Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography pdfdrive com

particular. Just like Martha Stewart.” In May 2005, a few weeks into his
romance with Katie Holmes, he joined Oprah Winfrey in Chicago for her TV
show, ostensibly to publicize his latest movie, War of the Worlds.

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Tom was an old hand at the publicity circus. Under the glare of the studio
lights, he was in charge, affable and jovial but with a reputation for giving away
only those personal details he wished to divulge. As Oprah later observed,
“Tom’s usually very closed and has his own ideas about what he’s going to tell
you and not tell you.” Oprah was an old hand at this, too, fully accepting her role
as cheerleader for his new movie while trying to tease out some tidbits about his
latest romance. Months after his marriage to Nicole, for example, the newlyweds
had taken a seat on Oprah’s sofa and told her how happy they were, while
managing to plug their new movie, Far and Away.
Both Oprah and Tom knew the rules of the game. After all, they had been
sparring with each other for years, professionally and socially. Indeed, at various
times both Tom and her neighbor John Travolta had tried to recruit her to their
faith. Today, though, it seemed as though Tom had thrown away the rule book,
leaving Oprah wondering what his game really was.
As soon as he walked into her studio, he put on a performance worthy of that
elusive Oscar. In front of an audience of howling, near hysterical women, he
dropped to one knee as though the Romeo from New Jersey were about to
propose to the astonished talk-show host. He punched the air. He laughed
hysterically. He leapt backward onto the couch, which is no mean feat even
when not on live TV. He held his head in his hands as though completely
overcome. Oprah shrieked at him, both in amazement and encouragement as he
spoke, at times incoherently, about his new love. As Tom burbled about
romance, red roses, and scuba diving, Oprah yelled, “You’re gone!” some
nineteen times.
“I’m in love! I’m in love,” Cruise proclaimed loudly, throwing his hands in
the air. “I can’t be cool. I can’t be laid back. It’s something that has happened,
and I feel I want to celebrate it. I want to celebrate her. She’s a very special
woman . . . she’s amazing.” Once he hit his stride, there was just no stopping
him, Tom praising Katie’s “generosity, her élan, her vital life force.” During the
extraordinary performance, he revealed that the now-infamous motorbike ride
was on a machine given to him by Steven Spielberg. The director appeared on a
video link, pleading in vain with the actor to plug the film rather than himself
and his new love. “Talk a little bit about War of the Worlds because we’re
opening really soon!”
It was only when Oprah asked how long he had known the woman who had
rocked his world that Tom adopted his default interview position, saying they
should talk about his new movie. Oprah had uncovered an uncomfortable fact:
Tom had known Katie for only a little over a month. Still, he seemed ready to
marry her, indicating that he didn’t want to disappoint the girl who had once told

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Seventeen magazine that her dream was to be Mrs. Tom Cruise.
Oprah, who had met the couple at her Legends Ball in Santa Barbara two days
before the interview, later confessed that Tom’s behavior left her mystified—and
not a little suspicious. During the interview, she was trying to decide whether
this was real affection or a premeditated act. She said, “It was wilder than it was
appearing to me. I was just trying to maintain the truth for myself because I
couldn’t figure out what was going on. I was not buying—not buying. That’s
why I kept saying, ‘You’re gone, you’re really gone.’ ” One clue of his
intentions was that he had warned Katie about his “spontaneous” nature: “I told
her, ‘Look, you never know what I’m going to do, Katie.’ That’s the point.”
Perhaps Oprah might have been even more confused if she had also had him on
the show a few weeks earlier. Then he could well have been jumping on the sofa
about Sofía.
Certainly the public shared Oprah’s misgivings, viewing the romance and his
on-screen antics as little more than a gimmick. A poll in People magazine
showed that nearly two-thirds of the public thought the romance was a publicity
stunt. This view was echoed not only by the supermarket tabloids, but even by
the venerable New York Times, with an article titled “I Love You with All My
Hype.”
Tom’s behavior on Oprah set the whole world talking. It was compared to the
moment when Michael Jackson dangled his baby son over the edge of a hotel
balcony. The phrase “jump the couch” even entered the language; it was named
the Slang of the Year by the editors of the Historical Dictionary of American
Slang, who defined it as “Tom Cruise–inspired slang meaning to exhibit frenetic
or bizarre behavior.”
Tom’s motives came under scrutiny, too. Why was a forty-two-year-old man
with two marriages behind him and two impressionable children watching him
on TV acting in this way? Even if he seemed to be the picture of happiness, it
was not normal behavior, certainly not for a man who had given new meaning to
the phrase “Cruise control.” He had acted out an erratic, uncontrollable,
overpowering ecstasy, almost as if he were experiencing a heightened mental
state. As Janet Carroll, his screen mother from Risky Business, drily observed,
“People say to me, ‘Did you know that when you worked with him, your son
was going to be a nut?’ ”
Watching Tom jump up and down like a man possessed, former Scientologist
Peter Alexander recalled his own behavior. Like Tom, he had reached the level
of Operating Thetan VII, where man is ostensibly on the cusp of becoming a
superman. “The jumping on the couch was directly attributable to the fact that he

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is not in touch with reality,” Alexander said. “No normal, sane man would react
that way to a love relationship because he would have a sense of himself and a
sense of where he was in reality. When you are on OT VII you lose that sense
because part of you is still in that hypnotic trancelike state.”
Just forty-eight hours later, Tom’s faith was front and center in a publicity
merry-go-round, the actor effortlessly switching from soap opera to soap box.
The man who had already claimed to be an authority on education, human rights,
religious freedom, detoxification, and drug rehabilitation added another arrow to
his quiver. Cruise unveiled himself on national TV as an expert on postpartum
depression. The target of the attack was actress Brooke Shields—the woman
who had starred in his first movie, Endless Love.
In an autobiography published a few weeks earlier, Shields had recounted
taking antidepressants to help her cope with postnatal depression. Cruise used
the platform of an Access Hollywood interview to berate the actress for using
antidepressants. “I care about Brooke Shields because she is an incredibly
talented woman—[but] where has her career gone?”
It seemed that War of the Worlds was going to miss out on more publicity.
“These drugs are dangerous. I have actually helped people come off them,”
Cruise said. “When you talk about postpartum depression you can take people
today, women, and what you do is you use vitamins.” This was an article of
Tom’s faith, that mental illness should be treated with vitamins and not clinically
developed drugs.
Shields, appearing in a musical in London, later responded to Cruise’s
criticism in a wry op-ed piece in The New York Times. Articulating the feelings
of many outraged women and doctors, she wrote: “I feel compelled to speak not
just for myself but also for the hundreds of thousands of women who have
suffered from postpartum depression. I’m going to take a wild guess and say that
Mr. Cruise has never suffered from postpartum depression. . . . Tom Cruise’s
comments are irresponsible and dangerous. . . . Tom should stick to saving the
world from aliens and let women who are experiencing postpartum depression
decide what treatment options are best for them.”
Watching the furor was a previously stalwart ally who was less than pleased
with Tom’s recent performances. Just as Tom Cruise had a well-deserved
reputation for focus and drive, War of the Worlds director Steven Spielberg is
known not only for his creativity but for his intense dedication to his films.
Spielberg did not seem pleased by the way his old friend’s couch-jumping antics
and attack on Brooke Shields were derailing the expensive publicity machine for
the movie. From this time on, Spielberg’s friends noticed that he spoke of Tom

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in the past tense.
Spielberg had first met Tom on the set of Risky Business in 1983. Both men
prided themselves on their focus and commitment, singing each other’s praises
in public. When it looked as if Minority Report was going to be canned because
each man was asking for too much money, it was Spielberg who picked up the
phone and convinced the younger actor to reduce his fee. Nor did he have a
problem with Tom’s faith. While he had not looked very deeply into Scientology
until the group pitched a tent on the set of War of the Worlds, he had always
found Scientologists to be personable and polite, making good eye contact and
showing interest in the other person. He liked to tell a story about how a former
Scientology boyfriend of his now-wife, Kate Capshaw, had given her a test using
the E meter to see if she was having an affair with the Hollywood director.
While she had passed the Scientology test, she left him shortly afterward for
Spielberg.
Even when Tom and Steven Spielberg were joined by David Miscavige
during the filming of War of the Worlds, Scientology was not on the menu
during lunch, when they discussed the merits of flight simulators. When Tom did
mention his faith, it was in the context of helping one of Spielberg’s children
who was having reading difficulties. The actor suggested that Spielberg take the
youngster to a Scientology center in Hollywood. Spielberg did so, but when he
was informed that his son would have to be taken off his medication in
accordance with Scientology principles, he declined their offer of help. In the
mythology surrounding Cruise and Scientology, this story was transposed into a
yarn in which Spielberg mentioned the name of the psychiatrist treating one of
his children, and within a matter of days the psychiatrist supposedly found
himself being picketed by Scientologists.
While the exaggerated gossip burnished the Scientology myth, the cooling
friendship between the director and actor was a typical Hollywood tale—it was
all about the bottom line. Spielberg simply feared that Tom’s behavior was
affecting the potential audience for their film. As one of his longtime associates
said, “What ended the friendship is that Steven saw him behaving not on the
team. He knocked the movie PR off track by jumping on the sofa. Steven is
focused on what he is working on totally and then he moves on. He is ruthless
and dedicated to his craft. If someone lets him down, he doesn’t work with them
again.”
If Spielberg disapproved of Tom’s behavior, it is not hard to imagine the
emotions of Katie’s parents as they watched a man whom they had never met
proclaiming his undying love for their daughter to Oprah Winfrey. This was car-

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crash TV, and they were the hapless passengers. At least her previous fiancé,
Chris Klein, had asked Mr. Holmes for his consent before proposing.
Just a few years before, Katie’s family and friends had welcomed camera
crews to Toledo as they chatted happily about Katie and her success on