Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography pdfdrive com

CHAPTER 7
The wedding gift from Dustin Hoffman and his wife, Lisa, was unusual but
appropriate—his-and-hers tenpin bowling balls. Ever the competitive couple,
Tom and Nicole had recently developed a passion for the game, but it was a
while before they could continue their sporting duel. As with his first marriage to
Mimi Rogers, there was no opportunity to enjoy a honeymoon; four days after
her Christmas Eve wedding, Nicole headed to North Carolina to finish filming
Billy Bathgate, a period gangster movie in which she was starring alongside
Tom’s best man, Dustin Hoffman.
It was also some time before Nicole was able to enjoy the wedding gift from
David and Shelly Miscavige. When Tom confided to the Scientology leader
about the couple’s fantasy of running through a meadow of wildflowers together,
his friend apparently decided to make his dream come true. A team of twenty
Sea Org disciples was set to work digging, hoeing, and planting wheat grass and
wildflower seed near the Cruises’ bungalow. Former Scientologist Maureen
Bolstad recalled working until early in the morning in the mud and pouring rain.
“It was an emergency project so that Tom could have his fantasy come true. I
felt it was strange that we were doing a special favor for him—I was supposed to
be a religious worker.”
Naturally the work was regularly inspected by David and Shelly Miscavige,
who would ride over to the site on his motorbike. They were apparently unhappy
with the finished appearance and had the area plowed over and reseeded. These
days the Scientology leadership is remarkably coy about the incident, Mike
Rinder, head of Scientology International’s Office of Special Affairs flatly
denying that the wildflower planting ever occurred. Other witnesses, some who
have signed legal affidavits attesting to the truth of their accounts, dispute this.
As Karen Pressley, a friend of both David and Shelly Miscavige, recalls, “The
story of the meadow for Tom and Nicole is absolutely true. I was there.”
Perhaps thinking of the great movie pairing of Spencer Tracy and Katharine
Hepburn, Tom gave his new wife a wedding present money could not buy—the
role of leading lady in his new movie, a rollicking romantic adventure eventually
titled Far and Away. Even though director Ron Howard had never seen Nicole
perform, he didn’t have much choice in the matter. For nine years the director of
such movies as Cocoon and Splash had been nursing the project, which was
based on the life of his great-grandfather, who’d left Ireland to join in the Great

---

Land Rush of 1893. More in hope than expectation, Howard had sent Tom the
script months beforehand, so he was surprised when Tom agreed to star in the
story of a brawling Irish laborer who heads west to seek his fortune and finds
love in the shape of a spirited landowner’s daughter.
Tom’s involvement effectively green-lighted the project, and at twenty-eight,
he was not shy about imposing his authority. Just as Howard agreed to Tom’s
choice of leading lady—as well as a reported $10 million fee—so did he give his
blessing when Tom insisted that Clearsound, the sound system developed by
Scientology, be used in the movie. The young star took Howard to Gold Base to
give him a demonstration and to work on the production in peace and quiet.
Producer Brian Grazer and scriptwriter Bob Dolman arrived later, flown to the
compound in a private helicopter. It was an experience that left Dolman
somewhat spooked. His Scientology hosts for the day were “so security-
conscious, so military—there was a car waiting for the helicopter, people
wearing brown khakis.” Once their script conference was finished, they were
entertained by David Miscavige.
Before they left for filming in May 1991, Tom and Nicole stayed at the base
to rehearse the parts of the young lovers, Joseph Donnelly and Shannon Christie.
It was perhaps as well that they were immersed in filming—the movie was shot
on location in Ireland and Montana—for that same month their faith was rocked
by the most devastating media broadside in its history. A cover story in Time
magazine—the same journal that had described the actor as “Tom Terrific” in an
earlier profile—accused Scientology of being a “Thriving Cult of Greed and
Power” that ruined lives and was little more than a “ruthless global scam.”
In a withering eight-page article, journalist Richard Behar described the
church as a “depraved enterprise” involving illegal activities, legal harassment,
mental and physical abuse, and tax evasion. Scientology was a “hugely
profitable global racket that survived by intimidating members and critics alike
in a Mafia-like manner.” In his extensive investigation involving 150 interviews,
Behar quoted Cynthia Kisser of the Cult Awareness Network as saying:
“Scientology is quite likely the most ruthless, the most classically terroristic, the
most litigious and the most lucrative cult the country has ever seen.” If the
article was not damning enough, a few weeks earlier, members of the Church of
Scientology had gone on trial in Toronto, charged with stealing documents from
government offices and law firms, and breach of trust. It was the first time a
church had been put in the dock in Canada’s history. The church was found not
guilty of the theft charges, but guilty of breach of trust, and was fined $250,000.
The fallout was immediate and widespread. For example, Scientologist Peter
Alexander, a former vice president of Universal Studios, had earlier been

---

instructed by the church to ask a movie friend, Tom Pollock, then president of
Universal’s Motion Picture Division, to remove a derogatory reference to
Scientology from the movie The Hard Way. Pollock reluctantly complied. When
he read Time, Pollock immediately called Alexander and told him never to ask
him for another favor on behalf of Scientology.
Realizing the damage to recruitment and existing membership, Miscavige
launched an aggressive $3 million counterattack, claiming that the Church of
Scientology was the victim of a bizarre and complicated plot involving the cult’s
bête noire, the drug industry. A subsequent libel action against Time was
comprehensively defeated. Nonetheless, when Miscavige visited Tom and
Nicole on the film set in Ireland in July to celebrate Tom’s twenty-ninth
birthday, he was prepared, if asked, to deliver a coherent rebuttal of Behar’s
thesis and soothe any concerns expressed by the Hollywood couple.
Tom and his faith were clearly in the crosshairs. Around the same time,
Scientology victim Nan Herst Bowers wrote separately to Tom, in care of his
publicist, on the Far and Away set, asking him to intervene in her unfolding
family tragedy. In a polite, two-page missive, she explained how she had, as far
as she was concerned, been falsely accused of revealing that Tom was a member
of the Church of Scientology to the media. Her subsequent trial and
excommunication meant that she could no longer see her family, who were still
members of the church. She wrote, “I felt that maybe if he was made aware of
the injustice and grief caused by the Church in their well-intentioned attempt to
protect him, he might want to contact them and discuss the situation and the
effect it has had on my family. I can’t believe Tom would condone breaking up a
family on his behalf.” She received no acknowledgment, even though she had
sent the letter by registered mail. When formally asked about it by journalist
John Richardson two years later, Tom denied all knowledge of the letter or of
Nan Herst Bowers’s plight.
While one family was being broken up, Tom and Nicole were a couple very
much in love, referring to Far and Away as their “honeymoon” movie. On the
set, director Ron Howard was moved to comment: “There was a lot of kissing
going on—all day long.” Tom was especially attentive toward his new bride, his
affection for Nicole proud and public. “He was always taking care of her,” extra
Tony Leone noted. “He would put a towel around her, making sure that she was
feeling good.” At organized events they held hands tightly, pressed their bodies
close together, and Tom always seemed to be whispering sweet nothings in her
ear. As Nicole suffered from panic attacks, their public canoodling was as much
to soothe her jangled nerves as from any romantic impulse.

---

For once this was not an act for outward show, Tom constantly expressing his
adoration for his young bride in the roses he sent her virtually every day and the
brief yet tender love notes, some written on yellow Post-its, which he left for her
wherever they were in the world. (One householder in Toronto who rented her
house to the Cruises was bemused to find several love notes in her sofa cushions
when she moved back in. At first she thought her husband was being
uncharacteristically affectionate. Then she realized they were penned by Tom.)
In the early years of their marriage Nicole was enchanted by the way he wooed
her. “He’s amazingly romantic,” she said. “He puts so much work into us.”
That work was expressed in lavish gifts of jewelry, the top-of-the-line
Mercedes, and even an adorable Labrador puppy. The last gift showed that he
had much to learn about his wife—she is no animal lover. When Nicole told her
husband that she didn’t like clothes shopping, he took over, buying her designer
outfits himself or occasionally employing wardrobe mistress Kate Harrington at
a thousand dollars a day to find Nicole appropriate attire. As one admiring and
rather envious female friend recalled, “I have never met a man who was so
loving, caring, and compassionate about another woman. He simply adored
Nicole.”
Both were keen to start a family. Nicole talked about having children as a
certainty rather than a possibility, the actress whimsically remarking that they
would have to be raised in Australia “to keep their feet on the ground.” On the
set, though, Nicole, who celebrated her twenty-fourth birthday during filming,
revised her thinking when she saw director Ron Howard and his wife, Cheryl, in
action with their four children. She saw them as role models of how to bring up
healthy, well-adjusted children in the Hollywood hothouse. That she wanted a
child with Tom, married or not, was never a question in her mind. As she
confessed some years later, “I was desperate to have a baby with him. I didn’t
care if we were married. That’s what I wish I’d done.”
Tom had never made any secret of his ambition to start a family, a desire that
was urgent and at times almost visceral. It was as if by becoming a father
himself he could expunge the heartache of his childhood, especially his
problematic relationship with his own father. Of course, when he did become a
dad, he was going to be, like everything else he tackled, the best dad in history.
For a man who liked having his family around him—his mother, Mary Lee,
visited the newlyweds in Ireland—fatherhood would be a kind of solace and
completion. “I would love to have kids,” Tom said during his romance with
Nicole. “I would turn down an Oscar to see my boy at a baseball game or my girl
at a song recital.”
For a time it seemed that the extended honeymoon while filming in Ireland

---

had worked according to plan. That summer Tom was quoted as saying, “It’s a
miracle. She’s pregnant. I’m going to be a dad. I can’t wait to hold my firstborn
in my arms.” While these fevered newspaper reports were briskly dismissed by
the couple’s publicist, it seems that the tabloids had for once gotten something
right.
In October, once Far and Away had wrapped, Nicole flew to New York on her
own to reshoot scenes for Billy Bathgate. During the filming, Nicole suffered
stomach pains and was taken to a local hospital for treatment. Immediately
afterward, she flew to St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica, near her Hollywood
home. At the hospital, where she was admitted under a false name, she
underwent, according to a widely quoted hospital source, “minor abdominal
surgery to remove scar tissue that was causing her pain.”
While the real nature of her illness remained a closely guarded secret, the truth
was that Nicole was indeed expecting their first child. The couple’s joy was
brief, as tragically she suffered a potentially life-threatening ectopic pregnancy.
This meant that the fertilized egg had settled in the Fallopian tube instead of in
the uterus, a condition that resulted in painful bleeding in the abdomen. While
ectopic pregnancies can now be dealt with by special drugs, in those days the
fertilized egg had to be removed by keyhole surgery to prevent further bleeding.
More severe conditions result in the entire Fallopian tube being removed,
seriously affecting a woman’s chances of becoming pregnant again. While
around half of the women who suffer ectopic pregnancies subsequently have
successful pregnancies, there is still, according to gynecologist Dr. David
Farquharson of Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, a one-in-ten chance of having a
second ectopic pregnancy.
The medical prognosis for Nicole was further complicated by her family
history. Her mother, Janelle, had believed that she was unable to have children
and, after six years of marriage, had become increasingly discouraged about her
ability to conceive. While Nicole’s birth came as a wonderful surprise, her own
gynecological issues may have been passed on to her actress daughter. If that
was the case, it truly was a miracle that Nicole had become pregnant at all. It
seemed, however, unlikely that she could conceive without miscarrying again.
Doctors warned that it would be dangerous to even try, as another pregnancy
could be potentially fatal. It was a devastating verdict for the couple, who
seemed so eager to start a family. Exhausted and emotionally drained, Nicole
flew to Australia alone to spend time recovering with her own family. “It was,”
she admitted years later, “really very traumatic.”
The options facing Tom and Nicole were bleak; if they tried for a baby, they
were aware that, even if she was successful in becoming pregnant, Nicole was

---

risking her own health. Ironically, it was a situation that would have far-reaching
repercussions not only for their image as a happy, loving couple, but also for the
perception of Tom as an all-action screen hero. But that was the least of their
worries as they privately struggled to come to terms with Nicole’s medical
condition.
With unintentional cruelty, a January 1992 Parade magazine article reported
that Nicole was expecting a baby the following month. While the story was flatly
denied by the couple’s representative, there was a grain of truth in the yarn, as
they were now actively discussing adopting a baby as one of their future options.
As Nicole’s biographer James Dickerson noted, “The story had gotten twisted in
the telling and retelling. Horrified by the story, Nicole and Tom put their secret
adoption plans on hold.”
For the moment they plunged into work, fielding thousands of questions as
they mounted a concerted campaign to promote Far and Away. Perhaps bruised
by the hurtful and endless speculation surrounding the marriage of Hollywood’s
most glamorous couple, Tom brought another woman into his life—publicist Pat
Kingsley, a media operator with a formidable reputation for the ruthless way she
controlled her client’s publicity. Control was the language Tom clearly
understood, his new publicist ensuring that in the media circus she was the
undisputed ringmaster. Before journalists could interview Tom or Nicole, they
had to sign contracts about where, when, and how material from the interview
was to be published. Those who refused were escorted from the big top.
“Increasingly there are indications that he is petulant and demanding, something
of a control freak who shows flashes of prodigious ego,” noted writer Rod Lurie
of Hollywood’s golden boy. “Many journalists are coming to believe that
they’ve been bought with an engaging smile.”
However much Kingsley cracked the whip, when the circus for Far and Away
did come to town in April 1992, the critics and paying public were not keen on
the performance of Hollywood’s latest married double act. There was to be no
repeat of the Tracy–Hepburn pairing. Indeed, when the movie was shown at the
Cannes Film Festival, some critics loudly groaned their disapproval, even though
Tom and Nicole were guests of honor. The public stayed away, too, the film,
which cost more than $30 million, grossing only $60 million in America. Hurt
by the critical panning—“doddering” and “hackneyed” were two descriptions of
the film—Ron Howard retreated into his family, spending the summer reading
books and watching movies. Nicole, admitting that she should not have worked
with Tom so soon after Days of Thunder, auditioned, unsuccessfully, for the
female leads in Ghost, Silence of the Lambs, Sleepless in Seattle, and Thelma

---