Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography pdfdrive com

Vanilla Sky, now filming in Hollywood. It did not take long for the media to get
wind of the couple’s troubles, especially as Tom had now moved into a hotel.
Their behavior at the Golden Globes ceremony in Hollywood on January 21
gave the gossip further credence. Both Tom and Nicole presented awards at the
ceremony, but they arrived in separate cars, Nicole escorted by her father,
Antony, and sat at separate tables.
With the National Enquirer about to break the story, publicist Pat Kingsley
issued a statement on February 5 confirming that the marriage was over. She
said that the split was due to “the difficulties inherent in divergent careers which
constantly keep them apart,” emphasizing that there was absolutely no third
party involved and that Scientology had not influenced Tom’s decision. For
once, even the credulous entertainment media was skeptical, pointing out how
both Tom and Nicole had often boasted that they had never spent more than two
weeks apart throughout their ten-year marriage. The split generated a frenzy of
reports linking Nicole to her Moulin Rouge costar Ewan McGregor, actor
George Clooney, her former boyfriend Marcus Graham, Blue Room beau Iain
Glen, and others. As for Tom’s on-screen love interest, Penélope Cruz denied
having an affair.
Even though there were two children involved this time, Tom refused to
consider any kind of marriage guidance or counseling—not even the Scientology
counseling he and Mimi Rogers had gone through at the end of their brief
marriage. Two days after the media announcement, Tom filed for divorce in the
L.A. Superior Court, citing “irreconcilable differences” and stating, “I do not
believe professional counseling or the assistance of any mental health
professional, lapse of time, or any other factor will change this breakdown.”
Publicly, he remained tight-lipped about the breakdown. “Nicole knows why”
was all he would say, his petulant tone more suggestive of a high-school breakup
than the dignified end of a ten-year marriage.
On the set of Vanilla Sky he seemed relaxed and jaunty, even attending a party
hosted by his friend Steven Spielberg. Behind the scenes, however, was a man

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who appeared to be out to control and intimidate his estranged wife and anyone
else who felt tempted to step out of line. Security on the set was drastically
beefed up, Tom constantly surrounded by five bodyguards. Crew members who
worked in close proximity to the star had to go through a metal detector to check
that they were not carrying cameras, mobile phones, or recording devices. It got
to be too much for one film executive, who was angered at the sight of a female
extra being made to empty her handbag. He shouted, “Tell Tom these are
professional actors and are to be treated with respect. This is not the Federal
Bureau of Investigation.” Tom’s publicist, Pat Kingsley, brushed aside these
concerns. “Yes, he is insisting on tight security,” she said, “but only to protect
the safety of himself and others.”
Meanwhile, Nicole was suffering, barely able to leave their home. She had
started working on a new film, Panic Room, in mid-January, but dropped out
within the month, ostensibly because of her knee injury. “Even though there
were strains,” said Nicole’s friend, Australian director John Duigan, “the final
breach was sudden and jarring.” A few days after the split was formally
confirmed in early February, her mother, Janelle, and sister, Antonia, and her
two children flew to Los Angeles to comfort and support the distraught actress.
She felt under siege, both by the media, who were throwing out a confetti of
possible names for her lover, and by Tom’s lawyers and the news that he had
hired the notorious investigator Tony Pellicano to look into her private affairs.
Not only did Tom and Nicole have an agreement not to use detectives, but she
knew her husband had always despised the man and his dubious methods. It
seemed that Tom’s mood was so vengeful that only the venom of Pellicano
could express it. Pellicano, a friend and associate of Tom’s lawyer Bert Fields,
was known as the “ultimate problem solver,” a thug who intimidated victims
with an aluminum baseball bat he carried in his car trunk. “I can’t do everything
by the book,” Pellicano once boasted. “I bend the law to death in gaining
information.” It was not until 2002 that it became clear how far he would go to
bend the law.
An FBI raid on his offices uncovered two live grenades, plastic explosives,
wiretapping equipment, and literally thousands of pages of transcripts of illegal
recordings of telephone conversations. He subsequently boasted to Corinne
Clifford, a client in a domestic case, that he had bugged Nicole’s phone while
working for Tom’s lawyer Dennis Wasser during the divorce case. “I’m the
number one private eye in the world,” he said. “I made Dennis Wasser’s career.”
Since then, both Tom and Nicole as well as Bert Fields have been interviewed
by FBI agents investigating Pellicano, who is currently in prison facing 110
counts, including wiretapping, racketeering, conspiracy, witness tampering,

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identity theft, and destruction of evidence.
While that scandal lay in the future, Nicole was sufficiently aware of
Pellicano’s bullying reputation to ask her lawyer Bill Beslow, a New Yorker
who had handled divorces for Mia Farrow, Tatum O’Neal, and Sarah, the
Duchess of York, for advice. He recommended that she bring in her own man to
handle countermeasures. So it was that Richard DiSabatino, a Hollywood private
eye who first got into the business thanks to Nicole’s friend Robert De Niro,
found himself sitting in her cool, elegant study while her lawyer idly fingered a
jazz tune on the grand piano in the sitting room. Dressed simply in jeans and an
oversized sweater, Nicole looked the picture of misery, her face porcelain white,
her eyes red-rimmed with crying. “She looked terrible,” he recalls. “This was not
an act, and it was clear that the breakup had hit her hard.” As she was talking,
she would break down in tears, the actress constantly rubbing her injured knee.
Her mood was bleak and pessimistic. “I feel so vulnerable,” she told him
plaintively. “People want to stop me from continuing what little career I have.”
After listening to her tale of woe, he explained that he would be responsible
for protecting her, making sure her phones could not be tapped, and ensuring
that she only dealt with people she knew and trusted. She was, however, insistent
that they not investigate her husband, even though DiSabatino had contacts at
the Carlyle Hotel in New York, where Penélope Cruz stayed during the filming
of Vanilla Sky before Tom filed for divorce.
As he left her home at Pacific Palisades, DiSabatino realized that he was
backing the wrong horse, that Hollywood would automatically side with her
powerful husband. Nevertheless, his job was now to protect his vulnerable client.
On a subsequent visit he swept her phones and installed an encryption device so
that she couldn’t be wiretapped. “We tried to keep one step ahead,” he recalls.
Realizing that Pellicano was a resourceful opponent, however, Nicole would say
things during phone conversations with friends and family like “Tom, are you
listening?” or “Am I saying what you want me to say, Tom?”
For all her bravado, this was a woman on the edge. She was bruised, angry,
but above all bewildered, obsessed with the reasons behind Tom’s rapid exit
from her life. Not only had she been informed by an associate that the marriage
was over, but when she called him in January to ask him why, all he would say
was, “You know why.” He repeated his mantra even when she yelled at him:
“You fucking bastard, don’t you realize I’m pregnant?” She pleaded with
DiSabatino to find out why her husband had left her, adamant that he was the
father of her child. DiSabatino was blunt, telling her that if Tom wasn’t going to
tell his own wife, he had no chance even if he tied him down and tortured him.
“Even then you only have a fifty-fifty chance of success of getting information

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out of Tom,” he said.
What concerned him most was the steady drip, drip of insinuation and gossip
in the media about his client. When negative stories about Nicole started
appearing in the National Enquirer, Pellicano’s tabloid of choice, he realized
that the gloves were well and truly off. One story suggested that Tom left
because he could no longer take Nicole’s “eternal moaning,” while others
speculated about the possible identity of the baby’s father—expanding the roll
call from the actors she knew to her knee surgeon, Neal ElAttrache, and her
driver Dave Garris. Certainly, Garris acted like much more than her driver,
behaving with the confident air of the man about the house. She seemed to enjoy
the company of a man who treated her like a woman rather than a star.
With Pellicano digging for dirt, DiSabatino needed to know if there were any
skeletons in his client’s sexual cupboard. He sat her down and asked Nicole
point-blank if she had been fooling around with another man. “She looked me in
the eyes and said absolutely not,” he recalls. She admitted that the only person
who came close to any type of inappropriate relationship during their marriage
was the actor Iain Glen and that “Tom had known all about it.”
Meanwhile a parade of men—and often their partners—publicly denied any
romantic attachment to the Australian star. A persistent rumor concerned her