What is the name of the character played by Tom Cruise in War of the Worlds?

In War of the Worlds, Tom Cruise plays Ray Ferrier, a New Jersey crane operator and estranged father trying to protect his children during an alien invasion.

Ray is not a military hero or scientist. When the tripods emerge, he is forced into a survival role while caring for his teenage son Robbie and young daughter Rachel. That family crisis gives Steven Spielberg’s 2005 adaptation a more personal focus than a conventional invasion spectacle.

The film updates H. G. Wells’s 1898 novel from Victorian England to contemporary America. Cruise and Spielberg had previously worked together on Minority Report, and War of the Worlds became their second collaboration. Common mix-ups include Cruise’s other famous characters: Ethan Hunt belongs to Mission: Impossible, while Jack Reacher comes from a separate action-film series.