mummy co-star Jake Johnson get in shape

“Here’s a story that is very anti-Hollywood, but very Tom,” Johnson told Thrillist recently. “He wanted me to work out with him and get in shape for the movie. People have told me in the past...that I need to lose weight and stay in shape. But they don’t tell me how. It’s like, ‘Hey tubbo, fit into these slacks!’” Instead Tom Cruise invited Johnson to his gym (the “Pain Cave”). “He said, ‘You’ll be training with me and my trainers. If you want I’ll put you on a food plan with my chef. The food is great,’” Johnson recalled. When someone on the Mummy set insisted that Johnson wait until after Cruise was done working out so the star could have the gym alone, Cruise was furious. “Let me make something crystal clear: I don’t care what anybody on the crew says to you, they don’t know what I’m saying to you,” Johnson remembered him saying. “And I’m saying to you that you are always welcome. I don’t care what I’m doing in there. You’re not other. You’re my cast mate. Come in.” What a nice way to make a cast-mate feel welcome.

13. He stayed in touch with the kid who dropped out of Jerry Maguire

Before Jonathan Lipnicki, there was another kid set to steal the show on the Jerry Maguire set. He spent a few weeks filming, but after a certain point, he “ran out of gas,” Cameron Crowe told Deadline, and wanted to leave the production. The role was recast — Lipnicki stepped in — but Crowe got a call from the mother of the boy who almost took the role. “Weeks later, the mother of the first kid calls the office. I got on the phone and she says, ‘Will you please tell Tom Cruise thank you for the way he has kept in touch with my son, sent him letters and gifts, and just let him know all is well?’ I thought, wow, I had no idea Tom Cruise was doing that,” he said. Crowe continued: “She said, ‘It really helped my son. He’s over it now, he’s fine, and Tom did a beautiful job helping him transition back to his life.’ This is a nice example of how people can uplift others through drastic changes in life.

12. He gave Kanye West advice on his fledgling comedy career

Once upon a time, Kanye made a comedy pilot for HBO. When Vulture saw the pilot, Wyatt Cenac revealed overhearing a conversation between Kanye and Cruise: “Kanye had been trying to get Tom Cruise to be in the pilot. And he had asked him because they were friendly. And we’re shooting a scene in a vehicle and at one point Kanye’s like, ‘Shut up, it’s Tom Cruise,’ and because he couldn’t get out of the car, he had to take the phone call smashed between people,” Cenac said. “You can hear Tom Cruise laughing and as Kanye goes, ‘Yeah, man, I’ve been working on the improv stuff, you know, all your suggestions were great.’ [Does another Tom Cruise laugh.] That went on for like 15 minutes. Tom Cruise never did the show and they had to hire a Tom Cruise look-alike that was like five-feet taller than Cruise.

11. He’s a good sport on set

“I think there’s something very right with him in that he cares so much about the audience experience,” his Mission: Impossible co-star Simon Pegg told Jimmy Fallon in an interview. “It’s like he’s obsessive with giving people an authentic experience.” Actor-director Todd Field, who acted with Cruise in Eyes Wide Shut, said something similar about working with Cruise and Stanley Kubrick: “You’ve never seen an actor more completely subservient at the feet of a director.” During the filming of the recent Mission: Impossible film, Cruise had a stunt to do in which he scaled from one building to the next. He actually broke his ankle during a take and kept on going to finish the scene. In an interview, he has stated that he knew it was broken when it happened. Not many celebrities would go to this length after breaking their ankle.

10. He sends Kirsten Dunst (and Jimmy Kimmel) a cake every year.

Kirsten Dunst acted with Cruise in 1994’s Interview With a Vampire. “I ran into Tom like five years ago, and now I get this cake every year that’s one of the best cakes I’ve ever had. It’s from Dylan’s Bakery in Thousand Oaks,” she explained to Jimmy Kimmel in 2015. “We call it the ‘Cruise cake’ at my family’s house. We’re like, ‘Cruise cake’s here!’ And it’s gone within a day.” Kimmel agrees that the cake is good, and that he receives one regularly, too. I don't think I have ever heard of someone doing this to a past or even present co-worker of theirs, so it's surprising to see that Cruise would do this years after shooting a film with Kirsten Dunst. It's been 24 years since they worked on set and the tradition has still been kept alive.

9. He bought his publicist’s daughter so many wedding gifts

Pat Kingsley and Tom Cruise had one of the closest talent-publicist relationships. They met after he’d finished work on A Few Good Men, and often talked every day. They parted ways, she later said, over a disagreement over The Last Samurai’s press tour: he wanted to talk more openly about Scientology, and she thought it wasn’t a good talking point during the press tour. But before that, she said, “We talked constantly,” telling The Hollywood Reporter, where that they shared 11 p.m. calls almost nightly. “He was an insomniac. I liked the fact that he was so much fun. And he was so thoughtful. He remembered birthdays, my daughter’s birthday. He came to her wedding; she was registered somewhere for the china, and he bought out everything. They’ve got things they haven’t even opened yet, and they’ve been together 15 years!”

8. He never forgets Dakota Fanning’s birthday

It appears that Tom Cruise has a knack for remembering people's birthdays, especially ones that he's worked with on previous movies. “He has sent me a birthday gift every year since I was 11 years old,” Dakota Fanning told Andy Cohen on Watch What Happens Live. “I always think, Oh, when I’m 18, he’ll probably stop. Oh, 21, he’ll stop. But every year. It’s really kind.” Fanning says he usually gifts her shoes. A lot of people don't recognize the time it takes to go out of their way and pick up gifts for people, so it's also nice to see that Fanning recognizes the nice endeavor. Of course Tom Cruise probably has people picking out the gifts for him, but the thought is still nice.

Cruise and Fanning worked together on War of the World's which was directed by Stephen Spielberg. He played her father in the film, so who knows, maybe he still feels a little responsible to at least remember her birthday.

7. He saved a pair of his littlest fans during a crowded red carpet

At Mission: Impossible’s West End premiere, Tom Cruise spotted preteen fans Laurence Sadler, 7, and Christos Tzanetis, 13. As he and then wife, Nicole Kidman made their way through the crowd, he eyed Sadler being pinned against a steel bar. Cruise rescued both young fans from being crushed, and called for a police officer’s help. “Every night I say good-night to him when I pass his poster in my room,” Sadler told People at the time. It is nice to see that out of all of the people at a premiere, he actually took the time to notice young fans. A lot of celebrities these days barely even take the time to sign autographs and completely ignore attention from fans, so it's a breath of fresh air seeing someone take the time out of their day to do something like this.

6. He rescued a family from their sailboat

While vacationing with then-wife Nicole Kidman and their kids on their luxury yacht in 1997, Tom Cruise spotted a sailboat going up in flames. Wasting no time, Cruise immediately sent over his yacht’s skiff to bring the victims to safety. Just moments after the stricken sailors—French paper tycoon Jacques Lejeune, 68, his wife, Bernadette, 42, daughter Eugénie, 7, and two crew members—reached safety, their 63-foot vessel sank. Cruise, who kept his feet dry and caught the whole incident on camcorder from his perch on deck, “did what any decent person would do,” proclaimed the actor’s delighted publicist Pat Kingsley. “If I ever get in trouble, I hope Tom Cruise is nearby.” Something like this could have turned into something much worse if he didn't take action. This act of kindness is similar to the next one, and it also helped being at the right place at the right time.

5. He helped rescue a victim of a hit-and-run, and paid her medical bills

The year before the sailboat rescue, Tom Cruise was driving down Wilshire Boulevard on a rainy night when he watched Heloisa Vinhas, a 23-year-old Brazilian-born aspiring actress, get hit by an Acura Legend as she headed to a bus stop from her job as a cashier at the California Chicken Cafe. The driver of the Legend sped away, but Cruise asked someone to call for an ambulance and then followed the injured woman to UCLA Medical Center, where she was treated for a broken left leg and bruised ribs. When he discovered she wasn’t insured, he arranged to pay her emergency room bill, which totalled $7,000. Some people wouldn't even take the time to pull over for something like this, let alone front the medical bill. Every good act of kindness definitely does not go unnoticed.

4. He gave Kevin Pollock a $500 pen (and then a second pen)

During rehearsals for A Few Good Men, Kevin Pollock noticed Tom Cruise making notes in his script with a ridiculously huge pen. At first, they joked about it. Then, Cruise convinced Pollock to try writing with it. “It’s like an angel wing floating on a cloud. It was a magical pen,” Pollock recalled to the Chive. Even Demi Moore agreed the pen was a total joy to use. When Pollock learned the pen cost $500, he was crestfallen. Later, Cruise’s assistant showed up with a gift: the luxury writing utensil itself. When Pollock admitted to his co-star that he hadn’t used the pen because he felt it deserved a special spot on his mantle, Cruise bought him a second $500 pen — one for the mantle, and one for Pollock’s pocket. I guess a pen worth $500 has got to feel somewhat comfortable after all.

3. He personally arranged for Bill Hader to leave a set and get home to New York after an attempted bombing in Times Square

As Bill Hader and Tom Cruise were in Los Angeles filming promos for the 2010 MTV Movie Awards, word reached the set that a car bomb had just gone off in Times Square. Hader was a new dad at the time, concerned about his wife and infant daughter in New York. Cruise noticed Hader’s concern, and asked when he’d get to go home to check on them. Hader wasn’t due back to the city for two more days, and so, Tom Cruise took over the set and got Bill Hader home by 8 a.m. the next morning. Hader had said that Tom Cruise somehow sped up two days worth of work and got it done in 45 minutes, and everyone was chest butting each other and he was able to surprise his wife and daughter by 7:45am the next morning. Hader had said, "So that's what it's like to work with Tom Cruise."

2. His maintained a friendship with Billy Wilder in the director’s last years

Cameron Crowe really wanted the legendary director, Billy Wilder, to take the role of Jerry’s mentor, Dicky Fox. Crowe set a meeting with Wilder to offer him the role and when he arrived to Wilder’s office, the director started chatting about his old movies and when Crowe offered him the role, he accepted, finally saying yes after a long courtship. But when filming began, Wilder apologized and dropped out. Crowe told Cruise. “Cruise says, let’s go talk him into it. We drive to Billy Wilder’s office. Billy is there, and he lights up when he sees that it’s Tom Cruise," Crowe recalled to Deadline. Even though Wilder declined, Tom wrote notes to him, and they developed a little bit of a friendship. When Billy passed away, Tom came to the memorial and really let everybody know how much he loved Billy.

1. Overall, he's just a nice guy

Tom Cruise seemingly just doesn’t know how not to be nice. It seems like any journalist who has interviewed Cruise over the years has said similar things. Or any of his many co-stars like Emily Blunt in Edge of Tomorrow who said that Cruise was “so sweet and generous”. Even former employees have nice things to say. His former publicist Pat Kingsley called Cruise “a prince” even though she was fired in 2004. The guy turned up to the London premiere of The Last Samurai three hours early to sign autographs for fans. There are endless articles online about his energy and hardworking and collaborative nature on set with cast and crew. It's also hard to find a picture without him smiling in it, and not everyone can just put on a smile even when they aren't feeling in the mood for it. It's nice to see that despite all of the fame, people can still be nice.

References: www.independent.ie, www.quora.com, people.com, emgn.com