Tom Cruise`s ancestry includes Irish `hero landlord`

London: Tom Cruise`s Irish ancestry has been certified in a ceremony in Dublin, following the discovery that the star has descended from a heroic potato famine landlord. Tourism Ireland had conducted research into the 50-year-old actor`s ancestry and found out that his great-great-great grandfather had been a landlord called Patrick Russell Cruise, who restored evicted families to their home farms before the Great Famine, the Telegraph reported. Tanaiste and Foreign Affairs Minister Eamon Gilmore presented Cruise with a framed certificate. Researchers also found that the Cruise family line dated back to the Anglo-Normans and aristocrat Strongbow, Richard de Clare, the first Earl of Pembroke and Lord of Leinster. The Russell family was also prominent in his genealogy and rebelled against Oliver Cromwell and the Protestant faith with the Cruise family. The two lines were joined by marriage in 1766, which resulted in the double-barrelled surname. ANI