Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography pdfdrive com

Wide Shut. An illicitly recorded telephone conversation between the increasingly
distant couple, published in March 1998, gave the world an insight into their
fractious marriage.
Celebrity photographer Eric Ford, who recorded the conversation, was
subsequently fined and jailed, but in the meantime everyone could listen in to the
Cruises uncut and in private. Away from the glamour and smiles of the red
carpet, they were revealed as a tired and spoiled married couple getting tetchy
with each other. During the chat, made on a car phone, Tom is clearly more
conciliatory, Nicole unwilling to be soothed. Noticeably, the love notes and

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flowers are now weapons in a war of emotional attrition rather than tokens of
affection.
After Tom tells Nicole that she makes him “feel like shit,” Nicole responds by
saying, “We’ve been hanging on by a fucking thread, okay? A thread. You know
it and I know it.” Even though Tom says that he wants their relationship to work,
Nicole continues to carp, asking why he hasn’t sent her a rose or a love note. The
conversation continues in this vein, sometimes lightening up, sometimes getting
more serious. The couple changes gears, like most married couples, between
discussing practicalities—notably plans for Connor’s third birthday—and
issuing serious complaints.
Nicole tells her husband baldly, “Tom, there’s no love here, right? You’re
under emotional abuse, I’m abusing you, you’re abusing me. Tom, this isn’t
worth it! You have two unhappy people, okay, who spend too much time apart
and in the past have hurt each other too much. . . . And I tell you something, we
haven’t spent any time together, Tom! You just don’t make an effort. I come
home and all you ever say is, ‘I’m exhausted.’ ”
After a brief interjection from her husband, Nicole continues her litany of
complaints: “I’m sick of it, I’m sick of it! And if it’s not, ‘I’ve got to get the kids
from school,’ it’s ‘I’m working, I don’t have time for you.’ And Tom, I’ve heard
this for so long now and you’re not working now and you’re still saying it.”
In an attempt to placate his wife, Tom is cajoling and consoling. “I miss you. I
love you. I think about you all day long. You’re a knucklehead, a knucklehead
for thinking that I don’t care, I’m not loving. I’m embarrassed that I was tired
last night. I apologize, okay?” Like many married couples who have a fight, by
the end of the conversation the couple is managing to laugh, and signing off by
saying “I love you” to each other. Unlike most married couples, however, Tom
and Nicole had to justify their spat to the gossip-hungry world, their
spokeswoman Pat Kingsley issuing a statement saying that the conversation was
taken out of context and the couple’s words edited to make their discussion
sound like a row. When she was asked, Nicole sensibly made light of the
squabble. “We were fighting about how many people to invite to our son’s
birthday party,” she said. “And about which one of us was more tired and who
was working harder. Quite boring, actually.”
Others who witnessed Tom and Nicole’s daily life were more frank. “To me,”
says an associate, “their marriage wasn’t a ‘happy marriage,’ but it was one that
had found a certain groove, and they went with it. Tom chased after Nicole, who
was always unobtainable, and that cycle continued. I think he was in love with
her up until the end, but that she had grown out of love with him and was
unhappy in the marriage. She seemed so much more mature than he was. He’s a

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jock; a guy’s guy. He isn’t sophisticated. She is. I believe she loved him when
she met him, but she outgrew him. He seemed happier in the marriage than she
was and she was always finding fault with everything.”
It was not just her husband she found fault with. Nicole often seemed bored or
disenchanted with her life as a Hollywood star, expecting a luxurious lifestyle as
her birthright. During publicity for Practical Magic in the fall of 1998, Warner
Bros. arranged for a private G5 jet to ferry her around. It was, as far as she was
concerned, a given, not a privilege. “She had no sense of wonderment about the
world,” recalls an associate. “So many wonderful things happened to her, but she
had an enduring sense of boredom like some 1920s flapper. She never delighted
in anything.”
Whatever the state of their marriage, that summer was artistic business as
usual—Tom working on the money-spinning blockbusters, Nicole choosing low-
paying art projects. When Tom finally finished work on Eyes Wide Shut in June
1998, the couple decided to stay on in London, renting another luxurious house
in central London. Tom worked on preproduction for a sequel to Mission: