Tom Cruise Says Scientology Helped with Learning Disability

The Associated Press

New York, July 11--(AP) 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."