Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography (28 page)

“We just tried to do stuff that we had never ever seen before in movies,” recalled Goba. “Sometimes she would come up with an idea or I would or Stanley would.” In the scene that actually made it into the movie, Nicole is lying on her back wearing a summer dress while Goba caresses her and lifts her dress over her breasts to reveal her body. “Leave [the dress] up there and have those hands continue on down, and, like, grab her tits, kiss them if you want, hands all the way down her body and end up between her legs,” said the director. Goba, trying to be sensitive to Nicole, rested his hand on her thigh, knowing that it could make little difference to Stanley, as her other leg was shielding what his hand might actually be doing from the camera anyway. “Whoa! Whoa! Whoa! Gary, you’ve got to get right in there!” Kubrick instructed.

“I couldn’t believe it,” says Goba. “I just couldn’t believe it. I think he was having fun with it. It was a joke for him, but I think he went a little far for her because as the days went on, she would be like, ‘Okay, cut!’ Like this is getting too intimate, but he just let it go. It was like he was trying to have things done to piss her off—or the opposite. It was weird. He was laughing. He thought it was so funny.”

It was as if he were enjoying the relentless humiliation of another man’s wife—and the unspoken emasculation of her husband—by playing out explicit scenes that would inevitably end up on the cutting room floor. In one scenario, Nicole had a wig glued over her private parts and Kubrick ordered Goba to perform oral sex on her. “He really wanted me to go for it,” recalls Goba. “I did and he was like, ‘You’ve got to really push in there and really move your head around,’ and I’d see him laughing and she would be like, ‘Oh God, Stanley!’ So I was really grinding away in there, with my mouth on her patch—and there was hair in my mouth, too, and I’d be pulling one out.”

As Nicole’s biographer James L. Dickerson caustically observed, “The most damning evidence against Kubrick lies in the relentless manner in which he pursued the sex scenes between Nicole and Gary Goba. He asked Nicole to do things
that he knew damned well would never make it onto film. It was abusive behavior cloaked in a mantle of professional necessity.”

While Nicole is not so censorious, she concedes that she only allowed herself to be used in this way for Kubrick. “He didn’t exploit me. I certainly wouldn’t have done it for any other director and, yes, it was a little difficult to go home to my husband afterward.” It seems that when she did go home, she did not say much about the day job—as per Kubrick’s standing instructions. Only after he saw the finished movie a year or so later was Tom aware of some of the intimate scenes played out between his wife and Goba. “Yeah, who the fuck was that guy?” he later said to
USA Today.
(The newspaper removed the expletive.)

If the leading man was in the dark about important aspects of this enigmatic movie, the mass media was in a fever of speculation. One story claimed that Tom would wear a dress in the film, another said that the photographer Helmut Newton, a master at creating sexually explicit images, was hired to snap the couple in a bid to “loosen” them up. Another tabloid tale suggested that the couple had visited sex clubs as part of their research. When Harvey Keitel left the set, it was rumored that he had been fired because a masturbation scene involving Nicole had literally gotten out of hand.

The rumor mill was fueled not just by Kubrick’s obsessive secrecy and control, but by the continuing gossip about Tom and Nicole and the nature of their marriage. The most high-profile couple in Hollywood was also the most discussed, prompting endless rumors surrounding Tom’s sexuality, their decision to adopt, and Nicole’s career ambitions. Gossip about Tom first surfaced in 1986 after his blockbuster
Top Gun
became cult viewing in the gay community. Even Tom’s costar Val Kilmer later admitted that the film had “a couple of shower scenes too many.” Beefcake pictures from Tom’s early years, which apparently appeared in a New Jersey gay magazine, together with his abrupt split from Mimi Rogers in 1990 and her subsequent tongue-in-cheek
comments about his desire to be a monk, had given the rumors greater traction.

When Tom played the sexually ambiguous character of Lestat in the 1994 film
Interview with the Vampire,
journalists had the perfect excuse to put the spotlight on Tom’s private life. During publicity for the film, he dismissed the gay talk as “hard-line cynicism,” telling writer Kevin Sessums in October 1994, “It’s not true, but people are going to say what they want to say. . . . I don’t care if people are Martians. I really don’t care. Straight. Gay. Bisexual. Catholic. Jewish.” The rumor mill kept churning even after Nicole rallied to his defense, telling
Vanity Fair,
“I’ll bet all the money I’ve ever made, plus his, that he doesn’t have a mistress, that he doesn’t have a gay lover, that he doesn’t have a gay life.”

In 1995, when
McCall’s
magazine published an article suggesting that Tom and Nicole’s marriage was a sham and that Nicole only had a Hollywood career in exchange for hiding Tom’s gay lifestyle, the couple decided to act, Tom instructing his lawyer Bertram Fields to file suit. While many actors ignore the gossip, seeing it as part and parcel of life in Hollywood, Tom was much more sensitive, especially as both he and Nicole knew the medical reasons behind their decision to adopt two children. While
McCall’s
printed a retraction and apology, his lawyer was to spend many more years damping down flames of gossip that flared up all over the world. When the German magazine
Bunte
claimed in 1996 that Tom was gay and sterile with a “zero sperm count,” Tom instructed Fields to slap the journal with an $80 million libel suit. “The actor’s career depends on his fans’ willingness to believe that he does or could possibly possess the qualities of the character he plays,” said Fields. In other words, no woman would go weak at the knees at the sight of Tom if they thought he was gay or impotent. If the rumors persisted, his image as a clean-cut American sex symbol could be compromised. The magazine duly caved.

The acid test came during the filming of
Eyes Wide Shut.
In October 1997, just a few weeks after the couple had attended
the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, the
Sunday Express
newspaper published a story claiming that Tom and Nicole’s marriage was a business-driven partnership of “convenience” designed to hide their homosexuality. The article also implied that the reason Tom and Nicole had adopted their children was because Tom was sterile and impotent. In keeping with previous policy, Tom decided to sue for libel, telling friends, somewhat oddly, that the story exposed his children, then ages two and four, to ridicule. For once the newspaper called his bluff and announced that it was prepared to defend the action. That meant that if Tom should decide to go ahead, he would have to appear in the witness box at the High Court in London and face hostile questioning about his marriage, his sex life, and his previous sexual partners.

He hired the best lawyer in Britain, the flamboyant George Carman, famous for defending, among others, Elton John, politician Jeremy Thorpe, comedian Ken Dodd, and cricketer Imran Khan. When the couple was ushered into his chambers, Carman was immediately struck by how nervous these Hollywood A-listers were at the prospect of going to court.

For all his bluster, Tom was particularly anxious about the prospect of facing a rigorous cross-examination. Few would blame him. In the sober quiet of his book-lined office, the silver-haired barrister walked Tom and Nicole through the financial and personal costs of appearing in court. In Britain, while the courts tend to favor celebrity plaintiffs, libel cases are notoriously unpredictable and ruinously expensive. Winners often end up losers, their reputations in tatters. Litigants who lie in court for the sake of protecting their good name can end up in jail, like novelist Jeffrey Archer and former Cabinet minister Jonathan Aitken.

During their conversation Carman ran through the allegations about the couple, asking them individually if they were prepared to repudiate the newspaper’s claims under oath. Carman’s son Dominic, who wrote his father’s life story, recalls: “My father formally asked Tom Cruise if he was gay. He categorically denied it. However, he warned him that he would have a rough time in court and asked him point-blank
if there were any relationships that he may have forgotten about that the other side might bring up.” Again Tom denied that he had any skeletons in his closet that could embarrass him. Carman was impressed. “George felt Tom would make an excellent witness as he was highly cooperative and had a certain charm without seeming arrogant,” remembers Dominic. “George was more than satisfied with his honesty.”

Certainly Tom’s replies would have come as no surprise to the women in his life—past and present. Not only had Nicole and Mimi publicly testified to his virile heterosexuality, but his earlier lovers were equally perplexed by the constant whispers about his sexual preferences. High-school girlfriends Nancy Armel, whom he’d wanted to marry, and Diane Van Zoeren both found Tom a regular red-blooded teenager. As Diane, who dated him from high school until he made the movie
Taps,
recalled, “I don’t get it. I find these stories just hard to believe. We romanced in my dad’s Oldsmobile doing what you are not supposed to.”

If anything, Tom was uncomfortable around gay men. Those who saw him in the company of some of Nicole’s gay friends, who included designer John Galliano, noticed that he was awkward and ill at ease, much preferring the company of jocks who talked about football rather than fashion. His discomfort was understandable, given Scientology’s view of the gay community. In
Dianetics,
Ron Hubbard famously described homosexuals as “sexual perverts” who should be taken from society “as rapidly as possible and uniformly institutionalized.” Indeed many men—and some women—joined Scientology in the hope that their homosexuality would be “cured.” After spending $500,000, painter Michael Pattinson, who reached OT VIII, the highest level attainable, sued Scientology for his money back because after years of auditing he was still gay. He eventually dropped the suit when his funds ran out.

While Tom could step into the witness box with a clear conscience, the upcoming trial troubled him greatly, the actor frequently asking George Carman to visit him on the set of
Eyes Wide Shut
and at his rented Hertfordshire home.
From time to time he and Nicole, or Tom on his own, drove to Carman’s chambers in central London. Even though Carman found Tom’s need for such extensive hand-holding “bizarre,” he did not begrudge them his time, charging them about three thousand dollars an hour for consultations that could last several hours. It was not only the impending court case that bothered Tom; he was “obsessed” about his public image, continually pointing out articles that irritated him and discussing the possibility of seeking redress. Over the next few years he consulted George Carman on at least a dozen occasions.

In the end it was not Tom’s demeanor in the dock that won the day, but Nicole’s admission that she had suffered at least one ectopic pregnancy during the early years of their marriage. It was the smoking gun, proof not only that Tom was fertile but that the couple were involved in a regular, loving marriage. Once Express Newspapers was informed of these medical facts, they threw in the towel. While their decision came as a relief to Tom and Nicole, it rather robbed George Carman of his moment of glory. Instead, the newspaper agreed to pay $200,000 in damages and publish a comprehensive apology and retraction.

In October 1998, just a year after the original libel suit, Carman and Tom Cruise appeared at the High Court to confirm that the money would be given to charity. In an eloquent address, Carman told the court that Tom and Nicole “married solely because they loved each other and their marriage is a close and happy one; they both love and are very devoted to their two young adopted children. They have brought proceedings to put an end once and for all to these highly offensive rumors which have been so hurtful to their married life together and to their role as parents.”

The only thing missing as Carman made his victory address was Mrs. Cruise. While Tom, Carman, and Bert Fields, calling from Los Angeles, had pressured Nicole to attend the triumphant occasion so they could stand side by side on the court steps, she had consistently refused. Even though Carman judged Nicole “cold and distant” during their meetings,
he still found her decision one of the “oddest” in his professional career. Tom explained her absence by saying that she had a cold. Carman didn’t believe a word and pressed him further. The plain answer was that she did not want to be part of the circus. As with most libels, the winner was really the loser. In order to prove that her husband was virile and heterosexual, she had to have the secrets of her womb placed on public display. She had gone along with the case, probably reluctantly, to support her husband in his legal pissing contest with an unimportant British Sunday tabloid. There was a price to be paid, as was shown on the steps of the High Court, where Tom was alone in waving to the crowds and accepting the applause of well-wishers.

Although George Carman feared that it would look “terrible,” the media failed to comment on Nicole’s absence. Only those associated with the couple appreciated the significance, seeing it as a further sign of the growing distance between them. In the year between the publication of the
Sunday Express
article and the court victory, cracks were beginning to appear in the marriage. Nicole bridled more and more at Tom’s controlling behavior, finding fault in everything he did for her. His constant love notes became irritating, the endless gifts of flowers a bore.

Romantic gestures like spontaneously taking her to their favorite London restaurant, the Ivy, or for a weekend away to the Cipriani Hotel in Venice with dinner at Harry’s Bar no longer made her heart sing. “She was an unhappy wife,” noted an associate. “She was constantly wrestling with the fact that she did not love him anymore.” For his part, the more he tried to woo her with gifts, the more she pulled away. “There came a point where nothing Tom did pleased her,” recalls an associate. “Tom adored Nic. I have never known a man who was so loving and giving. But that love was not reciprocated by Nic.”