Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography (34 page)

That said, Scientologists view death in a cold, matter-of-fact way. They call it “dropping the body,” believing that an individual’s spirit will inhabit another body at some point in the future. As far as they are concerned, Ron Hubbard, who died in 1986, will return any day now, hence the construction of lavish homes around the globe for the dead leader.

While the showman in Michael—his catchphrase was “Life is a cabaret”—would have loved the fame of a televised tribute, the trauma of 9/11 had apparently woken something deeper inside Tom. As Sam LaForte reflects, “I look at life 200 percent differently now; a lot of people do. It doesn’t surprise me that Tom Cruise was changed.” The feelings of helplessness, confusion, and disbelief that people around the world experienced after 9/11 did not sit well with the self-assured conviction by which Tom had always led his life. “After 9/11, I was so angry. I was devastated. I thought, ‘What can I do to help?’ ” he said later.

Tom Cruise was not so much a man in mourning as a man incensed, those in his inner circle witnessing a genuine transformation. From the smoke clouds over the Manhattan skyline was born Scientology’s most influential advocate. He later described the moment when he saw the catastrophe: “Once the towers had gone down and we were faced with the
aftermath of their collapse, I could not get out of my mind that huge cloud billowing across Manhattan.”

When his close friend and Scientology leader David Miscavige called 9/11 a “wake-up call,” Tom was certainly listening. As one Scientology insider observed, “I have no doubt Tom Cruise had conversations with Miscavige about what more he could do to spread Scientology, because obviously time was running out.” Certainly the events surrounding 9/11 seemed to confirm L. Ron Hubbard’s apocalyptic worldview. Scientology followers were urged to work harder, run faster, to save a planet overrun by “merchants of chaos.” They sent scores of so-called Volunteer Ministers in distinctive yellow shirts to Ground Zero, to offer “contact assists”—a kind of spiritual massage—to rescue workers, to recruit new members, and to interfere with the work of mental health professionals. Such was their persistence that the National Mental Health Association warned the unsuspecting public that Scientologists were operating at the site.

Hubbard’s words provided clarity for Cruise, showing him the chaos and evil in the world’s events from a broader perspective. The vision of time that Scientology provided was inviting. It removed the uncertainty and the desolation that presented itself, by revealing the bigger battle that had been running over several millennia, of which these flashes of devastation were just a part. For Tom, the days of hiding in the shadows were over; he now saw himself as part of his faith’s larger purpose. More had to be done by everyone, but on Tom’s shoulders rested even greater responsibility. With his fame came a duty to bring Scientology to the masses.

On November 16, 2001, the day that Fran LaForte gave birth to the son who would never meet his father, Tom sealed the final financial settlement in his divorce with Nicole. He was now working from a fresh slate, withdrawing into the intimacy and security of his own family and the family of Scientology. His sisters and their children moved into his new Hollywood home; his mother was a regular visitor, and, in
time, like Penélope, would start taking courses at the Celebrity Centre. There was talk that he and Penélope were on the brink of marriage.

The evidence of 9/11 was matched by the siren calls inside his extended family. Without any dissenting voice from Nicole, the message from Tom’s sister Lee Anne, a dedicated Scientologist, was to rededicate himself to the church. Scientology had the tools to help him through his marital breakup, the gay rumors, and the destruction of 9/11. While Tom had always been committed to his faith, he had never been vocal, at times almost embarrassed by his association with the organization. In fact, in 1993 his publicist, Pat Kingsley, had attacked questions about his religion as “un-American.” At that time, he was indeed questioning his commitment, Scientology leaders working assiduously behind the scenes to “recover” their high-profile Hollywood star. Now the man who had spent so long deflecting questions about Scientology was transformed into a celebrity crusader.

The first indications of his changed perspective came in December 2001, when Tom was promoting
Vanilla Sky,
interestingly a story about a wealthy publishing tycoon who continues his life on Earth after death with the help of the mysterious Life Extension Corporation. When the subject of 9/11 was broached during an interview with
Vanity Fair,
the writer noted with surprise how Cruise’s whole appearance seemed to change. His voice fell almost to a whisper and his eyes were “boiling with late-night rap-session intensity,” as he said: “Things mean something different than they did before September 11. It’s a responsibility not only for our country but for the entire planet.” In another conversation, Tom observed, “I think the World Trade Center has kind of ripped the social veneer off this country.”

During the worldwide publicity for
Vanilla Sky,
which began in the New Year, for the first time Tom used his star status to aggressively sell Scientology. Noticeably, Penélope joined him as they lobbied American ambassadors in France, Germany, and Spain—all countries hostile to Scientology—to help advance the cause of “religious freedom.” When the
couple arrived in Berlin, they met with the U.S. ambassador, Dan Coats, lobbying him to urge the German government, which had placed the sect under police scrutiny, to legitimize Scientology. After their meeting, Cruise spent nearly an hour signing autographs and talking to starstruck embassy staff.

This was not the first time Scientology had used celebrities to try to gain a toehold in what they considered an important market. In January 1997, thirty-four Hollywood personalities, including Dustin Hoffman, Goldie Hawn, Larry King, and Oliver Stone, put their names to an open letter to German chancellor Helmut Kohl, likening the plight of Scientologists in Germany to the persecution of the Jews under Hitler. The full-page ad, published in the
International Herald Tribune,
prompted the U.S. State Department to denounce the letter as an “outrageous charge” that bore “no resemblance to the facts of what is going on there.” It later became clear that almost all those who signed, while not necessarily Scientologists, were linked to Tom Cruise or John Travolta. In response, the German ambassador made it clear that Scientology posed a threat to Germany’s basic democratic principles. “The organization’s pseudo-scientific courses can seriously jeopardize an individual’s mental and physical health and it exploits its members.” Undaunted, in September 1997, celebrity Scientologists Chick Corea, Isaac Hayes, and John Travolta appeared before a congressional commission in Washington to complain about the treatment of Scientologists in Germany.

When the
Vanilla Sky
tour moved on to Spain, where Scientologists were accused of such crimes as kidnapping, tax fraud, and damaging public health (but were subsequently acquitted), Penélope’s presence in her hometown of Madrid was a significant bonus. The fact that a famous Spanish Catholic was prepared to stand shoulder to shoulder with her actor boyfriend gave the faith an air of legitimacy. Which, of course, was the strategy.

If anything, opposition to his faith merely inflamed Tom’s missionary zeal. He took time off from promoting
Vanilla Sky
to tell a whooping, near-delirious audience of Scientologists
in Hollywood that he had just achieved “the most important thing he had ever done” in his life: He had reached the exalted status of Operating Thetan V. It had been an arduous—and expensive—journey, taking him nearly a decade to progress along Hubbard’s bridge from OT III to OT V. Tom now had credentials beyond his celebrity—he had been cleared to audit people through the lower levels of Hubbard’s New Era Dianetics.

But the attractions of Hubbard’s teachings went far beyond that. Hubbard had the expansive imagination of a science fiction writer and the purpose-driven preaching of a cult leader. He conceived of life in different universes and times, claiming to have visited heaven twice and promising to return to Earth after his death. It was Hubbard’s galactic vision that provided the basis for John Travolta’s much-lambasted 2000 film
Battlefield Earth
. In this vision, Earth is an empty wasteland, where “vicious Psychlo aliens” rule over what remains of the human population they had destroyed a millennium earlier. It is a story in which the last survivors join together in a desperate attempt to drive the Psychlos from the world before man is lost forever.

For Scientologists, this kind of apocalyptic view is not fiction. The church has spent millions of dollars inscribing hundreds of stainless-steel tablets and disks with Hubbard’s musings, encasing them in heat-resistant titanium so that they will survive a nuclear blast, and storing them in vaults in at least three remote sites in California and New Mexico. One site in Santa Fe, New Mexico, is marked with huge hieroglyphics, akin to crop circles. It is believed that these signs will indicate to aliens from outer space that there was once intelligent life on Earth, and show where that intelligence is stored—just in case we’re no longer around when they arrive. It is revealing that this science-fiction worldview, although widely derided and parodied, could speak to someone like Tom Cruise.

It did. Tom digested every word, clinging to each passage with conviction. Hubbard’s writings were scriptural and immutable. Every word, utterance, and thought was the infallible
bedrock of the church’s scripture—inviolate tablets of stone—or rather sheets of titanium. As a child, Tom Cruise had been a daydreamer who loved star-gazing and watching films like
E.T
. As a man, he viewed the world through a Manichaean lens: Everything was black or white, right or wrong, good or evil. You were in or you were out. My way or the highway. Hubbard’s works confirmed Tom’s own thoughts and feelings. The man that he called his great teacher and mentor had provided him with a belief system that chimed perfectly with his own personality.

His attraction to technology and the possibilities of the future had found expression a few months earlier, when Cruise organized a secret conference of scientists and technocrats at a hotel in Santa Monica. He was working on the preproduction for the Spielberg film
Minority Report,
and asked them to discuss what the future might look like. The film was to be set in the 2050s, and Cruise wanted it to look as accurate as possible. Scientology’s pseudo-technical stance and futuristic worldview appealed to his inner geek. This was a man who enjoyed reading technical manuals, finding the scientific language enticing. Perhaps it made this middle-of-the-road pupil from Glen Ridge feel smart.

In the spring of 2002, Tom seemed to be on the verge of realizing a lifelong dream: becoming the first actor in space.

He had engineered a private visit to NASA in Florida to meet the astronauts on the shuttle program. While this was not normal NASA policy, it was a quid pro quo for Tom’s work recording the voice-over for a film about the international space station and for revamping the organization’s clunky Web site on what his religion boasted were Hubbard’s educational principles. Accompanied only by his Scientology communicator, Michael Doven, Tom spent two days with the astronauts, watching them train, going into the water tanks to replicate movement in space, and even trying on a space suit. After a day’s induction, he and Doven were invited to join a group of astronauts at the home of NASA’s General Jefferson Howell. As they ate Tex-Mex food and
drank cold beers from the local Shiner brewery, Tom could barely sit still with excitement, talking nonstop about his love of flying and asking endless questions about space travel. After he’d talked about mountain climbing, stock-car racing, skydiving, and his other passions, Tom’s boy racer approach to life earned a few words of warning from his host. “As an old guy who nearly got killed a couple of times in a jet, I suggested that he should be thinking about the limits of what he is doing,” said the host, General Howell, as Tom told him about some of his own aerial near misses.

Tom was in his element, rapping with men he truly admired. Guys, as Tom Wolfe famously described, with “the right stuff,” modern-day adventurers and buccaneers. It was all the more piquant as Tom was sporting a beard in preparation for his next film,
The Last Samurai,
a story about warriors who have a code of honor, duty, and courage similar to the values of the men and women sitting around the dinner table that night. While Tom proved that he had the right stuff to take a shot at astronaut training, his dreams of going into space were shattered when, in February 2003, the
Columbia
space shuttle disintegrated during its reentry over Texas, grounding the program for more than two years. Tom took the trouble to call Charlie Precourt, chief of the astronaut corps, to pass on his condolences.

For the time being, Tom had to leave outer space to the purview of his spiritual leader, L. Ron Hubbard. Meanwhile, he was making rapid progress toward becoming his own god, traveling up the bridge to Operating Thetan VI, a sign of how diligently he was ridding his body of the spirits of dead souls during his self-auditing sessions. When he spoke to an ecstatic audience of Scientologists at a graduation ceremony in Clearwater, Florida, in July 2002, he was received with the adoration reserved for the returning messiah, the transformation from celebrity member to tub-thumping preacher complete. As well as thanking his family, mentioning proudly that one sister had just gone “Clear” and another had passed OT III, he singled out “Dave” Miscavige—the shortening of his
name a calculated indication of their closeness—and of course his mentor, L. Ron Hubbard, for special praise.

He made a solemn promise to the worshipful throng that from here on in he would dedicate his life to spreading the word of Scientology. While he was doing no more than Hubbard expected of a Scientologist who had attained this lofty status, even the movement’s founder would have been impressed by Tom’s missionary zeal and commitment. As celebrity writer Jess Cagle observed during a conversation in June 2002: “Cruise is more than a defender of Scientology; he is a resolute advocate.”