June 19 – OK, let’s get this out of the way: Tom Cruise is not the tallest person we’ve ever seen. For some reason, that seems to be the first thing everybody asks about the movie star. For that matter, his girlfriend Penelope Cruz is on the shorter side, too, although nobody ever asks. We can tell you that both are as dazzlingly good looking in person as they appear to be on the screen. The two were at New York’s Chelsea Piers where Cruise, NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw, Bank of America CEO Kenneth Lewis and Ernst & Young Chairman James Turley received "Excellence in Mentoring” awards from MENTOR/National Mentoring Partnership. Comedian Jon Stewart emceed the gala, and singer Michael Bolton, Paul Newman, Lorraine Bracco of The Sopranos and New York Governor George Pataki attended. Cruise seemed very tall indeed when he told us that his own children are very proud of his involvement in mentoring efforts.