As Tom Cruise prepares to be a proud papa again, he has implied that there's one man he definitely will not be taking lessons in daddyhood from.

His own father.

Tom Cruise is even less popular The War of the Worlds star says in the upcoming issue of Parade magazine that his father, Thomas Cruise Mapother III, who died in the mid-'80s of cancer, was abusive.

"He was a bully and a coward. He was the kind of person where, if something goes wrong, they kick you," Cruise said. "It was a great lesson in my life--how he'd lull you in, make you feel safe and then, bang!"

Even when he was a child he felt that his dad was someone to watch out for. "For me, it was like, 'There's something wrong with this guy. Don't trust him. Be careful around him.' There's that anxiety," Cruise divulged. His mother, Mary Lee, divorced his dad in 1974.

Cruise said he approached his father for a reconciliation (sometime between Risky Business and Top Gun), when Mapother was on his deathbed. "He would only meet me on the basis that I didn't ask him anything about the past," the 43-year-old actor said.

The estranged father and son reunited, but there was no closure to be had. "When I saw him in pain," Cruise reminisced, "I thought, 'Wow, what a lonely life.' He was in his late 40's. It was sad."

And although going to school was a chance to flee his unhappy home, the classroom offered little solace for a young Cruise either. Apparently no one realized that they were picking on the future "Tom Cruise" because, as a boy, he was harassed in the halls quite a bit.

"So many times the big bully comes up, pushes me," Cruise remembered. "Your heart's pounding, you sweat, and you feel like you're going to vomit?I don't like bullies."

Cruise has begun making the publicity rounds in advance of Mission: Impossible III.

Already the actor made headlines during a weekend trip to Germany to promote the sequel. He appeared on the TV show Wetten Dass... (I'll Bet) and announced that his two pilots were on standby to fly him back to the States should fiancee Katie Holmes go into labor. The 27-year-old actress is in the final stages of her pregnancy. The actor has two adopted children with ex-wife Nicole Kidman, Connor and Isabella.

Cruise also divulged in the Bild tabloid that the couple's wedding would take place after the birth.

"First the baby, then the film," he was quoted as saying. "Then, in summer, we want to get married. I won't let this woman get away."

And why should he? For all the grief they get, Holmes has been something of a good-luck charm for Cruise. War of the Worlds, which premiered right around the time TomKat did, grossed more than $590 million worldwide. And the prospects are promising for Mission: Impossible III. The sequel, set for May 5 and costarring Oscar winner Philip Seymour Hoffman as the baddie, is part of a franchise with a pretty decent track record--the first two films raked in more than $1 billion.