Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography pdfdrive com

Dianetics, became an unwitting participant in the relationship among Tom,
Nicole, and David Miscavige. During the heady first months of her romance
with Tom, the Australian sailed through the entry-level courses of Scientology,
reaching the level of Operating Thetan II. Not only had she learned how to self-
audit, she was seen as a candidate to go through the Wall of Fire, to be admitted
into the inner sanctum. Yet she hesitated, citing film commitments. Even though
she was shooting the bittersweet drama My Life in spring 1993, David Miscavige
wanted to probe her explanation a little further.
Hines was asked to audit her, looking for any reasons why she was not
making further progress. It seemed to Hines that there had been some
conversation between David Miscavige and Tom Cruise about Nicole, and the
session had been arranged to find a problem and use that to pull her back into
line. The fact that she was close to her psychologist father—she began returning
home to Sydney with increasing frequency—would always, by Hubbard’s
definition, be a cause for concern. In preparation for the session, Hines reviewed
her confidential files, which gave no clue about any issues or difficulties she had
with her new faith. Previous auditors had the impression that she was a young
woman who got on with life, suffering few upsets or setbacks.
During the twenty-minute question-and-answer session with Hines, Nicole
made it clear that she was perfectly happy and nothing was bothering her. Nor
did she give the impression that she was hiding anything, either verbally or while
using the E meter. When he proffered his report, saying that there was nothing
wrong with her, Hines was accused of making a mistake and punished for failing
to find a problem. It was clear that the point of the session had not been to help
Nicole, but to find any difficulty to use as an excuse to “handle” her and pull her
back into the fold. As Hines now recalls, “They must’ve been concerned because
from this point she started to drop out of Scientology. Obviously they blamed it
on me. All they could say was that I didn’t ask the questions right. And I still to
this day don’t think I made a mistake.” While Scientology teaches that we are all
responsible for our own actions, that clearly does not apply to celebrities.
One woman Tom couldn’t “handle” was best-selling novelist Anne Rice.
While Nicole may have been having private doubts about Scientology, Rice
publicly voiced her concerns about Tom when he was cast in the role of the
sinister, sexually deviant Lestat in the movie based on her book Interview with
the Vampire. Rice much preferred Dutch actor Rutger Hauer for the role, and

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was equally displeased with Tom’s costar, Brad Pitt. “It’s like casting Huck Finn
and Tom Sawyer in the movie,” she raged. “Cruise is no more my Vampire
Lestat than Edward G. Robinson is Rhett Butler.”
Nor did it help that her comments coincided with calls in September 1993 for
an investigation into the celebrity couple’s adoption, erstwhile Republican
candidate for Senate Anthony R. Martin criticizing “Florida’s corrupt interstate
adoption baby sellers.” While Martin was easy to dismiss as a frivolous publicity
hound, Rice proved harder to shake off. Her public campaign, which incited
thousands of her fans, resulted in death threats days before Tom began filming.
These threats were taken seriously enough for the producers to erect a covered
walkway from Tom’s trailer to the set, which also stopped paparazzi from taking
shots of Tom in full vampire makeup, adding to the air of mystery surrounding
the production.
When Tom accepted the award for Actor of the Decade at the Chicago
International Film Festival in October 1993 shortly before filming started, he put
a brave face on the personal mauling, saying that he “hoped to prove a lot of
people wrong.” In an attempt to defuse the situation, Tom claimed he had read
Rice’s 352-page tome when he was a teenager—no mean feat for a young man
who’d described himself as a “functional illiterate” when he left high school.
In public Tom was placatory, but in private he was “deeply hurt” by Rice’s
ferocious assault on his artistic integrity. Legendary producer David Geffen,
who’d convinced Cruise to take the role in the first place, soothed him by saying
that Rice was a woman gone mad. Nonetheless, it must have been a bewildering
experience for a man who was now constantly surrounded by those who deferred
to his will, sang his praises, and soothed his ego. What probably rankled most
was the fact that there was no appreciation for the artistic and commercial risk he
was taking by embracing the role of a creature of fluid sexuality.
For the first time here was the world’s sexiest man, whose audience had
become used to seeing him in the role of clear-eyed hero, playing a villain, a
character who seeks love beyond gender. It was all the more commendable,
given the previous judgments of his friend David Miscavige, who had advised
against his taking on the role of Edward Scissorhands because of that character’s
ambivalent sexuality. The role of Lestat was much darker and riper. Whatever
misgivings Miscavige may have had, Tom put his faith in the judgment of his
wife and David Geffen, the man who had acknowledged his talent a decade
earlier by choosing him for the lead in Risky Business.
Researching the role with his customary zeal and vigor, Tom set out to prove
Rice and her fans wrong. Not only did he read all of Rice’s books, he went on a
drastic diet, learned to play the piano, and flew to Paris with Nicole to soak up

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the decadent atmosphere. They roamed the streets, visiting museums and
galleries—mostly at night, just like real-life vampires. “We just went wild,” he
recalled. “Drank fine wine and danced till dawn.” Ironically, while Tom
interpreted Lestat as essentially a lonely figure looking for love, the film’s
director, Neil Jordan, compared the life of a vampire to that of a major
Hollywood star—kept away from the daylight and living in a “strange kind of
seclusion.” It seemed that no matter how hard Tom tried, he ended up playing
himself.
Like the creature of the night he became for a time, he and Nicole enjoyed a
restless life, roaming the planet in pursuit of their art, their times together
punctuated by innumerable partings. During the filming of Interview with the