Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography pdfdrive com

National Enquirer said that Nicole had made a number of taped confessions
during her Scientology auditing sessions in which “she bared her soul” and
suggested that these personal details might be used against her, especially if
there was a battle for custody of their children. Her desire to return to Australia
and her hostility to Tom’s aim of educating their children inside Scientology
made Nicole so anxious that her lawyer, Bill Beslow, asked advice from a

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former high-ranking Scientologist. He recalls: “Nicole’s lawyer called me and
said it was a very difficult situation, but all Nicole wants is the kids. He said, Is
there anything you can tell me that would help this situation? At this point
Nicole hated Scientology but was concerned for the kids. Her mission was to
sneak them away from Scientology as much as possible. She did not want to ruin
her relationship with them. I told the lawyer if she wants to stay with the
children she will have to be quiet and not speak out about Scientology.”
If run-of-the-mill celebrity Scientologists were forced to choose between their
faith and their relationships, it was even more important for a poster boy like
Tom Cruise to have a partner who was as committed to his beliefs as he was. At
first glance, Penélope Cruz, who was raised in a poor but devoutly Catholic
family in Madrid, did not fit the bill. Indeed, when she met and interviewed
Mother Teresa of Calcutta during the 1990s, she was so inspired by her work
with the homeless that she started her own charity, the Sabera Foundation, to
help tuberculosis sufferers in India.
At the same time, Cruz was open to other faiths and religion. During her six-
year romance with Mexican singer Nacho Cano, she was introduced to
Buddhism, on one occasion meeting the Dalai Lama during a trip to Nepal.
Shortly before meeting Tom in 2000, she described her attitude to faith: “I was
raised as a Catholic, but I believe in God in my own way and I pray in my own
way and I respect all kinds of philosophies. The one philosophy or religion that I
find I am most close to is the Buddhist one.”
Scientology likes to market itself, falsely, as an “applied religion,” able to
coexist with other faiths, which would have appealed to the free-spirited Ms.
Cruz. In the early days of their romance, Tom quietly took her to his local
hangout, the Hollywood Celebrity Centre, giving her the full tour, complete with
glossy brochures and books by L. Ron Hubbard. It was not long before she was
spending days at the CC, reportedly up to seven hours at a time, immersing
herself in basic Scientology courses.
Soon the red roses and love notes that he had once showered on Nicole started
arriving for Penélope, who much preferred his thoughtful, seemingly
spontaneous gestures to lavish presents of jewelry. “Penelope is someone to
whom gifts don’t mean a lot,” Tom said later. “She doesn’t really want jewelry
or big gifts. She likes written notes and a letter or a phone call at a particular
time while she’s away.”
As in the early days of his romance with Nicole, Tom kept his new love in the
background until his divorce was finalized. So when Tom arrived at the Oscar
ceremony in March 2001, he did not sit with Penélope. Both were presenting
prizes, Tom for Best Director and Penélope for Best Achievement in Costume

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Design, while Nicole was notably absent. Even though Tom and Penélope tried
to disguise their burgeoning relationship, there was no hiding the hostility
between Nicole and the Spanish actress when they were photographed for a
“Legends of Hollywood” story in Vanity Fair. For the cover, photographer
Annie Leibovitz shot a group portrait that included Nicole, Sophia Loren, Meryl
Streep, Catherine Deneuve, Cate Blanchett, Chloë Sevigny, and, incongruously,
Penélope Cruz, who had scarcely a Hollywood movie to her name. That she was
now represented by Tom’s publicist, Pat Kingsley, and under his management
umbrella, CAA, might just have worked in her favor. Significantly, Leibovitz
placed the rivals, Nicole looking icy and haughty and Penélope looking scared,
in opposite corners of the photo.
If including the relatively unknown Penélope in the photo shoot was a not-so-
subtle attempt by Tom’s camp to intimidate and humiliate Nicole, their plan was
effective. By April, Nicole, still weak from her miscarriage and complaining
about her injured knee and a stalker who was hounding her, was sufficiently
softened up by Tom’s media and legal campaign that she was ready to throw in
the towel. According to DiSabatino, “Nicole was talking about settling. Tom
gave her a figure that was half of what she eventually got. She called me over to
the house and said she was going to settle. I begged with her not to settle for that
price—if she hung in there she would get so much more. But she said her knees
were bothering her and she wanted to move on with her life.” In the end, wiser
counsels prevailed and she decided to wait.
Even so, in early May she was telling Oprah Winfrey that her life was “a
nightmare . . . You pretend that you’re fine and there’s days when you’re great
and there’s days when you’re not great.” She still didn’t understand why Tom
had left her. When the cameras stopped turning after an interview on the Today
show, Katie Couric quietly asked her about the split. “I don’t know why, I don’t
know why,” Nicole told her. She continued to be overwrought when she
attended the opening of Moulin Rouge at the Cannes Film Festival a few days
later. Nicole, who suffers from panic attacks, was mobbed by overenthusiastic
crowds, later confessing that it was the most frightening moment of her life.
Vulnerable and distraught, she felt unable to face the media at the traditional
press conference. Seeing his lead actress fading before his eyes, director Baz
Luhrmann told her, “Get back up on that horse and be Nicole Kidman.” She took
his advice, dancing the night away with Ewan McGregor and DJ Fatboy Slim.
As Nicole flew to London to prepare for her role as author Virginia Woolf in