Cruise's wild hitchhiking youth

Film

13:30 24 April 2006

Tom Cruise used to hitchhike with prostitutes.

The 'Mission Impossible III' star used to grab rides with men picking up hookers outside New York's Holland Tunnel when he was a struggling actor.

Cruise - who celebrated the birth of his first child with fiancée Katie Holmes last week - revealed to Britain's Sunday Times newspaper: "There were prostitutes, who used to be around the tunnel, who knew me. They'd see me and they'd go, 'Look, I'll pick up a john and you jump in'. So I'd ride through the tunnel to New Jersey.

"The drivers would say, 'What's this guy doing in the back seat?' But they saw I was just this 18-year-old kid. I didn't look dangerous.

"They didn't do anything sexual in front of me. I'd get out in New Jersey and say, 'Thank you very much'. Then I'd hitchhike home."

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