Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography pdfdrive com

The Hours, Tom was squaring up for another battle—this time with his old foes
in the media. As writer Richard Goldstein noted, “Tom Cruise sues the way

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Robert Downey Jr. violates his parole. Downey can’t pass up a snort and Cruise
can’t resist a tort.” As he had spent many hours—and thousands of dollars—on
the phone with his lawyer Bert Fields, asking for advice on the divorce, he had
no hesitation in calling Fields when French gossip magazine Acustar reported in
May 2001 that Tom had had a relationship with gay porn star and erotic wrestler
Kyle Bradford, real name Chad Slater. Slater was slapped with a $100 million
lawsuit, Fields stating, “There is not a germ of truth to this vicious, self-
promoting story. While Tom Cruise thoroughly respects others’ right to follow
their own sexual preference, he is not homosexual and had no relationship of any
kind with Kyle Bradford [Chad Slater] and does not even know him.” Even
though Slater denied making the comments and Acustar printed a retraction, the
gay rumors just kept circulating.
It was turning into a minor cottage industry, not because there was any merit
in the stories but because, for those who inhabit Hollywood’s underbelly, there
was money in exploiting Tom’s itchy legal finger, particularly his sensitivity to
gay slurs. So it was that in June 2001, gay porn star Big Red—“They don’t call
me Big Red just because of my freckled face and carrot top”—found himself
sitting in the office of Tony Pellicano with fellow private eye and sometimes gay
porn producer Paul Barresi. Barresi, who billed himself as Pellicano’s enforcer,
had earned notoriety in 1990 by claiming to have had an affair with actor and
prominent Scientologist John Travolta. Big Red, aka Nathan Hamilton, told the
two detectives an elaborate story about his paid dalliances with some of
Hollywood’s biggest stars, including Tom Cruise. Barresi had already tried to
sell Hamilton’s account to the National Enquirer, but the tabloid had found the
porn star’s preposterous story too convoluted and contradictory.
Pellicano was less skeptical. “I think the kid is very credible,” he told Barresi
after Hamilton left. The unspoken implication was that they could make money
out of the hapless Hamilton—and Tom Cruise—by reporting their findings to his
lawyer, Bert Fields. They reasoned that Fields would set the legal wheels in
motion, sending threatening letters to Hamilton and paying Pellicano, his PI of
choice, and Barresi for their trouble. It was a win/win play—at least for them;
the only losers were Hamilton and Cruise. As Barresi conceded, “The story is
perfect because it is never going to see light of day but it’s going to be enough to
incite Cruise by going for his Achilles’ heel. Everyone knows that Cruise goes
nuts when he is called a homo. Walking both sides of the street is a great way of
making money. Celebrities are naïve and have deep pockets.”
In the end, Hamilton went into hiding, claiming that after he received
threatening letters from Fields, his phones were tapped and he was being
followed by unmarked cars. Not that the detective duo had much sympathy. At a

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subsequent meeting, Hamilton claimed he’d had an affair with Pellicano’s
favorite singer, the blind Italian tenor Andrea Bocelli. “What a sick bastard,”
observed the sultan of sleaze after virtually kicking Hamilton out of his office.
For his pains, Barresi eventually received five thousand dollars from Bert Fields,
and was so proud of his association with Tom’s lawyer that he carries a
photocopy of the check to show to friends and acquaintances.
As fiercely as Tom wielded his legal sword, the media proved a many-headed
Hydra. That same month, June 2001, Michael Davis, publisher of Bold
magazine, offered $500,000 to anyone who had photographic evidence that Tom
Cruise was gay. Once again Fields reached for his favorite number, filing a $100
million lawsuit against Bold in the Los Angeles Superior Court. The magazine
published a retraction.
Even though Tom has successfully—and rightly—won every legal battle
about his sexuality, at the time of writing he seems to have lost the war. There
are more than 2 million Internet sites today relating to “Tom Cruise gay”—
slightly more than for a similar heartthrob, Brad Pitt, who has never taken legal
action and has publicly stated he will not marry Angelina Jolie until gay
marriage is acceptable in America. Indeed, Rob Thomas of Matchbox Twenty
has even spoken publicly about the rumor that he and Tom were caught in bed
together by his wife. “If I was gay, Tom Cruise wouldn’t be on the top of my
list,” he said. “It would be Brad Pitt.”
The irony did not escape Tom’s inner circle that, in the midst of quashing gay
slurs, he was quietly dating one of the world’s sexiest women, Penélope Cruz. In
July he took a break from filming his latest movie, Minority Report, directed by
his friend Steven Spielberg, to fly her on board his private plane—now named
Sweet Bella rather than Sweet Nic—to a private island near Fiji in the South
Pacific. Originally the island’s owner, Canadian entrepreneur David Gilmour,
who started the Fiji bottled water company, had offered the private use of the
Wakaya Club resort to Tom and Nicole—a further signal that when the
invitation was proffered the couple had not been contemplating divorce. As it
was, Nicole and her children, as well as her friend actor Russell Crowe used the
resort for the first week, Bella and Connor staying on to join their father and
Penélope Cruz for a further two weeks. Penélope’s arrival certainly surprised
Nicole, the actress later complaining to a friend, “He flat-out swore to me up and
down that there was nothing going on. He obviously had her waiting in the
wings.”
The children knew before the rest of the world that Tom and Penélope were a
serious item, and in late July their spokesman, Pat Kingsley, confirmed for the

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first time that the couple had indeed been dating. In early August, Penélope was
diplomatically absent from the Hollywood premiere of The Others, where the
leading lady and executive producer walked the red carpet separately. The very
next day, on August 7, 2001, their divorce was legally finalized, the couple
agreeing to joint custody of the children and promising not to talk to the media
about each other.
A few weeks later their finances were settled, Nicole winning twice the
original offer. While he retained their compound in Colorado, Nicole kept the
houses in Pacific Palisades and Sydney, Australia. When she emerged from her
lawyer’s office after signing the divorce papers, Nicole was pictured letting out a
piercing scream of relief.
It was a relief, too, for Penélope, who could now appear in public with her
lover. First, though, she wanted him to meet the other man in her life, flying her
father, Eduardo, to Los Angeles to see her and Tom. For all her spiritual
exploration, Penélope was very family oriented, and her father’s approval was
important to her. If he had doubts about her twice-married boyfriend, Eduardo
kept them to himself, at least for the time being. It would only be later that he
looked more carefully—and skeptically—at the man and his controversial
religion.
As for Penélope, she was delighted, as Nicole had been a decade earlier, that
she no longer had to be kept in the shadows. As her personal assistant Kira
Sanchez said, “Penélope has told her friends she’s mighty relieved it’s all out in
the open. She told Tom she didn’t like skulking around.”

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