Tom Cruise's $39.5M Telluride House Is Pretty Nice

Tom Cruise is leaving his 320-acre estate for Clearwater, Florida — the mecca for Scientologists.

Tour Tom Cruise's $39.5M Telluride Getaway

World-famous movie star and devout Scientologist Tom Cruise is selling his 10,000-square-foot mansion in Telluride, Colorado, for $39.5 million.

The "Mission: Impossible" star's getaway property is nestled in pristine aspen hills, has snow-capped mountain views and more privacy than you can shake an L. Ron Hubbard book at — the property comes with 320 acres of land.

So why is he selling and where is he going? Come find out and take a look inside Cruise's alpine retreat and learn all about his new real estate ventures.

It Was Custom Built for Cruise

Cruise had this modern ranch-style home custom built for him in 1994 after spending a few years designing it, according to the Wall Street Journal.

Property records don't say how much he paid for the land, but the real estate market in Telluride during the 1990s was booming with property development. Cruise was riding high on the success of 1990's "Days of Thunder" and 1992's "A Few Good Men," the latter of which he was paid $12 million to star in.

"Days of Thunder" is where Cruise met Nicole Kidman. The two married on Christmas Eve in 1990 and divorced 10 years later. This house was built during their earlier years, presumably when they were happy.

A Total of 11,600 Square Feet

The main house is a 10,000-square-foot mansion with four bedrooms and six bathrooms. Also on the property is a guesthouse, which measures 1,600 square feet and has three bedrooms and three bathrooms.

That brings the total square footage to 11,600, the number of bedrooms to seven, and the number of bathrooms to nine.

Remote, But Not Too Remote

Amenities on the property include a gym, rec room, library and sports court. The house is perched far, far away from the main road. A gated, mile-long driveway snakes up through the hills to near the base of a 13,800-foot mountain, which dominates the northern landscape.

Despite the remote location, it's only about 12 minutes away from downtown Telluride and the Telluride Ski Resort (we're assuming that's after making the driveway trek).

Not the First Time It's Been Up for Sale

Cruise first put this property up for sale in October of 2014 with a listing price of $59 million.

Apparently, there were no buyers, and Cruise whisked the multimillion-dollar property off the market some months later.

Living in Clearwater, Florida

In 2016, Cruise sold off his Beverly Hills mansion for about $40 million and skipped off to Clearwater, Florida, a city that the Church of Scientology has been taking over building by building since 1975, when it established its headquarters there.

Cedar and Stone

The mansion is made out of stone and wood. Lots of wood.

The entire interior is made of bleached cedar, with many custom-cut pieces for flair.

A Rough Childhood

Cruise is a native of Syracuse, New York, but spent a good chunk of his upbringing in Ottawa, Canada, and had a peripatetic youth, reportedly going to 15 different schools in 12 years. His childhood was lonely and fraught with abuse at the hands of his father.

"I had no really close friend, someone who understands you," he told Parade in 2006, about a year after his infamously manic couch-jumping appearance on "The Oprah Winfrey Show." "I was always the new kid with the wrong shoes, the wrong accent. I didn’t have the friend to share things with and confide in."

A Private Place for a Private Person

Cruise is a very private individual, but he relaxed his guard for a bit following that disastrous Oprah interview and also that time he criticized Brooke Shields for taking antidepressants, calling them and psychiatry "pseudoscience."

Both interviews were given around the same time, which brought a lot of negative attention to Cruise and Scientology.

'There's Something Wrong With This Guy'

In the Parade interview, he revealed that he grew up in an impoverished Catholic family headed by his father, an electrical engineer that couldn't hold down a job.

Cruise said his father beat him and that he "was a bully and a coward" and "was the kind of person where, if something goes wrong, they kick you. 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. Be careful around him.' There’s that anxiety."

'An Affront to My Dignity'

Large stone fireplace in wood ranch home

Cruise rationalized his contempt for modern psychiatry because he was diagnosed as dyslexic as a youth.

Feeling "labeled" by the diagnosis, the actor said it was "an absolute affront to my dignity."

He credits Scientology with helping him overcome his disability.

Not-So-Risky Business

The movie star had a remarkably successful start in Hollywood. Shortly after graduating from Glen Ridge High School in New Jersey, he moved to New York City at the age of 18 and worked as a busboy, trying to get some TV roles in his off time.

Unsuccessful, he then flew out to Los Angeles and signed with an agency, which landed him roles in "Taps" and "The Outsiders." In 1983, he made "Risky Business" — for which he is rumored to have been paid $75,000 — and became a household name. He was just 21 years old.

This mansion is anything but risky. However much Cruise paid for it in the early 1990s must pale in comparison to what it will cost to purchase today.

Eyes Wide Shut

In the 1990s, Cruise became one of the highest-paid actors in Hollywood. The 1990s was also the time that he joined the Church of Scientology.

Cruise's first wife, Mimi Rogers, was a Scientology church auditor and introduced him to the new religion. She and Cruise married in 1987 but divorced in 1990.

In the 2013 book, "Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood and The Prison of Belief," author Lawrence Wright alleges that the church split the couple up so Cruise could marry Nicole Kidman. The church served Rogers her divorce papers.

A Pure Instrument

But Rogers had said their relationship was already in trouble because Cruise was seriously pondering becoming a monk.

"He thought he had to be celibate to maintain the purity of his instrument," she said in a 1993 Playboy interview. "Therefore, it became obvious that we had to split."

But you know what instruments are really cool? Those cooking instruments hanging above the large wooden island.

His Thetan Levels Are Really High

This would have been the second time Cruise considered a religious path of work. When he was a teenager, Cruise took one year of seminary and considered becoming a priest.

Now, the actor is possibly Operating Thetan Level 8, the highest auditing level in Scientology (he was OT7 over 15 years ago). That means the whole truth of existence has been revealed to him, or some other nonsense.

The $600 Million Man

While the whole "levels of Scientology" thing is a convoluted exercise in suspending disbelief, it's well-known to be a seriously expensive one.

Cruise is worth an estimated $600 million, and he's made it clear that he believes Scientology has made him the ultra-successful actor that he is — so however many millions of dollars he's spent along the way must seem well worth it.

The Color of Money

It's no surprise that Cruise likes pool. He prepared for hours on end to become the pool shark in "The Color of Money" (he performed almost all of the shots in the film).

Later, he underwent a lengthy filming process for a billiard room scene in "Eyes Wide Shut," which reportedly took three weeks of filming and nearly 200 takes.

Spending Lockdown at Saint Hill Manor

A listing agent for the property told the Wall Street Journal in 2014 that Cruise was simply not using the property enough and decided to sell the place. That must be even more true now, seeing as how he's more involved in the church than ever.

He reportedly spent lockdown in Saint Hill Manor, a 1792 country house in West Sussex, England, that was once the home of Hubbard and now serves as the British headquarters of Scientology.

From Mountain Views to Skyview

In Clearwater, Cruise is said to have purchased a two-floor penthouse in a new 10-story condominium called Skyview.

The Skyview belongs to a company owned by Moises Agami, a property developer who belongs to a family which the Tampa Bay Times calls "one of the Church of Scientology's largest donors."

Joining the Other Scientologists in Clearwater

Scientology owns nearly all of downtown Clearwater. The group dropped $103 million between 2016 and 2019 and "now own most commercial property on every block within walking distance of the waterfront, putting the secretive church firmly in control of the area’s future," according to a fascinating (and terrifying) expose written by Tracey McManus for the Tampa Bay Times.

There are about 15,000 Scientologists in the Tampa Bay area, according to Scientology's magazine, Freedom.

Tom Cruise: Scientology City Mayor?

Most of those properties weren't even on the market. Their owners were approached by a Scientologist who offered a cash deal that sometimes quadrupled the property's value. Many of the storefronts sit vacant.

They're basically making Scientology City. Maybe Cruise will be their mayor.

Expensive for the Area

Homes in Telluride are very expensive. The typical, middle-price tier of home value is about $1.1 million.

Cruise's home is many times more expensive than that, with a price-per-square-foot of $3,431.

Remember TomKat?

We'd be remiss to talk about Cruise's life and real estate without mentioning TomKat, the celebrity couple name for Cruise and Katie Holmes.

The two purchased a $30.5 million, 10,286-square-foot mansion in Beverly Hills in April of 2007, about a year after they married.

Holmes' Escape

Holmes broke up with Cruise in 2012 and fled to a $12,500-a-month apartment in Manhattan.

According to the New York Post, she was reportedly stalked by Scientologists, who waited outside her apartment building, snapped photos of people and demanded to know who they were.

It's believed that Holmes left the relationship because she didn't want their daughter, Suri, to become a Scientologist.

Breaking Up Is Expected at 33

Cruise has had three wives, and every one of those relationships ended when the girl was 33 years old.

Thirty-three is also a number that has some significance in Scientology. According to HuffPost, 33 is known as the "Master Teacher," a number that represents altruism and is associated with healing powers through love.

Of course, it was Holmes who divorced Cruise. He was blindsided by the news and was filming in Iceland at the time.

A Place to Heal After a Day at Work

One thing that you have to commend Cruise for, though, is his absolute fearlessness when it comes to performing his own stunts. Cruise earned his pilot's license in the 1990s, but what he did for "Mission: Impossible – Fallout" was truly on the next level.

He trained for months to learn not only how to fly an H125 helicopter, but to perform a corkscrew dive for one stunt. The pilot's license just to fly the helicopter took 2,000 hours.

Not All Stunts Go Well

While the corkscrew drive went flawlessly (there wouldn't be a Tom Cruise if it didn't), not all of this stunts do. Cruise broke his ankle jumping from one building to another while filming another scene from the same movie. Ouch.

As for "Top Gun: Maverick," Cruise was forbidden by the U.S. Navy from trying to pilot a $70 million F-18 Super Hornet. That's probably for the best.

Mission: Possible

Given the mansion's enormous price tag, it will likely take a little while to find a buyer. That's just the nature of mega-expensive real estate, but the thing does seem to be priced to sell at $19.5 million less than what he originally listed it for. Telluride has only gotten more exclusive.

Real estate sales for Telluride and Mountain Village surpassed $1 billion in 2020, a new high-water mark.

A Three-Door Garage

The estate features a dramatic three-door garage. It likely came into good use, because Cruise loves cars. According to GQ UK, the actor is known to have owned:

A 1958 Chevrolet Corvette C1
A 1970 Chevrolet Chevelle SS
A 1996 Porsche 993
A 2000 Ford Excursion (which is probably the most practical car to use in this area)
A 2005 Bugatti Veyron

His Real Estate Is Almost as Nice as Him

Wood rocking chair with a snow background

The odd thing about Cruise is that he's heavily involved in a controversial religion, but by nearly all accounts, he's a really nice guy (maybe Christian Bale taking Cruise's real-life personality as inspiration for Bale's role in "American Psycho" was a bit off).

He's done a lot of nice things for people over the years, like rescuing a family from a burning sailboat and paying a hit-and-run victim's medical bills.

Interview With a Realtor

In addition to selling his homes in Beverly Hills and in Telluride, Cruise also offloaded a $5 million mansion 30 miles south of London in 2017.

Given his time at Saint Hill Manor and his move to Clearwater, it seems pretty clear that Cruise is looking to make the church an even bigger part of his life.

Maybe he has finally mastered telekinesis and mind control like other Scientologists. But if that were true, he wouldn't have needed to cut the price tag.