Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography pdfdrive com

South Park airs on the Comedy Central network, owned by media
conglomerate Viacom—which in turn counted Tom Cruise as one of its most
important clients. When the episode aired, it caused a wave of controversy both
inside and outside the company. Tom was reportedly so angry that he insisted
the show not be broadcast again in America or aired elsewhere in the world. In
Britain, Channel Four, which held the South Park franchise, pulled the episode
for fear of attracting a lawsuit from the actor. Although Tom later denied being
aware of the program—a tad disingenuous, given his obsession with his public
image—the damage was done, as media and public rallied to the beleaguered
writers. Stone and Parker received flowers from the makers of The Simpsons for
their bravery, while the team behind King of the Hill sent them a message that
they were doing “God’s work.”
It was a story that refused to go away—much to publicist Paul Bloch’s
frustration. In March, singer and Scientologist Isaac Hayes, who had voiced the
character of Chef on South Park, announced that he was resigning from the
show, ostensibly because the controversial episode was scheduled to be aired
again later that month. In his resignation letter, which used the unmistakable
language of Scientology, he accused Matt Stone and Trey Parker of “religious
intolerance and bigotry.” In response, Stone noted that “in 10 years and more
than 150 episodes Isaac never had a problem with the show making fun of
Christians, Muslims, Mormons and Jews.” Moreover, when he had talked about
the episode in an earlier interview, he had sounded relaxed about it, admonishing
Stone and Parker to “take a couple of Scientology courses, and understand what
we do.”
It seems that Hayes’s Scientology masters were behind his resignation,

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especially when it was revealed that Hayes had suffered a mild stroke in mid-
January and, according to friends, was still recovering when he decided to
“resign” in March. In fact, it was eventually reported that the announcement had
actually come from the singer’s Scientologist manager Christina “Kumi”
Kimball. Observers concluded that Scientology had made an ailing man, whose
wife was expecting a baby, quit his job to protect the organization’s reputation.
As The Washington Post commented, “Hayes’s action makes Scientologists look
like what many, many people assume they are: intolerant, humorless, and under
the thrall of a demonic, soul-eating cult that brooks no dissent.”
Still, the dispute rumbled on, Tom Cruise reportedly issuing the ultimate
warning—if the show was repeated, he would not do any publicity for his
upcoming blockbuster Mission: Impossible III. In the face of this threat, the
Viacom organization, the company behind both M:I & III and South Park,
backed down. When the episode was finally pulled, Matt Stone and Trey Parker
issued a statement saying, “So, Scientology, you may have won THIS battle, but
the million-year war for Earth has just begun! You have obstructed us for now,
but your feeble bid to save humanity will fail!”
Cruise’s victory over South Park came at considerable cost. Hollywood
insiders were realizing that Tom Cruise’s championship of Scientology was
becoming a nuisance that could affect the bottom line. Previously favorable
magazines became more critical. In March, Rolling Stone, edited by Tom’s
friend Jann Wenner, carried a thirteen-thousand-word article minutely detailing
the nefarious activities of Scientology, while Vanity Fair printed a cover banner
asking: “Has Tom Lost His Marbles?” Retribution was not long in coming. For
once Rolling Stone was not given access to the Mission: Impossible set to
interview Wenner’s friend.
Yet the normal excitement surrounding a Cruise action movie was focused
less on the film’s star than on his fiancée, the actor answering endless questions
about Katie’s health as the days ticked down to the birth of his first biological
child. Even though Katie’s mother attended a baby shower in late March at the
Celebrity Centre in Hollywood, the tabloids portrayed the actress as a “prisoner
of the cult” who was rarely allowed out without Tom or her Scientology
minders. Sightings of Katie going out on her own, to a local farmers’ market or
for coffee, became regular staples of the gossip columns.
Certainly, when she moved in with her fiancé, she inherited an instant family,
joining his mother, Mary Lee Mapother South, and younger sister, Cass
Darmody, and her two children, Liam and Aden, in the sprawling Beverly Hills
compound. As Katie was embarking on her new life, Mary Lee and Cass were

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rebuilding their worlds. In an extraordinary about-face, Tom’s mother had
abruptly given up everything in 2005 to be with the son she doted on. Not only
had she renounced her Catholic faith—she was a Eucharist minister—but also
her husband of twenty years, Jack South, and her circle of friends in Marco
Island, Florida. As a friend from her local Catholic church observed, “She left
her faith and went to Scientology. I’m so sad I can’t believe it.” When Tom’s
younger sister, Cass, went through a divorce in 2004, she and her two children
came to live with him. Like her brother, Cass was dyslexic but insisted on
homeschooling her two children in Scientology’s Applied Scholastics.
In this home environment, the precepts and principles of their faith reigned
supreme, Katie accepting and adopting the rituals of Scientology as she
approached her due date. If moving in with the future in-laws was daunting,
Katie didn’t let on, saying enthusiastically, “There’s always something going on
in the house and I love it.” Perhaps it reminded her of the noisy home life she’d
enjoyed in Toledo, where, Katie told TV interviewer Jules Asner, she always felt
a little bereft when her older siblings went to school and the house fell silent.
It was the manner in which she would be giving birth that caused the most
comment. Hubbard’s followers have adopted a ritual known as a “silent birth,”
the assumption being that any loud noises or words uttered as the baby is born,
or even in the first week after birth, can have a detrimental effect on the infant.
Hubbard is not alone, many believe that the “initial insult of birth,” when the
infant goes from a warm, cozy world to bright lights and noise, can cause
psychological trauma. The science fiction writer thought that such noise could
produce damaging “engrams,” which would increase the need for auditing in the
baby’s later life. From start to finish of the reproductive process, Hubbard
counseled quiet. “Be silent during and after the sex act,” he exhorted his
followers in his book Child Dianetics. Shortly before Katie went into labor, a
number of six-foot boards were put up in Tom’s Beverly Hills home, reminding
everyone who would be around Katie during the delivery to maintain absolute
silence and stay calm.
On March 24, 2006, Tom’s nephew Liam even helped carry a stack of large
cue cards into the couple’s home: “Be silent and make all physical movements
slow and understandable,” read one. As Tom explained, “We’ve been doing
seminars with the family just to educate them, so that everyone in the family
understands. The kids, and even friends and different people.” He did point out
to interviewer Diane Sawyer that the mother was allowed to make noise but not
say words. When he announced that he was going to eat the baby’s placenta, it
was consistent with the bizarre nature of Katie’s pregnancy.
Staff inside Tom’s compound needed no reminders of the need for quiet—and

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discretion. From the moment they were allowed through the high-security gates,
they entered a world of controlled calm, with the emphasis on control. Staff were
monitored by a German governess, everybody watching everyone else. They
were encouraged to remain silent, and if they did speak, it was in hushed tones.
The daily cleaning crew, which started at dawn and left by eight
A.M.
so as not to
disturb Tom and Katie, was under strict instructions to operate in silence. The
home itself had the feel of a tasteful but anonymous upmarket hotel suite or
upscale private hospital. As one insider said, “The place was as quiet as you can
get. It was unreal.”
At the entrance stood a giant portrait of Tom and Katie, but their closeness in
the picture was not reflected in the home. They lived in separate wings, with
separate bathrooms, bedrooms, and sitting rooms, Isabella and Connor in their
father’s quarters. Ostensibly, they slept apart because of Tom’s snoring. How
Hubbard would interpret the effect of that sound on the baby’s development was
uncertain. On April 18, 2006—twenty years and three months after the death of
L. Ron Hubbard—Katie was driven to St. John’s Health Center in Santa Monica,
where she gave birth, not to a red-haired boy, but to a baby girl, seven pounds,
seven ounces, and twenty inches long. After carefully scrutinizing a couple of
baby name books, the couple called their first daughter Suri, which they later
discovered means “red rose.” Within twelve hours Katie and Suri had left the
hospital, Tom flying his precious cargo to his four-hundred-acre ranch in
Telluride, Colorado, for their week of Scientology silence.
While her birth was not quite the Second Coming die-hard Scientologists had
hoped for, the arrival of Tom’s first biological child garnered worldwide
attention, the hospital and their Hollywood home surrounded by dozens of
photographers, reporters, and camera crews. As writer Mark Lawson noted drily,
“There have previously been children whose birth attracted a certain amount of
attention—Jesus Christ, Elizabeth Windsor, Brooklyn Beckham—but the arrival
of Suri Cruise set a new record for interest in an infant.”
It did not take the attendant media long to point out the irony that along the
same corridor in the same hospital on the same day, Brooke Shields, so recently
berated by Tom for taking drugs for postpartum depression, was giving birth to
her second daughter, named Grier. Nor did it escape comment when Nicole
Kidman’s publicist pointed out that, contrary to media reports, she had not sent
congratulations to Katie on the birth of Suri. It was hardly surprising. Her friends
described the announcement of Katie’s pregnancy as akin to a “kick in the
stomach.” At the time, Nicole was trying to have children with her future
husband, troubled country singer Keith Urban. She was on the margins of Tom’s
life—and, it seemed, the world of her adopted children. Not only were Connor

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and Isabella educated in the gospel according to Ron Hubbard, but Nicole saw
them only rarely. Katie had effortlessly assumed the role of their stepmother, she
and Tom endlessly photographed watching the youngsters play soccer for their
school teams.
It appeared that Katie’s parents were as much on the sidelines as Nicole
Kidman. While their daughter was giving birth according to Scientology ritual,
they were three thousand miles away in their vacation home in Florida. It was
Tom’s Scientologist mother, Mary Lee, who lived with the couple, who was
present when a Scientology-sanctioned epidural was administered to Katie to
ease her pain during labor. It was another two weeks before Katie’s parents, who
had been by her side throughout her Hollywood career, saw their granddaughter.
In the tabloid soap opera that Tom and Katie’s life had become, her lawyer
father, Marty Holmes, was characterized as fighting a futile rearguard action to
protect his daughter’s interests. If he couldn’t stop her from becoming a Stepford
wife, at least he could ensure that she was a wealthy Stepford wife. By the end of
May, Katie’s father and Tom had come to a $52 million prenuptial agreement,
the deal reportedly ensuring Katie $3 million a year for every year of marriage as
well as a $19 million trust fund for his daughter and grandchild whether the
marriage went ahead or not. Marty may have lost his daughter, but Katie had
gained a small fortune. It was said that the reason Katie was pushing for a
prenuptial agreement was to speed up the marriage so that, once they had gone
their separate ways, she could fight him for custody of Suri. Otherwise, she
would be no match for his financial big guns—or his formidable clout in
Hollywood. Newsweek magazine quoted a Holmes family friend as saying: “If
she walks now, Tom will fight her for custody of Suri and Katie can’t outlast
him in court. She knows she needs to marry him to get the money to fight him
for custody.” This constant speculation was hard on Katie, who admitted to
seeing all the gossip in the tabloids and on entertainment television. “Some of
the crap that’s out there—the stuff that’s said about my parents and my siblings
—it’s really frustrating,” she told writer Jane Sarkin.
While she put on a brave face in public, it was not long before cracks began to
appear in the façade.

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