Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography pdfdrive com

CHAPTER 8
At last he was truly where he felt at home, a place where he instinctively
belonged. In the driver’s seat. In the cockpit. At the helm. Finally master of his
own craft, producing, starring in, and fine-tuning his first blockbuster, Mission:
Impossible. For the greenhorn producer, still only thirty-two, it was truly a risky
business, as he steered a choppy course between the breezy demands of director
Brian De Palma and the rocky financial realities of making a movie based on a
half-forgotten 1970s TV show about maverick secret agents who foil endless
dastardly plots of evildoers who want to take over the world.
Not only did he have the mental and physical pressures of playing a
convincing leading man, in this case Special Agent Ethan Hunt, he also had to
keep a weather eye on the budget and all the other routine details of sailing a
multimillion-dollar project to the safe harbor of myriad multiplex screens. All
that, as well as surviving an exploding fish tank, performing a backward
somersault on a speeding train, and, famously, starfishing out his limbs as he
was lowered 110 feet into a tightly guarded vault while carefully avoiding
security laser beams. Perhaps his most difficult feat was not so much evading red
lasers as finessing his way through the labyrinth of red tape in the former
Communist Czech Republic, where filming took place in the winter of 1995.
For a controlling, driven perfectionist, the convoluted bureaucracy tested his
patience to the limit. “Prague ripped us off. They are still getting used to
democracy,” he said drily. Even a man-to-man chat with the country’s new
President, playwright Vaclav Havel, failed to bring costs down. Still, one bonus
of filming in the Czech capital was being able to stroll around the cobbled streets
with Nicole, baby Connor, and Bella without attracting attention. It was a change
to go sightseeing in daylight—normally the couple went out at night to avoid the
attentions of fans and paparazzi.
Not that he had much chance to soak up the sights. As filming progressed in
Prague and finally at the Pinewood Studios outside London, there was no doubt
who was in command. Even though De Palma was twenty-two years his senior,
the novice producer insisted he have the final say over every detail of the
production: from ordering daily script rewrites to rerecording the film score so
that he could hear more flutes. Perhaps his focus on sound quality was inspired,
or even recommended, by his spiritual Svengali, David Miscavige, whose
sensitive ear was the final arbiter of Scientology’s own musical offerings.

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Certainly there were those in Cruise’s faith who saw in his depiction of Ethan
Hunt, a secret agent who lived on the edge, distinct similarities to the character
of the Scientology leader. “Mission: Impossible is fascinating because in Ethan
Hunt I could see David Miscavige,” observed Karen Pressley. “Both the
character and the man were striving for the ultimate thrill. Just as David was
living vicariously through Tom Cruise, I could see that Tom Cruise was slowly
becoming David Miscavige. That transposition in itself was worthy of a movie
script.” It was an early appreciation of the direction in which Tom was headed.
While Tom’s superagent role echoed the character of his close friend, Nicole
was finally breaking free of the “wife of Tom Cruise” tag. In May 1995, Nicole
flew to Cannes where her movie To Die For was showing at the film festival.
For the first time she walked the red carpet on her own, her dress, slit to the hip,
making almost as big a splash as her movie. Not only was she nominated for
twelve awards, including a Golden Globe for best actress, which she eventually
won, she was finally acknowledged as an actress to be reckoned with on her own
merit.
As she basked in the critical glow—the film itself was only a modest financial
success—she embarked on a serious role, which meant leaving Tom holding
baby Connor and his sister, Isabella. Even though, in the summer of 1995, the
couple were living in a palatial $15,000-a-week mansion in London, Nicole
decided that she needed to be alone to focus on her role as heiress Isabel Archer
for Jane Campion’s movie of Portrait of a Lady. It was a sign of her absorption,
some would say self-absorption, and intensity that she had to immerse herself in
the character without any distractions.
Such was her obsession with the part that she insisted on wearing a corset that
squeezed her waist to a mere nineteen inches, so she could feel the pain that
Isabel felt. Several times filming was halted when the actress went pale with
fatigue or even collapsed in a dead faint. It was no surprise that at the end of
filming in November, she spent two weeks in bed with exhaustion and a
temperature of 104 degrees. As with her husband on Born on the Fourth of July,
the ghost of Laurence Olivier could be heard whispering, “Try acting, it’s much
easier.”
As Nicole was putting herself through self-imposed agony for what she called
“her baby,” Tom was juggling home, career, and children, filming Mission: