Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography (38 page)

Sofía agreed to delay her return to Montreal, accepting Tom’s offer to hang out at his Hollywood home. She brought her son, Manolo, born when she was eighteen, along, too. Manolo played with Cruise’s children, Connor and Isabella, and was thrilled when Tom took him out on the back of his trail bike. If this relationship was going to work, both Tom and Sofía knew that their children would lie at the heart of it. Sofía once told an interviewer that her favorite date was a night in with her twelve-year-old son. As a close friend noted, “She is a mother first, not a careerist.”

Besides being single parents, the couple had much else in common, beginning with early fame. When Sofía was seventeen, a photographer “discovered” her as she lay on a Colombian beach. That first modeling session earned her other deals, notably the starring role in a Pepsi commercial shown all over Latin America. Like Tom, she had a passion for adventure, growing up on a cattle farm in Barranquilla, Colombia, where she spent her childhood riding horses and swimming in rivers. This headstrong girl, who her family nicknamed “La Toti,” was an ideal choice to host a travel show called
Fuera de Serie
(Out of the Ordinary) in which she was sent to extreme locations around the globe. For a guy who listed skydiving, jet planes, and trail biking among his hobbies, Tom recognized that this was a woman who spoke his language.

Their spiritual pasts were similar, too. Both Tom and Sofía had been brought up in the Catholic faith. As she embarked on her acting career, she had relied on the guidance of the nuns at her school, following their advice to turn down big-money offers from
Playboy
magazine to display her
32DD assets. Tom, however, no longer found guidance from his Catholic past. He now had a very different moral compass.

It was not long before Cruise casually suggested that Sofía join him on a trip to what he calls “CC,” the Celebrity Centre in Hollywood. When she arrived, David Miscavige, the diminutive head of the church, was there to greet her and show her around. He was charming and attentive. She was given some Scientology literature to leaf through. It was a pleasant introduction to the world of Scientology.

But it was on this trip that Sofía realized something else: Tom was never alone. Everywhere he went, he was surrounded by Scientologists. They were at his home, they were in his car, they were at the restaurant. They were never short of smiles, but she found them “powerful and authoritarian.”

At the end of February, when she returned to Montreal to complete filming, Cruise bombarded her with calls. He was obsessed with the new woman in his life. After she flew back to Hollywood in early March 2005, the couple spent every moment together. If they were not at his home, they were at the Celebrity Centre. Sofía even took her mother, Margarita, along for a look around the palatial Scientology mansion. Unlike her daughter, this devout Catholic was not given an armful of literature as she left. All conversion efforts were focused on Sofía—they had been ever since she first met Cruise.

Although they had known each other only for a matter of weeks, the relationship had become so intense that marriage looked like the logical next stage. One friend told me: “She met his children, there is no doubt he was auditioning her for the part of his wife. If she had been interested, she would today be the next Mrs. Cruise. Was it going to go further? No doubt about it. He wanted to marry her—that was the idea.” The “audition” was going according to plan. Cruise had found a feisty, athletic, adventurous woman. The winning factor was that she had a child. Vergara had a proven track record; she could provide him with exactly what he was after. They could be together forever—Scientology’s poster boy and first lady.

As the days passed, however, Sofía started to connect the
dots, and didn’t much like the pattern that was emerging. As affectionate and attentive as Tom was, she found his world cloying and suffocating, and was never quite sure if his actions were motivated by passion or were part of a well-practiced performance. She felt she was being followed or watched and that her phone calls were being monitored. It was as if he and Scientology were trying to take over her life. Certainly her longtime manager, Luis Balaguer, and his team thought their days were numbered, fearing that they would be replaced by management chosen by Cruise.

It was made clear that if their relationship were to continue, she would have to renounce her Catholic faith and convert to Scientology. For Tom, this was supremely important. It would be unacceptable for Hollywood’s and Scientology’s leading man to be married to anyone other than a member of his faith. “She was fundamentally terrified by Scientology,” recalls a friend. “She sincerely believed that she would be struck down by God and burn in hell if she joined. That is what she said.” The lighthearted frivolity that had characterized her early discussions with friends was replaced by their genuine concern for her well-being. “Her friends got scared for her,” admits one of her close circle.

They need not have worried. Although educated by nuns, Sofía had graduated from the school of hard knocks. Not only was she a single mother, but her brother had been killed in a botched kidnap attempt and she had survived thyroid cancer three years before. As she later admitted, “It was terrifying. But I knew I’d beat it.” Sassy, street smart, and obstinate, she proved immune to the blandishments of Cruise and Scientology. Her friend said, “Sofía comes from Colombia, where the women have balls. There is no sense you can control her. If you know her, it makes perfect sense. . . . She had plenty of opportunity to hitch her wagon to Hollywood and to Tom. She is not swayed by that—she is her own person.”

Sofía told her friends that she had been deliberately targeted not only as a possible bride for Tom, but as a high-profile Scientology recruit who would be an alluring figurehead for a
future recruitment drive in Latin America. The unexpected invitation to Will Smith’s party, the “impromptu” decision to go to Jerry’s Famous Deli, the “casual” visits to Celebrity Centre—they all began to make sense. They were to impress and ultimately win her over.

Instead of impressing her, all this drove her away. Tom’s constant “love bombing”—the endless texts, calls, and e-mails—was too much. She saw it as a performance to serve the higher purpose of his faith. On Easter weekend—March 27, 2005—she and Tom had arranged to go to Clearwater, the Scientology center in Florida. Instead, she stood him up, packing a bag and “disappearing” for a few days. For five days he left messages and texts, but she resolutely refused to return his calls. Even now, the location is kept secret in case she needs to use the same bolt-hole again. As one friend put it, “The guy’s a freak and she ran for the hills.”

Sofía is kinder. While she admits that she likes Tom as a friend and found their affair “fun,” having seen him in action she has a very clear vision of who he is and how he operates. “You have to have respect for his beliefs and trying to get his religion out there in any way possible,” notes a close member of Sofía’s circle. The bottom line was that she was not prepared to sacrifice herself or her faith to further her career—or to become the next Mrs. Cruise.

Sofía was savvy enough to see the consequences of the game being played. It seems that Tom, for all his protestations of love and affection, saw it as a game, too, albeit a game with high stakes. Even before the blooms on Sofía’s flowers from him had faded, Tom was already sending bouquets to a new girl—a wholesome, wide-eyed actress from America’s heartland.

For days, John Carrabino’s phone had been ringing off the hook. Every call to his Beverly Hills office seemed to be about the young actress he was managing—Katie Holmes—and her love life. Since March 5, 2005, when she had publicly called off her engagement to longtime boyfriend Chris
Klein, star of the teen comedy
American Pie
, all the talk had been about a new man in her life. She had been spotted kissing heartthrob actor Josh Hartnett in a coffee shop in New York. The rumor mills whirred into action. Managing this kind of attention is never easy; Carrabino was deflecting inquiries from all over the country. So it must have been something of relief, as well as a surprise, when in early April he received a call from the office of Tom Cruise rather than from another gossip columnist. The request, which came out of the blue, was for a meeting between Hollywood’s leading man and the aspiring star.

If her manager was surprised by Tom Cruise’s invitation, Katie Holmes was ecstatic. She had dreamt of meeting the Hollywood action man since she was a little girl growing up in Toledo, Ohio, her childhood crush a long-standing family joke. She told her three older sisters that she would marry him someday and live in a beautiful mansion where she would start the day by sliding from her bedroom into her own swimming pool. Even in 1996, when she snagged the part of Joey Potter, a teenage girl growing up in a suburban town, for the hit teen soap
Dawson’s Creek
, her crush continued. Indeed, it was her unworldly innocence—and her playful green eyes—that won her the role in the first place.

“She had these incredible eyes, it was all about the eyes,” recalled writer Kevin Williamson. Educated by nuns and raised by a protective, God-fearing family, Katie, just seventeen, was a real greenhorn when she first arrived on the TV set in Wilmington, North Carolina. Her artlessness was exploited by her costars, James Van Der Beek and Josh Jackson, who teased her about her teenage crush and sexual naïveté.

Close to her family and friends from Toledo, she daily phoned her mother, Kathy, who was recovering from ovarian cancer. Kathy visited the set often, while Katie’s longtime pal Meghann Birie, who impressed the cast with her loyalty and levelheaded nature, stayed with her friend for six months to keep her company. Her father, Martin, a partner in a law firm, was on hand to look over the contract when she bought her first
condo, just as he was there when she signed up for the series. “She trusted him absolutely, and rightly so,” said a crew member.

The family became anxious when they realized their youngest daughter was caught in a tug-of-love contest between Josh and James. The love triangle was like a real-life episode of
Dawson’s Creek.
At first she dated the mild-mannered, likable James, but then fell for the bad-boy charms of Josh, who once claimed that his Irish roots gave him a divine right to get drunk. The two young men, so close that they shared a room during the first season, became sworn enemies, on numerous occasions nearly coming to blows. They couldn’t even be in the makeup trailer together.

Katie’s relationship with Josh, a notorious womanizer, worried her parents. As her sex education from school boiled down to the nuns telling the girls to practice abstinence, a
Dawson’s Creek
crew member decided to give her more practical advice. “I talked to her about condoms and the need for contraception,” the crew member recalled. “I can tell you she was certainly careful after that.”

This tug-of-love made her grow up. By the third season she was no longer the sweet little innocent thing from Toledo, but a determined young woman—more savvy and cynical about the industry, yet still determined to make her mark in Hollywood. After her first film,
Go,
an action comedy, in 1999, she had small parts in several films, notably appearing opposite Michael Douglas in the 2000 movie
Wonder Boys,
about a college girl who is infatuated with her professor. It was a real thrill for Katie, the starstruck young woman even enjoying an on-screen kiss with the Hollywood legend. “Katie was so excited but very nervous,” recalls a
Dawson’s Creek
friend. “She was blessed by the fact that they could see she was young and inexperienced and took her under their wing.”

As her career was moving onward and upward, so was her love life. Friends introduced her to actor Chris Klein, riding high with the hugely successful teen comedy
American Pie.
With appearances on TV’s
Saturday Night Live
as well as
several movies, including
Phone Booth
with Colin Farrell, under her belt, Katie was ready to talk about her life and career for an hour-long TV special with host Jules Asner.

In fall 2002 her family spent days with Asner’s film crew, allowing them total access to their rambling, clapboard home in Toledo. In a fascinating documentary, first screened in October 2002, the young actress came across as a wry, confident, strong-willed, occasionally stubborn girl with a wide streak of sparky, self-deprecating humor. It was clear, too, that her adoring family had supported, nurtured, and advised her every step of the way. She was a bright, much-loved, well-understood jewel in a solidly conventional Catholic family.

When they all attended midnight Mass at their church, Christ the King, on Christmas Eve 2003, just after Katie’s twenty-fifth birthday, they had special reason to give thanks. That night Katie’s longtime boyfriend, Chris Klein, had asked her to marry him—after first nervously asking her father for his official blessing. As proof of his serious intent, Klein had spent a reported $500,000 on a wedding ring—the kind of money that could have bought a substantial five-bedroom house in Toledo. The excited couple planned to marry in Los Angeles during the fall of the following year.

In the meantime, she had work to do. Katie spent months in London, where she had been given the chance to star in a Hollywood blockbuster, playing the love interest, Rachel Dawes, opposite Christian Bale in
Batman Begins.
She also attended film premieres—including the one for Tom Cruise’s action thriller
Collateral
—and was a guest at numerous fashionable parties, rubbing shoulders with the likes of model Elle Macpherson, actress Sienna Miller, and actor Jude Law. She had clearly left behind her tomboy Joey Potter image, emerging as a beautiful and talented star.

When she returned to Hollywood in September 2004, the strain in her relationship with her fiancé became apparent. Although she was a rising name, Chris was struggling to find work, having turned down the chance to appear in the final
American Pie
film. A public argument in a restaurant in October confirmed media rumors of a rift.