London: Hollywood star Tom Cruise has credited his Scientology faith with helping him overcome dyslexia insisting he was illiterate until he followed the teachings of the controversial religion's founder L. Ron Hubbard.

The actor struggled with literacy at school and resigned to the fact that he would struggle with reading and writing after he was diagnosed with the language-based disability aged seven.

Cruise admits he walked away from school as an illiterate and blames the school system for the same.

However, he states it was science-fiction writer Hubbard's methods of learning and the ideas behind Scientology that finally enabled him to get over his learning difficulties, reports contactmusic.com.

"I asked myself if I was normal or an idiot. I would try to concentrate but I felt anxiety, frustration (and) boredom. When I graduated from high school in 1980, I was functionally illiterate,” he said.

"Nobody gave me a solution and I wanted to know why the system had failed. Finally, as an adult, I learned to read perfectly through the method of L. Ron Hubbard."