Tom Cruise: All the World's a Stage

by Iain Johnstone

  The boys left and after Steven, who was amused by the episode, concluded the press conference, he went on to a one-on-one interview with Japan’s leading television interviewer who was in a separate studio.

  Five minutes into that, the Virginian living room doors flew open again and Tom repeated his performance. Steven retained his sang-froid but, after the interview, which was being recorded, he asked his interlocuter to cut that bit out.

  In retrospect, apres Oprah, I could see that Tom was capable of an adrenalin rush like few other humans – who wouldn’t, if you were worshipped like a Roman Emperor? – but also was not always sure when enough is enough.

  What is not in doubt is the fact that Cruise has guts. It is as if he believes an invisible cloak protects him from physical harm. Indeed he was once white-water rafting with some studio executives and three helicopters were lined up to take them all back to Los Angeles. One junior executive climbed into the helicopter containing Cruise and, once airborne, a vice-president asked him why he was there and not in the craft with his peer group. “Because helicopters with Tom Cruise in them don’t crash,” the nervous young man replied.

  Cruise does his stunts when the film insurance permits and sometimes when it doesn’t; he rides horses hard and motorcycles harder; he skydives; he can drive a racing car up to professional standards; and he pilots jet planes and helicopters.

  In Virginia, this last was a bone of contention between him and his director. The location was a stately family home on its own exclusive island, connected to the mainland by a bridge. Then travel time from the hotel by car was an hour. By helicopter ten minutes. Tom knew which form transport he preferred but Steven is less sure of his own immortality and preferred four wheels. Using statistical evidence Tom eventually persuaded him that the skies were safer - the crowning argument being that the helicopter gave Steven more time in which to work.

  Steven has never made any secret of his physical fears to me, not least because I share them. He forced Kate Capshaw, later to be his wife, to cross a perilous rope bridge several hundred feet above a gorge in ‘Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom’, but felt disinclined to follow the Steadicam that was tracking her and Harrison Ford across the slight structure. And although he designed the Jurassic Ride in the Universal Theme Park, he told me he always got out of the boat before the final scream-inducing drop into a lake.

  In fact Kiwa Island in that soft September of 2001 had aspects of a theme park. There were stalls selling, no - giving away - all manner of coffees and ice cream and doughnuts and sweetmeats. And children running around, playing football, or listening to the assistant directors on their headphones.

  Not normal for a film set, but this was no normal film set. It was Spielberg and Cruise safely hidden from the crowds that normally flock to their locations. Kate Spielberg sat beneath an almond tree concentrating on her embroidery with the occasional glance at her brood – she and Steven have seven children between them.

  Tom’s mother was there and so were his three sisters. When he was shooting, they kept an eye on Isabella (8) and Connor (6), the children he had adopted with Nicole Kidman whom he had divorced at the beginning of the year.

  The world’s most popular film star seemed sublimely content with his family – and his work. I suspect that if he could have frozen that day it would be the most perfect one for him – no intrusive press or troublesome relationship, a day when the dividing line between reality and the fiction of filming was barely visible.

  Away from the safety of the island, anywhere in public, he is discreetly followed by bodyguards. There is no backstage in public; for Tom Cruise all the world’s a stage.

  CHAPTER TWO.

  2005 was, without doubt, the most remarkable year in Tom Cruise’s life. On Wednesday May 25th the star bounced up and down on the couch of the television celebrity, Oprah Winfrey, and announced he was in love with Katie Holmes, a young actress from Dawson’s Creek. “You’ve never had this kind of feeling before?” the experienced host prompted him. Shaking his head he cried: “I honestly haven’t – and I’m not gonna pretend.”

  It is most unusual for a major Hollywood star to talk with such candour about his private life in public but the hitherto rather reclusive Cruise threw the stable doors wide open to the world on that show.

  A columnist in the Los Angeles Times reported in an interview that this was “probably one of the biggest stories in the history of Hollywood.” I am not sure if I would go quite that far but whoever saw it is hardly likely to forget it and many saw it. In fact, it won a subsequent poll of Wildest Celebrity Meltdown Moments beating Michael Jackson dangling his baby from a Berlin hotel balcony into second place.

  I had something of an inside track on the events leading up to this momentous meeting. I spent the first half of that year working for Paramount’s Marketing Department, making a documentary on HG Wells, Spielberg and Cruise and the interpretations of ‘The War of the Worlds’ which Wells had written in 1897. Steven was adamant that no-one should see anything significant from the film until they went to the cinema – the mystery of the Wells’s Martians and their demon tripods was a central selling point so their images was guarded like the Pentagon. In fact, they weren’t Martians in the movie. As the scriptwriter, David Koepp told me: “we figured that if these creatures were intent on destroying Earth they wouldn’t waste their time on introducing themselves.” So all the clips I worked with had ‘Property of Paramount’ so emphatically stamped across the screen that it was hard to recognize what was happening in any scene.

  Within their hundred million dollar plus budget, the Marketing department agreed that the first beneficiary of some not-to-revealing clips and behind-the-scenes material would be Oprah Winfrey and, of course, she would have Tom on for the whole show, giving the film a high profile launch.

  Oprah got more than she bargained for. The previous month Cruise had flown to Rome to be given a Life-Time Achievement Award at the David di Donatella Ceremony – very much Italy’s equivalent of the Oscars. They needed to attract big overseas names to get decent television exposure – the previous year Steven Spielberg had collected exactly the same honour, although the breaking news that Iraqis had murdered their Italian hostage marred the light-hearted atmosphere. Steven presented the Best Actress Award to Penelope Cruz for ‘Don’t Move’ only a few days after it had been announced that the Spanish actress had broken up with Tom Cruise.

  It was Paramount’s intention that Cruise would tantalize the prime time Italian television audience with a taste of ‘War of the Worlds’ but, unfortunately, the ceremony was recorded and transmitted at an off-peak hour.

  There was only one Cruise story that made headlines that girdled the globe that week and it was the fact that he had a new girl-friend, Katie Holmes, a 26-year-old actress best known as Joey Potter in the hit young peoples’ television series, Dawson’s Creek.

  The couple gave the paparazzi ample opportunity to photograph them as, hand-in-hand, they strolled back to the Hassler Hotel by Rome’s Spanish Steps.

  Normally when rumours of a film star romance are the subject of press speculation, the couple get their publicity people to deny them. But in this instance precisely the reverse was to take place. Cruise’s press agent (and sister), Lee Anne DeVette, said that they had been dating for a few weeks. Simultaneously Holmes’s public relations firm, Baker Winokur Ryder, also confirmed that this was the case.

  Few Hollywood watchers had ever experienced such candid press releases about the private lives of two stars. But soon they had it from the horses’s mouths, so to speak. The Associated Press quoted Tom as saying it was “like a dream” to have Katie with him for the awards ceremony.

  He went on: “She’s such an extraordinary woman It’s beautiful. I feel really happy. I’m more than enamoured.”

  Katie’s body language as they strolled round Rome over the next days left onlookers and photographers in little doubt that she reciprocated these feelings.

  They
were both free. Holmes, a few weeks previously, had broken off her engagement to the American Pie star, Chris Klein. They had been together for nearly five years but it was unlikely that the relationship had benefited from an interview she gave to Seventeen magazine in which she revealed: “I think every little girl dreams about her wedding. I used to think I was going to marry Tom Cruise.”

  Oprah Winfry, through politeness or design, had invited Tom and Katie to her ‘Legends’ ball shortly before she taped her show with star. She had planned the glittering evening to pay tribute to African-American artists who had ‘paved the way for their fellow men and woman to follow in their footsteps.’ And when Oprah invites you, you turn up. Angela Bassett, Ruby Dee, Sidney Poitier, Maya Angelou, Gladys Knight, Diahann Carroll, Toni Morrison, Aretha Franklin, Mariah Carey, Halle Berry, Diana Ross, Jesse Jackson and Corretta King were a mere sampling of the names along with Barbra Streisand, Barbara Walters, John Travolta and Stedman Graham, Oprah’s husband.

  A waiter came across to Tom’s table and handed him a single rose, saying it was from Tina Turner. Since she was being honoured as a legend that night, she couldn’t leave the top table to meet him so would he come and meet her? Not unnaturally, he did. Later that night, Tina, who was staying with Oprah, was in seventh heaven. “I met Tom Cruise, I met Tom Cruise, my God, he is so good looking.”

  Someone else who shared the sentiments was Katie Holmes. They danced and kissed and hugged the whole night long.

  Not everyone there knew who Katie Holmes was since Dawson’s Creek attracted a largely teenage audience. Indeed it revolved round the lives and problems of six teenagers who lived in the fictional community of Capeside, Massachusetts. The eponymous Dawson Leery, (James Van Der Beek) was an aspiring filmmaker and Katie played his good buddy, something of a tomboy. Others in their gang had problems ranging from homosexuality to mental illness. It proved hugely popular nationally and internationally over its six seasons on television.

  It had not been the intention of Katherine Noelle Holmes’s father that she should end up in show business. He was an affluent lawyer in Toledo, Ohio (where she was born on 18th December 1976) and the youngest of his five children. She acceded to her parents’ suggestion that she pursue a career in medicine. To this end she was sent to a good all-girl Catholic school, Notre Dame Academy. “In hindsight I think we missed out socially. We came out of school and it was suddenly: ‘Oh, my God! Boys!’”

  But there she exhibited a predilection for all things musical – the piano, singing and dancing – as well as acting and her mother, Kathleen, acknowledged her daughter should have the opportunity to make use of her looks and talent. She attended a local modeling academy which sent its brightest and best to an international competition in New York. There she was spotted by a talent scout and, ultimately, this yielded her a part in Ang Lee’s ‘The Ice Storm’ when she was only 17.

  The film was too cerebral to be multiplex popular – it dealt with the disintegration of Kevin Kline’s marriage to Joan Allen and his affair with Sigourney Weaver. A sub-plot was the married couple’s son, Tobey Maguire’s, quest for a relationship with the rich and pure Manhattanite, Katie Holmes.

  The role didn’t lead to cinema stardom but Kathleen Holmes knew that there was a demand for her daughter’s clean-cut ‘type’ in television. They made an audition tape together and, although it didn’t open the door to daytime soaps or even ‘Buffy, the Vampire Slayer’, it did land on the desk of Kevin Williamson, the current god of the teen movie such as ‘Scream’ and ‘I Know What You Did Last Summer’. When he came up with a television series, ‘Dawson’s Creek’, inspired by his own teenage years, Katie looked a possible candidate for the female lead.

  But here’s an amazing thing: she didn’t fly out to Los Angeles for the auditions. Why? Because she was playing Lola in the Notre-Dame production of ‘Damn Yankees’ and she didn’t want to let down the school. Such splendidly decent behaviour paradoxically made her a perfect Joey. Rearranged auditions took place and Joey she was for 128 episodes.

  She was settling into the image of a bit of a good-goody and was anxious to disabuse this in order to extend her range of parts. So, between series, Holmes played a school slut in the film ‘Disturbing Behavior’, a drug dealer’s girl friend in ‘Go’, a tattoed rebel in ‘Pieces of April’, went topless as something of a tart without much of a heart in ‘The Gift’ - which, despite a cast that included Hilary Swank, Keanu Reeves and Cate Blanchet, a script by Billy Bob Thornton and Sam Raimi as director – did badly at the box- office. But not as appallingly as‘The Singing Detective’ (2003). Katie did a suggestive song and dance in which caused the bedridden Robert Downey Jr to, well, ejaculate.

  Katie, herself, demurely denies that she was trying to alter her image with these unruly roles: “I just want to run the gamut of parts. There are an awful lot of stories to tell.”

  Her ambition remained undimmed. She may have failed to play opposite Leo DiCaprio in ‘The Beach’, but she became better known on the big screen as Colin Farrell’s girlfriend in ‘Phone Booth’ (2002) and then really hit the big time opposite Christian Bale in ‘Batman Begins’ which opened in June 2005. And she remained well known on television as the face of Garnier

  So how did Tom meet her. It was a question that Oprah was not slow to ask. “Is it true you called her for a meeting for something?”

  Tom demurred. “Do we have to go into details of everything?”

  “Yes, yes,” his hostess insisted.

  “I admired her and I thought that I wanted to meet her so I called her. You see someone’s work and you hear from people what a special person she is. I met her. She’s extraordinary … I can’t be cool … I can’t be laid back … I want to celebrate her.”

  He certainly wasn’t cool or laid back. He went down on one knee making a fist with his right hand as if he had just won a major tennis tournament, he persistently clasped Oprah’s hands in the manner a son might play with a parent and, most notoriously, he bounced up and down on her sofa.

  It has to be said Tom had walked into a cauldron of female hysteria, adroitly whipped up by Oprah, at the very start of the show and he fed off the audience and they encouraged him.

  ‘You’re gone, you’re gone,” his hostess chanted at him and, certainly his behaviour was that of someone who had taken some amazing magic mushroom or, almost certainly in Tom’s case, generated such a tidal wave of adrenalin in himself that it drowned all inhibition.

  In fact, recent research at Rutgers University revealed that the state of being in love is characterised by feelings of exhilaration, and intrusive, obsessive thoughts about the object of one's affection. Some researchers suggest this mental state might share neurochemical characteristics with the manic phase of manic depression. Dr Fisher's work, however, suggests that the actual behavioural patterns of those in love - such as attempting to evoke reciprocal responses in one's loved one - resemble obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). Moreover the brain areas active in love are different from the areas activated in other emotional states, such as fear and anger. Parts of the brain that are love-bitten include the one responsible for gut feelings, and the ones which generate the euphoria induced by drugs such as cocaine. So the brains of people deeply in love do not look like those of people experiencing strong emotions, but instead like those of people snorting coke. Love, in other words, uses the neural mechanisms that are activated during the process of addiction.

  Tom Cruise is the man most unlikely to be snorting cocaine, so the Rutgers’ research goes some way to explaining his behaviour.

  Oprah made so bold as to ask him if he had covered their hotel room in Rome with rose petals and Tom leant back, laughed – and then nodded.

  On a roll, she pushed him on the question of marriage although it seemed the couple had known each other for a mere few weeks. “I don’t want to disappoint her,” Tom confessed, adding, “I’ve got to discuss it with her first.”

  The audience was joyous. “I like s
eeing people happy,” Tom responded, “and I want to share it with people because it’s something very special. She is an extraordinary woman. She really is a very, very special person She has spirit, generosity, elan, she cares about other people and she has a real joy about life. I’ve spoken to her parents and she ‘s met my mother and my family.”

  He had also told Steven Spielberg about Katie and Steven observed “you look so happy,” as had his sister and publicist, Lee Anne DeVett.