Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography (39 page)

While the wedding was postponed until after Christmas, the couple spent the festive season together skiing in Aspen, Colorado, a place that Chris said “held a lot of good memories.” But their holiday “honeymoon” did not last long. Katie was working on a starring role in the comedy
Thank You for Smoking
. She was unimpressed when Klein was caught driving drunk outside San Diego in February and given 150 hours of community service and an eighteen-hundred-dollar fine. It was the final straw for Katie, the couple officially calling off their engagement in March. By then they were not speaking. Chris was enigmatic about the reason for their parting. “We grew up. The fantasy was over and reality set in.”

The reality was that her star was rising. That is what probably appealed to Tom. When his office called Katie’s manager, they said the meeting would be about work and should take place as soon as possible. They said Tom had been interviewing actresses for weeks in search of a leading lady to play Ethan Hunt’s fiancée in
Mission: Impossible III
. It was Katie’s big chance, but she seemed to be one of many, and it did not take long for rumors to start circulating that there was more to this auditioning process than met the eye. It was the choice of candidates that gave rise to this story.

It was said that the list included Jessica Alba, who had split from her fiancé the previous year, as well as Kate Bosworth—she, too, had split from her boyfriend, actor Orlando Bloom, back in February. Next was Scarlett Johansson; she was single but had expressed a keen interest in older men. The word among gossip columnists was that Cruise might be looking for more than just a leading lady for a film: There was a gap in his own life that needed filling.

Katie Holmes was on the same list as the rest of them. While she may have been excited, Cruise had cast his celebrity net wide. She did fit the bill, but so did many others. What really mattered was whether she passed the test. As soon as Carrabino called Katie about the meeting, she flew to L.A. from New York, where she had been living. That was around April 11, 2005—less than three weeks after Tom’s frantic pursuit of Sofía Vergara. Katie would not be seen
again by friends or family for over two weeks. She seemed to have disappeared. The time she spent with Cruise that fortnight was all-transforming. It was the period that separated her from the rest of the women who had tried out for the role.

As with the first meeting between Tom and Nicole Kidman, the connection was immediate and powerful. “It was instant,” she told talk-show host Jay Leno. He took her on her first motorcycle ride, to the beach at Santa Monica. “It was amazing and fast,” she recalled later. “I was in love from the moment that I shook his hand for the first time.” As Katie was not cast for
Mission: Impossible III,
it was clear that she had made a different kind of connection. Soon after their meeting, a limousine filled with chocolates and flowers arrived at Katie’s place. In a generous gesture, he apparently had her own car cleaned and repainted. Courtship was something Cruise had mastered—it was only weeks since he had been doing the same thing for Sofía. Just for good measure, he also presented Katie with a copy of a Scientology handbook.

Their first proper date was a sushi dinner held in one of his parked private jets at Santa Monica airport. It was a taste of things to come—not just because of the luxury, but because they were not alone. Cruise’s close circle of Scientology friends joined them throughout the dinner. It is impossible to know exactly who attended—but it is likely the guests included church leader David Miscavige and the tall, watchful figure of Katie’s designated new best friend—Jessica Feshbach Rodriguez. Katie would be seeing more of these people than she could possibly have imagined.

It seems that she passed her social audition. Tom was eager to introduce the young actress to his children, Isabella and Connor, who had been playing with Vergara’s son, Manolo, a few weeks before. Katie flew back to New York with a sparkle in her eye. A few days later, in a Starbucks on Waverly Place, not far from her SoHo apartment, she was overheard gushing to a friend about her new love. “He introduced me to his kids!” she whispered. “And he’s taking me to Rome on a private jet this weekend.”

Tom picked Katie up in New York on April 23 and flew
her to Italy to stay in the $3,500-per-night suite in the Hotel Hassler in Rome. He had arranged for the double bed to be scattered with red rose petals, and took her to the same restaurant where he and Penélope Cruz had dined just over a year before. They were spotted by the paparazzi, and this became their first appearance as a couple who were head-over-heels in love. It was a picture that would become very familiar in the following months. Back in the U.S., Sofía Vergara saw the images of Tom and his latest love on television. Only then did she fully recognize her own narrow escape. A friend said, “Sofía privately pitied the poor girl. Katie is a much weaker, more innocent person than Sofía.”

If Sofía felt sorry for the girl who had taken her place, Katie’s family and friends in Toledo could be excused for being in shock. It had been only six weeks since she had split with her fiancé, Chris Klein. Now she was dating a twice-married man sixteen years her senior. As they watched the footage of Katie walking the red carpet with Tom at the David di Donatello Awards on April 29, they must have noticed other changes in their normally vivacious daughter. While she smiled, kissed her new love, and posed for photos, Katie was uncharacteristically silent—and stooping. It set the pattern for future public appearances; Tom occasionally giving an impromptu interview to tell the world how “amazing” and “beautiful” Katie was, and how much in love they were. All the while Katie would smile but say absolutely nothing.

Spontaneity was alien to Tom Cruise. He knew about control and command, about calculating and calibrating the odds. There was no risk in his business. As one friend, choosing his words carefully, told me: “He is meticulous and particular. Just like Martha Stewart.” In May 2005, a few weeks into his romance with Katie Holmes, he joined Oprah Winfrey in Chicago for her TV show, ostensibly to publicize his latest movie,
War of the Worlds.

Tom was an old hand at the publicity circus. Under the glare of the studio lights, he was in charge, affable and jovial but
with a reputation for giving away only those personal details he wished to divulge. As Oprah later observed, “Tom’s usually very closed and has his own ideas about what he’s going to tell you and not tell you.” Oprah was an old hand at this, too, fully accepting her role as cheerleader for his new movie while trying to tease out some tidbits about his latest romance. Months after his marriage to Nicole, for example, the newlyweds had taken a seat on Oprah’s sofa and told her how happy they were, while managing to plug their new movie,
Far and Away.

Both Oprah and Tom knew the rules of the game. After all, they had been sparring with each other for years, professionally and socially. Indeed, at various times both Tom and her neighbor John Travolta had tried to recruit her to their faith. Today, though, it seemed as though Tom had thrown away the rule book, leaving Oprah wondering what his game really was.

As soon as he walked into her studio, he put on a performance worthy of that elusive Oscar. In front of an audience of howling, near hysterical women, he dropped to one knee as though the Romeo from New Jersey were about to propose to the astonished talk-show host. He punched the air. He laughed hysterically. He leapt backward onto the couch, which is no mean feat even when not on live TV. He held his head in his hands as though completely overcome. Oprah shrieked at him, both in amazement and encouragement as he spoke, at times incoherently, about his new love. As Tom burbled about romance, red roses, and scuba diving, Oprah yelled, “You’re gone!” some nineteen times.

“I’m in love! I’m in love,” Cruise proclaimed loudly, throwing his hands in the air. “I can’t be cool. I can’t be laid back. It’s something that has happened, and I feel I want to celebrate it. I want to celebrate her. She’s a very special woman . . . she’s amazing.” Once he hit his stride, there was just no stopping him, Tom praising Katie’s “generosity, her élan, her vital life force.” During the extraordinary performance, he revealed that the now-infamous motorbike ride was on a machine given to him by Steven Spielberg. The director appeared on a video
link, pleading in vain with the actor to plug the film rather than himself and his new love. “Talk a little bit about
War of the Worlds
because we’re opening really soon!”

It was only when Oprah asked how long he had known the woman who had rocked his world that Tom adopted his default interview position, saying they should talk about his new movie. Oprah had uncovered an uncomfortable fact: Tom had known Katie for only a little over a month. Still, he seemed ready to marry her, indicating that he didn’t want to disappoint the girl who had once told
Seventeen
magazine that her dream was to be Mrs. Tom Cruise.

Oprah, who had met the couple at her Legends Ball in Santa Barbara two days before the interview, later confessed that Tom’s behavior left her mystified—and not a little suspicious. During the interview, she was trying to decide whether this was real affection or a premeditated act. She said, “It was wilder than it was appearing to me. I was just trying to maintain the truth for myself because I couldn’t figure out what was going on. I was not buying—not buying. That’s why I kept saying, ‘You’re gone, you’re really gone.’ ” One clue of his intentions was that he had warned Katie about his “spontaneous” nature: “I told her, ‘Look, you never know what I’m going to do, Katie.’ That’s the point.” Perhaps Oprah might have been even more confused if she had also had him on the show a few weeks earlier. Then he could well have been jumping on the sofa about Sofía.

Certainly the public shared Oprah’s misgivings, viewing the romance and his on-screen antics as little more than a gimmick. A poll in
People
magazine showed that nearly two-thirds of the public thought the romance was a publicity stunt. This view was echoed not only by the supermarket tabloids, but even by the venerable
New York Times,
with an article titled “I Love You with All My Hype.”

Tom’s behavior on
Oprah
set the whole world talking. It was compared to the moment when Michael Jackson dangled his baby son over the edge of a hotel balcony. The phrase “jump the couch” even entered the language; it was named the Slang of the Year by the editors of the
Historical Dictionary
of American Slang
, who defined it as “Tom Cruise–inspired slang meaning to exhibit frenetic or bizarre behavior.”

Tom’s motives came under scrutiny, too. Why was a forty-two-year-old man with two marriages behind him and two impressionable children watching him on TV acting in this way? Even if he seemed to be the picture of happiness, it was not normal behavior, certainly not for a man who had given new meaning to the phrase “Cruise control.” He had acted out an erratic, uncontrollable, overpowering ecstasy, almost as if he were experiencing a heightened mental state. As Janet Carroll, his screen mother from
Risky Business,
drily observed, “People say to me, ‘Did you know that when you worked with him, your son was going to be a nut?’ ”

Watching Tom jump up and down like a man possessed, former Scientologist Peter Alexander recalled his own behavior. Like Tom, he had reached the level of Operating Thetan VII, where man is ostensibly on the cusp of becoming a superman. “The jumping on the couch was directly attributable to the fact that he is not in touch with reality,” Alexander said. “No normal, sane man would react that way to a love relationship because he would have a sense of himself and a sense of where he was in reality. When you are on OT VII you lose that sense because part of you is still in that hypnotic trancelike state.”

Just forty-eight hours later, Tom’s faith was front and center in a publicity merry-go-round, the actor effortlessly switching from soap opera to soap box. The man who had already claimed to be an authority on education, human rights, religious freedom, detoxification, and drug rehabilitation added another arrow to his quiver. Cruise unveiled himself on national TV as an expert on postpartum depression. The target of the attack was actress Brooke Shields—the woman who had starred in his first movie,
Endless Love
.

In an autobiography published a few weeks earlier, Shields had recounted taking antidepressants to help her cope with postnatal depression. Cruise used the platform of an
Access Hollywood
interview to berate the actress for using antidepressants. “I care about Brooke Shields because
she is an incredibly talented woman—[but] where has her career gone?”

It seemed that
War of the Worlds
was going to miss out on more publicity. “These drugs are dangerous. I have actually helped people come off them,” Cruise said. “When you talk about postpartum depression you can take people today, women, and what you do is you use vitamins.” This was an article of Tom’s faith, that mental illness should be treated with vitamins and not clinically developed drugs.

Shields, appearing in a musical in London, later responded to Cruise’s criticism in a wry op-ed piece in
The New York Times
. Articulating the feelings of many outraged women and doctors, she wrote: “I feel compelled to speak not just for myself but also for the hundreds of thousands of women who have suffered from postpartum depression. I’m going to take a wild guess and say that Mr. Cruise has never suffered from postpartum depression. . . . Tom Cruise’s comments are irresponsible and dangerous. . . . Tom should stick to saving the world from aliens and let women who are experiencing postpartum depression decide what treatment options are best for them.”

Watching the furor was a previously stalwart ally who was less than pleased with Tom’s recent performances. Just as Tom Cruise had a well-deserved reputation for focus and drive,
War of the Worlds
director Steven Spielberg is known not only for his creativity but for his intense dedication to his films. Spielberg did not seem pleased by the way his old friend’s couch-jumping antics and attack on Brooke Shields were derailing the expensive publicity machine for the movie. From this time on, Spielberg’s friends noticed that he spoke of Tom in the past tense.