Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography (30 page)

It proved to be contagious. As Tom was preparing to reprise his role as special agent Ethan Hunt in
Mission: Impossible II,
he, too, found himself seduced by a challenging script. This one was by Paul Thomas Anderson, young director of the cult film
Boogie Nights,
who had visited Tom during the long hours of waiting on the set of
Eyes Wide Shut
to say he had written a role for him in his upcoming movie,
Magnolia.
Tom, who devours scripts the way others read newspapers, was immediately taken with the character of Frank T. J. Mackey, a macho, misogynist self-help guru who teaches men how to snare women at his “Seduce and Destroy” seminars. Like the film, his character was over the top, ripe, and rather gamey. Anderson based Tom’s character on the teachings of California author Ross Jeffries, whose speed seduction techniques were the basis for a series of self-help books.

While many were surprised that Tom was prepared to join an ensemble cast, which included Julianne Moore, Jason Robards, and Philip Seymour Hoffman, Tom relished the part, inviting his pals to the set to watch when he conducted a seminar in which his character yelled at his enraptured male audience to “respect the cock and destroy the cunt.” As he later told director Cameron Crowe: “When I read the script I thought, ‘When do you get a chance to go to seminars like that?’ I’m an actor. I’d never played a character like that. I like humor. I thought it was dark and funny.”

It was believed that Anderson had written a scene in which Mackey visits his estranged father on his deathbed with Tom in mind. In fact, Anderson didn’t know that Tom had last seen his father in similar circumstances in real life. The actor did, though, draw on his own experience, Tom later admitting that he was “skating on the edge.” He was sensitive enough to ensure that his mother, Mary Lee, and stepfather, Jack South, saw the film privately before the premiere, lest it
bring back painful memories for her. She loved his performance, as did audiences and his peers, Tom duly rewarded with a Golden Globe award and an Oscar nomination.

Shortly after filming ended in early 1999, Tom received an invitation he could not refuse. It was from Scientology executives, politely requesting that he undertake the rigors of what is known as the Potential Trouble Source/Suppressive Person course. The course is designed to anchor an individual’s faith while pinpointing those in his life who create problems and difficulties—Suppressive Persons, who stop a Scientologist from achieving “wins” on his journey up the bridge. The Potential Trouble Source in the sights of the Scientology hierarchy was Nicole Kidman.

Alarm bells had been ringing ever since they had read a December 1998 interview in
Newsweek,
where she described her faith: “There’s a little Buddhism, a little Scientology,” she said. “I was raised Catholic and a big part of me is still a Catholic girl.” That was not good enough. Not only was she married to one of Scientology’s poster boys, but her father was a psychologist, which automatically made her a Potential Trouble Source. Even though, as a celebrity, Nicole was treated with kid gloves by Scientology leaders, the storm clouds were gathering.

Shortly after Kidman’s
Newsweek
interview, senior Scientology leaders, including David Miscavige, Ray Mithoff, and others, discussed their strategy to keep Tom firmly in the fold. The fear was that a lukewarm Nicole could fatally compromise Tom’s commitment to his faith. Somehow Tom had to be inoculated against the virus of doubt. The surefire cure for skepticism was the Potential Trouble Source/Suppressive Person course, which reinforced wavering Scientologists’ loyalty while making them more suspicious of those around them who were not members of the faith.

Often, on completion of the course, Scientologists would of their own free will write letters “disconnecting” from loved ones who were not members of Scientology. For example, after he completed the rigors of the PTS/SP course, Peter Alexander’s seventeen-year-old son calmly sat down
and wrote him a letter saying that he never wanted to see him again. The fact that such letters were voluntary meant that when questioned, Scientology officials could argue that these individuals were acting in their own best interests and without any coercion.

When she read the
Newsweek
article, Karen Pressley, who had watched Nicole’s waning enthusiasm for Scientology, realized that it was the beginning of the end for her marriage. “By the late 1990s, Nicole was dragging her feet. Tom was much more involved and advancing much faster than she was. I realized that she wasn’t going to make it and it really upset me.” At the time Karen wanted to leave Scientology. She knew that if she left and her husband, Peter, wanted to stay inside the organization, he would have no choice but to divorce her, which is what happened. Karen now feared that Nicole would go down the same path and lose her children into the bargain.

In early 1999, Tom dutifully attended rigorous auditing sessions with Marty Rathbun, Scientology’s inspector general. On one occasion, as part of a drill, he had to ask strangers this question: “What is the most obvious thing about me?” He carried out the drill so enthusiastically that, rather than confine his questioning to fellow Scientologists, he went out onto the street and collared complete strangers. One startled passerby told him: “Well, you look like Tom Cruise—but only at a stretch.”

His decision to embark on such a tough course coincided with a period of “real loss and pain” in his life. On March 2, 1999, a few days after
The Blue Room
ended, Nicole and Tom watched
Eyes Wide Shut
for the first time at a private screening room in Manhattan. Except for two executives from Warner Bros., they were alone. They watched the movie twice, Tom calling Stanley Kubrick in London to tell him how much they loved it. Four days later, Kubrick was dead of a massive heart attack.

“I broke down when I heard,” Tom said about the news. “I was in absolute shock and disbelief. We had shared two years of our lives together.” Tom was a pallbearer at the funeral,
which was held in a church in St. Albans, Hertfordshire. At the request of his friend Terry Semel, chairman of Warner Bros., the stunned actor channeled his grief by taking charge of all things relating to the movie.

An acknowledged control freak, Kubrick could not have chosen a better executor, Tom overseeing every detail of the film’s distribution, marketing, and publicity. He was furious when scriptwriter Frederic Raphael penned a short book about working with Kubrick without asking permission. For their part, Raphael’s publishers, Penguin, were astonished at Tom’s reaction to what he considered an act of treachery. As Raphael recalls, “Penguin said they’d never seen anything like it—him trying to stop them publishing the book. But then he is one of these people crazed with wanting total control.”

Tom’s reputation for control faced a further challenge when the noted film critic Roger Ebert refused to sign a two-page “loyalty oath” before interviewing the actor about the long-awaited film. The contract insisted on editorial control, stressing that no interview could portray Tom in a “negative or derogatory manner” and that “the artist” had the right to delete any parts of the interview he didn’t like. When Ebert refused to sign, for once it was Tom who caved, the film critic sitting down for a “frank and forthcoming” chat with the Hollywood star about the movie.

Much as Tom tried to tame the media tiger, he could never truly control the unruly beast. Shortly after Kubrick’s funeral, two American tabloids claimed that two sex therapists had been hired by the director to give Tom and Nicole lessons in loving. The couple was less than amused, Warner Bros. issuing a statement denying the story while their lawyers filed suit. Nowhere was Tom’s hair-trigger sensitivity more exposed than when mention was made of his involvement with Scientology. During the filming of
Eyes Wide Shut,
the magazine
Us Weekly
stated that Tom felt that actor John Travolta’s involvement with the production of
Battlefield Earth,
based on an L. Ron Hubbard novel, was a “mistake.” Within a week the magazine was forced to print a
prominent retraction declaring that Tom was an “active and committed member of the Church of Scientology,” who had neither said nor even “hinted” at anything negative to do with
Battlefield Earth.
That did not stop the film from being described as the worst movie ever made.

“I don’t like suing people,” Tom told
Harper’s Bazaar.
“I take no pleasure in it. But there comes a point where it’s beyond silly; it’s destructive. I will sue. I will sue every single time that I can until it stops. And when they stop, I will stop.”

After all the controversy, when
Eyes Wide Shut
actually opened in July 1999, it was a huge anticlimax. Even though it was the first of Kubrick’s films to open at number one at the American box office, the critics were uncertain, some finding the movie dull and unconvincing, others describing the 159-minute film as Kubrick’s last masterpiece, a fitting end to a brilliant career. Naturally, much of the attention focused on the sex scenes, with Nicole viewed as passionate and sexy in her encounters with Gary Goba, but distant and unengaged when coupling with her husband. In time, the movie would be seen as much as a coda to their unraveling marriage as an epitaph to Kubrick’s career.

Tongues were kept wagging that same month when Nicole gave an interview to writer Tom Junod, who had flown to Sydney, where she was rehearsing
Moulin Rouge
while Tom, also in Australia, worked on
Mission: Impossible II.
Clearly she enjoyed Junod’s company, taking him around to local bars, showing him the Sydney Harbor bridge, which her grandfather had helped build, and ending up in his hotel bed with Junod, fully clothed, next to her. Just then the phone rang; it was Tom seeking the whereabouts of his wife, as he and the children were waiting for her in a Chinese restaurant. When Junod told him where she was, Tom responded by saying, “In your dreams, buddy,” only for Nicole to interject with, “I’m afraid so, darling. I’m afraid I’m right in his bed at this very moment.”

While Junod insisted he had only been enjoying a “flirtation,” it was perhaps a sign of his security that Tom, who had seen his wife make love onstage with a man he didn’t
particularly like and have sex with a complete stranger for six days straight, seemed to take the unusual news in his stride. In fact, he singled out Nicole for special praise when he accepted his Best Supporting Actor award for
Magnolia
at the Golden Globe awards ceremony in Hollywood. “Her generosity, her support, her sacrifices, her talent—she inspires me,” he told the audience.

Nicole’s sister, Antonia, was by his side when he walked the red carpet, as Nicole was busy filming
Moulin Rouge
. During the lengthy shoot, rumors inevitably circulated that Nicole was having an affair with her new leading man, another Scotsman, Ewan McGregor. The fact that she got on equally famously with his wife, Eve, and that Tom was on set as much as his schedule allowed, to see his wife and children, was lost in the shuffle. Indeed, Connor and Bella became used to seeing their mother, dressed in high heels, fishnet stockings, and a tight corset, making them supper in their trailer in between rehearsing her song and dance routines. Notably, even though Tom insisted on filming
Mission: Impossible II
in Australia so that he could be close to his wife, no one recalled her ever visiting him on set. Nicole remained his elusive object of desire, playing a role on film, and perhaps in life, where, as director Baz Luhrmann said of her character, “She was a woman at her absolute sexual prime.”

There was a price to pay. The long and intense rehearsals took their toll, Nicole twice cracking a rib during a dance sequence and then, in April 2000, badly tearing some knee cartilage. She flew to Los Angeles, where noted surgeon Neal ElAttrache, the handsome brother-in-law of Sylvester Stallone, operated. Nicole saw him frequently afterward for consultations about her injury and the two became friendly.

At that time the whole family seemed accident-prone. After filming for
Mission: Impossible II
wrapped, Tom took the children on an ill-fated fishing trip on a forty-foot boat. During the voyage, they hit a reef, the motor conked out, and a Jet Ski hit the boat’s side. When flames from the onboard barbecue flared too high, Tom threw it overboard—becoming, as one wag noted, the first actor in Australian history to throw
a barbie on the shrimp. In some ways it was refreshing to see that the all-action hero who races sports cars and motorbikes, scuba dives, skydives, flies acrobatic planes, and dreams of climbing Everest is flawed like mere mortals. He exudes such a mountainous air of competence, security, and invincibility that when he was returning from a wilderness rafting trip, the party had a choice of three helicopters to pick them up. One rafter, who was terrified of choppers, traveled with Tom. “God isn’t going to kill him,” he reasoned.

Director John Woo exploited that image of the superhero, the guy who always dodges the bullet, in full for
Mission: Impossible II.
Even Woo, who made his name from choreographed violence, was nervous as he watched Tom film the famous opening stunt where he held on to a rock face thousands of feet above the Utah desert with one hand. Woo’s mood was not helped by the fact that Tom’s mother was standing next to him watching anxiously as a hovering helicopter filmed her son clinging to a rock. “I was more panicked than her,” recalled Woo. “I grabbed her hand, turned to her, and said, ‘Mom, he’s going to be fine,’ and actually I was the one worried.” It took the cameraman seven takes to get the right shot. When Woo wanted Tom to be a “rock star,” he didn’t mean him to take it so literally.

Tom told director Cameron Crowe afterward that during the dazzling sequence he was simply admiring the view. That moment symbolized a man at the top of his game, king of his movie world. At thirty-six he was still limber enough to perform his own breathtaking stunts, an actor whose determined nonchalance in the face of danger was his trademark, and a successful producer in firm control of a big-budget movie that took in $70 million on its opening weekend in America alone.