Tom Cruise said Scientology let him overcome dyslexia

Associated Press/July 11, 2003

New York -- Tom Cruise said he learned to overcome his learning disability through Scientology.

"When I was about 7, I had been labeled dyslexic," he told People magazine for its July 21 issue. "I'd try to concentrate on what I was reading, then I'd get to the end of the page and have very little memory of anything I'd read. I would go blank, feel anxious, nervous, bored, frustrated, dumb."

After Top Gun came out in 1986, Cruise became a Scientologist and discovered the "Study Technology" the religion's founder, L. Ron Hubbard, developed in the 1960s.

"'I realized I could absolutely learn anything that I wanted to learn," Cruise said.

Now the 41-year-old actor is a founding board member of the Hollywood Education and Literacy Project, a nonprofit group that uses Hubbard's teaching techniques in a secular setting.

"'I don't want people to go through what I went through," Cruise said. "I want kids to have the ability to read, to write, to understand what people are saying to them, to be able to solve life's problems."