Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography (48 page)

In a remarkably well-organized and coordinated campaign, some 8,300 people worldwide gathered in protest outside Scientology buildings in Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Berlin, London, Melbourne, Dallas, Houston, and elsewhere. (Tom and Katie were resident at the Hollywood Celebrity Centre during the protests, as their home was under renovation.) Wearing Guy Fawkes masks—from the movie
V for Vendetta
—to protect their identity, they chanted anti-Scientology slogans against a background of the 1980s pop song, “Never Gonna Give You Up,” by singer Rick Astley.
As writer Chez Pazienza wryly observed, “It’s kind of satisfying to watch someone turn the tables on Scientology, using the same brand of furtive cloak and dagger absurdity to publicly shame an adversary that the church has used for decades.”

While the demonstrators, mainly young college students, did not take themselves too seriously, Scientology did. In retaliation, they made their own video of allegations accusing the group of terrorism and hate crimes. They claimed they had received harassing phone calls, death and bomb threats, and envelopes containing white powder that could be anthrax. To long-time anti-Scientology activists, their protests had the familiar ring of humorless exaggeration and hysteria that greets even moderate criticism of the church. No infraction escapes notice. A snarky comment by a
US Weekly
writer about a shiny suit worn by Nicole Kidman—“Bonus: This specially designed suit repels Scientologists”—earned a lawyer’s letter from celebrity Scientologist Kirstie Alley demanding that the writer be fired and that the publication “apologize and commit to a thorough examination of why you have chosen to foster animosity and bias against Scientologists.”

Meanwhile, many former senior officials and upper-echelon members came out publicly in support of my book. The response of one former high-ranking official who worked at the Hemet base for twenty years was typical: “I saw Scientology’s denial of all sorts of things you reported which just burned me up, especially how they don’t separate families—biggest lie in the world.” Another former member posted the names and details of thirty couples who had been split up because of Scientology.

Most prominent was Jenna Miscavige Hill, the niece of church leader David Miscavige, who wrote an open letter to spokeswoman Karin Pouw in January 2008. The 24-year-old former Scientologist, who was brought up in the faith, launched a withering assault on the church and its most prominent supporter, Tom Cruise: “I am absolutely shocked at how vehemently you insist upon not only denying the truths that have
been stated about the church in that biography, but then take it a step further and tell outright lies.” She went on to denounce Tom Cruise for “supporting a religion that tears apart families, both in the media and monetarily.”

Jenna described how her own family—her father Ron is David Miscavige’s elder brother—was scattered by the organization’s policies. When her parents left the church in 2000, she decided to stay but was prevented from contacting them. She said that Scientology officials intercepted letters from her parents and friends, kept her from speaking to them on the phone, and only allowed her to visit them once a year for four days—and then only after her parents threatened legal action. “Hell, if Scientology can’t keep his family together then why on earth should anyone believe the church helps bring families together,” she wrote. For her pains, Jenna, who teamed up with other disillusioned Scientology “aristocrats” to form an organization to help Scientology children,
ExScientologyKids.com
(Motto: “I was born. I grew up. I escaped.”), found herself harassed by church officials. She told the
New York Post
that the church ordered friends to “disconnect” from her.

Her experience failed to deter celebrity Scientologist Jason Beghe from speaking out several weeks later. The one-time Scientology poster boy and star of
G.I Jane
and TV series like
Melrose Place
and
American Dreams
blew the whistle on the fourteen years—and one million dollars—he had spent inside the organization. He accused the church of being a “rip-off” and a “dangerous cult” whose purpose was to create a “brainwashed, robotic version of you.”

As Beghe and others spoke out, other former high-ranking Scientologists were simply baffled by the church’s insistence that Tom Cruise held no official or unofficial position inside the organization. For example, film producer Marc Headley, who was brought up inside the faith and worked closely with David Miscavige for fifteen years, recalled that the church leader had told him and others at Gold base in Hemet: “If I could make Tom Cruise IG [Inspector General, second in command] I would.” Moreover, Headley considered the actor
effectively the “dean” of the organization’s celebrities, recalling the time that Tom ordered fellow Scientology stars including Anne Archer, Giovanni Ribisi, Jenna Elfman, and Jason Lee to attend a meeting at Celebrity Centre, where he lectured them for failing to work hard enough for the cause, accusing them of being “out ethics,” essentially not pulling their weight. The message got home.

Second in command or not, he was treated as anything but an ordinary parishioner. A number of former Scientology executives, several of whom were personal friends of L. Ron Hubbard, recalled the building of Bonnie View, the home designated for the church’s founder after he had finished his planetary peregrinations. For the overwhelming majority of Scientologists, this shrine to Hubbard—with a freshly laundered set of clothes laid out every day in case the founder turns up unexpectedly—is strictly off-limits. Not only did Tom regularly tour the mansion, he was wined and dined there by David Miscavige. As always, he was treated like royalty when he visited the remote base; for example, if he was arriving by helicopter, the hillsides had to be freshly planted and brown patches of grass removed and replaced.

Then there was the surprise birthday party for Tom on
Freewinds
, the church’s own cruise ship. Every year the church organizes a special celebration to commemorate the birthday of L. Ron Hubbard, flying in musicians, entertainers, cooks and camera crew at an estimated cost of $300,000. After the festivities in the summer of 2004, they were all flown back again for Tom’s lavish birthday concert—along with the chefs and staff from his favorite sushi restaurant. When he walked into the ship’s ballroom, a solo guitarist on stage played the
Top Gun
theme. For the next hour, singers and dancers entertained the star, singing a medley of tunes from his movies while film clips played in the background. At the end, Tom, casually dressed in jeans and a T-shirt, joined singers and dancers on stage to reprise the Bob Seger hit, “Old Time Rock and Roll,” which he had danced to as a fresh-faced actor in
Risky Business
. “It’s the best birthday ever, ever, ever, ever,
ever, and I mean ever,” he told the assembled throng, which included David and Shelley Miscavige. Probably the most expensive, too. Former Scientologists who helped organize the bash estimate it cost the church $300,000—the same as the Hubbard birthday celebration—to entertain the multimillionaire. As Gawker wryly noted when they first aired the video on their website in March 2008: “If Cruise was merely a humble parishioner why in Xenu’s name did the sect spend six figures to celebrate his birthday in 2004?”

Why, too, did David Miscavige personally supervise every aspect of the event, from the camera positions to the dance choreography? According to Scientology producer Marc Headley, he also edited and approved the commemorative video, which he presented to Tom. He did the same thing before the now-infamous gala at Saint Hill where Tom told the world that only Scientologists could help at the scene of a car accident. Not only did Miscavige produce the video preceding Tom’s award of the Freedom Medal of Valor, according to Headley, he instructed the camera crews filming the audience what and what not to shoot. Strictly off-limits were photos of Tom and his new girlfriend, aspiring actress Yolanda Pecorara. Tom had first met the 19-year-old daughter of a Nicaraguan mother and Italian father at the opening of a new Scientology centre in Madrid in September 2004, a few months after his breakup with Penelope Cruz. With her big brown eyes and striking looks, she bore a remarkable resemblance to the Spanish actress. There was, however, one big difference: Yolanda had been a Scientologist since the age of 13. The 42-year-old actor and his teenage girlfriend, whose only claim to fame was appearing as a bikini babe in the TV drama
Dr. Vegas
, dated for a few months. Tom invited her to join the Beckhams and the Miscaviges at a Real Madrid soccer game in October 2004, and a month later, dressed in a long coral satin gown, she was by his side when he accepted his award. By February 2005, he had moved on to another Cruz look-alike, Sofia Vergara.

That evening the cameramen clearly forgot their orders, as brief shots of the couple were evident when the video surfaced
in January 2008. The emergence of a Scientologist teenager as a possible partner encouraged the whispers previously alluded to in the original biography, that church elders had played cupid for the Hollywood star. In March 2008, Marc Headley, who was audited by Tom when he worked at Hemet, claimed in a British tabloid that church officials had actively tried to find him a bride. According to Headley, church officials put out a casting call to actresses for a part in an upcoming Tom Cruise movie. Auditions were held in a room at the Celebrity Centre in Hollywood, where Headley was in charge of taping the interviews to be screened personally by David Miscavige. First they rounded up Scientology actresses like Erika Christensen, Erica Howard and Sofia Milos, but none was deemed acceptable. “They had to look outside the herd, so to speak,” Headley told writer Lewis Panther. “They went for Jennifer Garner, Scarlett Johansson and Jessica Alba, in that order. Jennifer and Jessica didn’t bite, but Scarlett took the bait and came in for an audition. When she arrived at the audition address and found out it was the Scientology centre in Hollywood, she freaked out and didn’t do a tape.” Finally they hit on Katie Holmes after they read an interview saying that she would like to marry him. Headley claimed they sent a senior Scientologist to New York, where she was then living, to vet her.

For all the furor surrounding Tom and Scientology—a Gallup poll released in April 2008 revealed that Hubbard’s church was the most negatively viewed religion in America, behind the Mormons, Muslims, and atheists—his enthusiasm for his faith remained undimmed. It was revealed that he had donated $5 million to the cause, beaten only by Nancy Cartwright, the voice of Bart Simpson, who gave $10 million to spread the word of L. Ron Hubbard. Nor was his friendship with church leader David Miscavige impaired; the pals were spotted at a motorcycle race track in Monterey, California, in the summer of 2008. By then Scientology membership had become a toxic issue for other celebrities. Tom’s friend and sword-fighting partner Will Smith spent much of the year fencing with journalists about his possible
involvement with the controversial church. In a confrontation with members of Anonymous in September, he denied that he was a member.

Tom’s unwavering support for his spiritual constituency came at a price. The electorate who really called the shots, the movers and shakers in Hollywood, began to voice their doubts about his future. Peter Bart, the editor-in-chief of
Variety,
the Bible of the entertainment industry, captured the hostile mood in January 2008. It did not make reassuring reading for the man who had recently been the biggest box-office draw in the world. Bart wrote, “Since the appearance of the Cruise salute [Tom’s Scientology video], I have been peppered with anecdotes from top players in the industry describing instances in which Cruise has used his bully pulpit to advance his cause. His fervor is tilting the entertainment community against him. He is a target of suspicion rather than respect.” Arguing that a film star’s brand should remain bland, Bart continued, “Cruise’s advocacy of Scientology and its satellite causes seems to have become even more strident and contentious. More than ever, his actions reflect the conviction that he, Tom Terrific, has sole and unique access to the ultimate truth about life, science and cinema.”

Whatever his views on life, Hollywood was beginning to doubt his cinematic choices. The financial and artistic failure of
Lions for Lambs,
his first movie as the head of United Artists, placed more pressure on his second big feature,
Valkyrie,
about the doomed attempt to assassinate Hitler. It was a troubled shoot, dogged by bad publicity and misadventures on the set, such as a studio fire and injuries sustained by a number of extras. The frequent change of the film’s release date merely added to the air of pessimism. Obituary writers were beginning to sharpen their pencils. “Is Tom Cruise’s career over?” asked a headline in
The Week.

For once it seems that the actor was prepared to listen to the warning voices inside the industry. In March 2008 he swallowed his pride and invited Viacom head Sumner Redstone—the man who had publicly sacked him from Paramount—out for lunch. Their very public rapprochement at the Beverly
Hills Hotel seemed to signify that Tom was once more back in the fold—and back with a chance of making
Mission: Impossible 1V.
“We agreed that past is the past and we would put it behind us and renew our relationship,” said Mr. Redstone afterwards. “It seems clear,” noted Hollywood insider Kim Masters, “that Cruise has begun to appreciate the magnitude of career damage that he has inflicted upon himself, though he may not completely grasp the cause.” Operation Career Recovery was now underway.

The rebranding—or as Peter Bart might say, the “reblanding”—of Tom Cruise began in earnest when he invited Oprah Winfrey to join him at his ranch in Telluride, Colorado. After giving Oprah a tour of the sprawling property—the highlight was a miniature “office” for baby Suri—he sat sedately on his overstuffed sofa and attempted to explain away the pitfalls and pratfalls of the recent past. Oprah obligingly helped out whenever he struggled for the right language; it was less of an interview than Hollywood royalty communing with itself.