Whether or not his 50th birthday is a happy day for Tom Cruise in light of his wife filing for divorce less than a week of his landmark birthday, only he will know.
Landmark birthdays marking the end of one decade and the start of a new are often occasions when we reflect on achievements and challenges of the past, and look towards our life and hopes for the next 10 years. For Tom, no doubt his thinking on both fronts will be going into overdrive!
Putting his marital difficulties aside, does Tom Cruise turning 50 help change the perceptions of age. He still plays the romantic lead, still plays the action hero and the still draws in the box office crowds Nobody seems to suggest that he should be swapping the silver screen for his pipe and slippers just yet!
50 is far from old
Will the relatively youthful image of Tom Cruise create a new awareness of 50 being far from old- after all, at 50 we are unlikely to have yet reached the halfway point of our adult lives. Far from fading into the background, Tom Cruise is considered a person of influence and still commands column inches in the press- as do his contemporaries Brad Pitt (soon to be 50) and George Clooney. They may be viewed as mature- but none are considered old.
Interestingly as Pierce Brosnan approached 50 he was allegedly considered too old by producers to play the iconic Bond lead a fourth time – perhaps mindsets have started to change even in the past eight years!
Phil
I think both for men and woman in our fifties,
we are the first generation that have not aged
as most of our Parents did. I know personally,
in my head I feel no more than 30, which was a
good age.
Most people I know who are Fifty or more, are
celebrating their past and their maturity,and
are striving to maintain their health and
fitness, to embrace the future, and all its
potential, with the same mental energy, that
they had when they were a lot younger.