New York, June 22: Tom Cruise, accompanied by girlfriend Penelope Cruz, walked the red carpet on Thursday (June 19, 2003) in New York City. The Hollywood heartthrob was honoured with an award for "Excellence in Mentoring" for his role in founding the Hollywood Education and Literacy Project.
Hollywood duo Tom Cruise and girlfriend Penelope Cruz made a joint appearance in New York City on Thursday (June 19, 2003) at the Mentor/ National Mentoring Partnership's annual recognition dinner. There Cruise was given the "Excellence in Mentoring" award for his continued dedication to youth mentoring.


Despite rumors that Cruise and Cruz were no longer an item, the pair appeared as in-love as ever while they walked the red carpet and posed for the press. At one point, Cruise even kissed his leading lady before she left to enter the ceremony. The ceremony, given by Mentor/ National Mentoring Partnership, honored Cruise for his role in founding the Hollywood Education and Literacy Project (H.E.L.P.) Founded in 1996, H.E.L.P. delivers one-on-one tutoring and mentoring for students and their families, as well as instruction and training for volunteers and people opening community centers in other areas - all at no cost to participants.


The decision to work with a mentoring program was a personal one for Cruise. "I was diagnosed with being dyslexic, and I really had a hell of a time learning, a hell of a time. It was very difficult. I came up with all kind of tricks; I had to get through auditions. For me, as successful as I was, I always saw the mountain. I knew there was a limit to what I could do with my life," Cruise said.
After working with several different tutoring programs, Cruise discovered that he was not dyslexic and studied how to apply learning tools to conceptually understand anything he wanted to learn.



Dyslexic or not, no one can doubt the enormity of Cruise's success. He is now working on a variety of projects, including the next installment of the "Mission Impossible" movies. He said, "[I'm] Working on MI3, with Joe Carnahan. We've got a bunch of films that we're producing. Just a bunch of stuff. It's rocking right now." Music star Michael Bolton also walked the red carpet. He has supported mentoring programs for some time now, and firmly believes in their success. Said Bolton, "If you have a program where you have a million mentors, that's a million kids being taken out one at a time, or being given opportunities one at a time."


Inside the ceremony Cruise's long-time friend, Paul Newman, welcomed him and presented him with the award. Afterwards, Cruise gave a lengthy speech about the importance of mentoring and praised the evening as a great honor.


Bureau Report