Tom Cruise: All the World's a Stage

by Iain Johnstone

  ‘Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman announced today that they have regretfully decided to separate. The couple, who married in 1990, stressed their great respect for each other both personally and professionally. Citing the difficulties inherent in divergent careers which constantly keep them apart, they concluded that an amicable separation seemed best for both of them at this time.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Matters moved on from there with barely decent haste. Eschewing the etiquette that normally allows the wife to sue for divorce, Tom’s lawyers served papers on Nicole just forty-eight hours later. Why? The public wanted to know.

  ‘Nicole knows why,’ Tom replied.

  But, apparently, she didn’t. And said so. And appears not to know why to this day. Her immediate response was to call her fellow-Australians, Baz Luhrmann and John Duigan, to express her shock and bewilderment. The Pacific Palisades house was besieged by journalists and photographers with TV news helicopters hovering overhead. Her sister, Antonia, took leave from her TV job in Sydney and within four days arrived with her children, Antonia and Lucia, to comfort her.

  Tom moved out to the Bel Air Hotel where he and his entourage rented five bungalows at £10,000 a night. He went back to finish ‘Vanilla Sky’ and was seen at a Spielberg party, joking and relaxed.

  Five weeks after receiving the divorce petition, on 16 March 2001, Nicole suffered a miscarriage. In a deposition to the court her lawyers stated: ‘During December 2000 the parties were intimate. In fact Kidman became pregnant but lost the baby through a miscarriage.’ Tom sent her flowers, but he did not visit her in hospital.

  Six days later she had recovered sufficiently to give a small party at Ago restaurant, a trendy trattoria on Melrose Avenue named after the chef, Agostino Sciandri, and owned by, amongst others, the Weinstein brothers and the Scott brothers (Tony had directed Nicole in ‘Days of Thunder’). It was for fellow Aussie, Russell Crowe, who, the following Sunday, won the Best Actor Oscar for ‘Gladiator’. Not that Nicole was there to see him, although she did grace the cover of the new Oscar issue of ‘Vanity Fair’ along with Meryl Streep and Gwyneth Paltrow. Penelope Cruz also appeared in the Annie Liebovitz montage but in a separate panel.

  Nicole watched the ceremony at home with her sister. Tom was on stage and gave the Best Director Oscar to Steven Soderbergh for ‘Traffic’. Penelope Cruz presented the Oscar for Best Costume Design. Later in the week Tom took off for Washington DC to being work with Spielberg on ‘Minority Report’.

  Nicole did not want the marriage to end, and suggested marriage counselling. But she should have known that the Church of Scientology would hardly endorse such a route and Tom, in a court declaration, stated: “Irreconcilable differences have arisen between Nicole and me. These differences have led to an irremediable breakdown of our marriage. I do not believe that professional counselling or the assistance of any health professional, lapse of time or any other factor will change this breakdown”.

  Nicole was, reportedly, devastated and depressed. She had no immediate desire to do another movie. She wanted a rest and to spend time with the children. But she did emerge from her self-imposed professional exile to attend the New York premiere of ‘Moulin Rouge’ and, three weeks later, flew to the Cannes Film Festival where the film opened the competition on 6th May. It didn’t win any prizes but the director and cast traditionally give a post-screening press conference in the vast Palais du Cinema. Nicole confided to Baz Luhrman that she just couldn’t face the press but he told her she had to “Get back up on that horse and be Nicole Kidman, not a member of the royal family.”

  She did, and later emerged as a swinging single at the opening party, dancing with Baz, co-star Ewan McGregor and the quaintly named British disc jockey, Fatboy Slim. But she gave no personal interviews telling the press: “I am not coming out until I am completely healed.”

  When she eventually gave an interview she merely quoted: “It is better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all” – Alfred. Lord Tennyson’s lament for his friend, Arthur Henry Hallam. On the Oprah Winfrey Show she revealed her continuing pain: “All I will say is that it has been awful, one of those things where you just have to say, ‘I cannot believe this is happening to me.’”

  Tom, on the other hand, seemed to be feeling no such pain. I was staying at the resort hotel in Virginia that the ‘Minority Report’ crew had taken over as I was making a documentary for Spielberg. As I wrote earlier, I have never seen Tom so exhilarated as he ran round the place with Colin Farrell, even gate crashing a satellite interview Steven was doing live to Tokyo. The actual set was a small island and both Steven and Tom brought their families who had earsets and walkie talkies. There were stalls set up for the children with cup cakes and candies, it being the perfect place for them all to run wild as there was no access for the press.

  After he returned from Virginia, Tom’s PR spokeswoman, Pat Kingsley, confirmed the rumours that had long been in the air about him and Penelope Cruz and Tom took her on holiday to the $1500 a night Wakaya Club in Fiji. Cameron Crowe revealed that one of the things that endeared Cruz to Cruise was that she had perfected an imitation of him in ‘Mission Impossible’ which involved her in making a gun with two fingers and holding it to her head. “Tom loves it,” said the director. “He makes her do it all the time.”

  The two-week Hawaii holiday had, in fact, been planned a year earlier for Tom and Nicole and their children. So Nicole had taken the first week with Isabella, now eight, and Connor, six, as well as Russell Crowe and friends. Nicole then departed for Sydney without seeing her ex but leaving her children for him. The Cruz affair evidently came as a surprise to her since she later expostulated: “He flat out swore to me that there was nothing going on.”

  But reality loomed in the shape of their divorce. Tom further stated: “Nicole and I were married on 24th December 1990. We separated in December 2000. I have personal knowledge of the facts. If called to testify them, I could and would competently and truthfully do so.” It looked as if the truth was about to come out. Had the couple separated before or after they renewed their marriage vows? The mystery deepened. There had been no prenuptial agreement. Legally, in California, Tom would have been obliged to support her for the rest of her life, or until she remarried. Was this the reason for his claim that they separated in December? The case would make headlines around the world as details of their extraordinary wealth were revealed.

  In 1989, when Clint Eastwood fought his partner, Sondra Locke’s palimony case, he told the court that she occupied his house on a “non-exclusive basis” and was a little taken aback when her lawyer subpoenaed both an early will including her and many more details of his financial affairs.

  Perhaps mindful of this, there was an outbreak of common sense among the lawyers and litigants and the Cruises settled their differences in private. Whether Nicole walked away with $75million or $275 million is not a problem most mortals have to wrestle with. The couple had always agreed on joint custody of their children. What was public knowledge was that Cruise changed the name of his plane from Sweet Nic to Sweet Bella.

  On 7 August 2001 they both attended the Los Angeles premiere of ‘The Others’ – Tom, of course, was a producer – but separately. The following day they were divorced. Cruise then took the children to his estate in Telluride for the rest of the month. “My kids are the most important thing in the world to me,” he told People Magazine. “They always have been and they always will. There is nothing else in the world that matters to me right now.”

  In the autumn Nicole flew to England to appear in Michael Cunningham’s ‘The Hours” with Meryl Streep and Julianne Moore. This was inspired by Virginia Woolf’s ‘Mrs Galloway’ and Nicole played Woolf, although bare recognisable thanks to a an emphatic Roman nose. Sadly her make-up artist was ineligible for an Oscar as the nose was digitally enhanced in post-production. But nothing could enhance Kidman’s performance which won her the Best Actress Oscar for that year. .

  �
�Vanilla Sky’ opened to relatively poor reviews in December but the American public, possibly intrigued to see the Cruise on Cruz sex scenes, pushed the box-office over the $100 million mark. Tom went on Larry King who asked: “Are you in love with this beautiful woman? You are either the greatest actor in the history of mankind or you like this lady.”

  Cruise was cautious. “I was going through a lot of things at that time. People say there is chemistry on the screen. There are many elements that go into that. Things that evolved for Penelope and I were not until later.”

  King persisted: “Oh, they weren’t happenening when making …”

  Tom did not let him finish: “No, no. no. no. no. no.”

  He was more positive about his current relationship with Nicole. “When you’re going through stuff it was difficult at times. But I have to say that where we are now is a beautiful, beautiful place. I love Nicole. I’ve always loved her.”

  What he didn’t love was the use of the drug Ritalin in treating attention deficit hyperactivity disorders in children.

  The teachings of L. Ron Hubbard with regard to such medication were, to him, more accurate than the studies done by many universities which claimed not only that the drug was effective but that it actually reduced the probability of the child abusing alcohol and drugs in later life. Some four years before Brooke Shields and Matt Lauer were on the receiving end of his criticism he preached the gospel of Scientology to King, assuring the audience that 'If you pick up a book and read about it, there's so many tools that people can apply to their lives to make them better instantly.'

  Having abandoned conventional education, Cruise had a voracious appetite for self-improvement and clearly Scientology fed that need. In his work, too, he was looking for characters who had this same urge and lived by a strict code. He had long been interested in a famous American mercenary, Frederick Townsend Ward, who had served with William Walker in Nicaragua and with the French forces in the Crimean War. In 1859 Ward headed for Shanghai in southern China where the Taiping Rebellion against the Manchu Dynasty had entered its tenth year. The authorities hired him to instil Western discipline into their troops and he became something of a local hero. The West was concerned that a victory for the insurgents would disrupt valuable European trade. Ward met with considerable success but, unfortunately, was killed in battle and the English General Charles George Gordon seems to have been accorded most of his glory. (Gordon was to obtain lasting fame through his noble death during the siege of Khartoum - failure or death or, better still, both are much more likely to ensure immortality in British history books.) There had been various attempts by Ward's contemporaries and biographers to grant him the credit he so sought. Several books on Ward including ‘The Ever Victorious Army' were published, culminating in the bestselling ‘The Devil Soldier’ in 1992 by the historian Caleb Carr.

  Tom saw a great part for himself and optioned the book for Cruise-Wagner Productions. He and John Woo tried to develop a movie, working from a script by Carr, but they couldn't crack it. Possibly armed with this knowledge, the producer and director Edward Zwick later approached Tom with a screenplay by himself and John Logan that was partially inspired by Ward's adventures, only set in Japan. This gave Captain Nathan Algren, the part on offer to Cruise, an appetising career arc from disillusioned Civil War officer to someone who trains Japanese government troops but then is captured and embraces the knightly bushido code of the Samurai. All that, plus plenty of heroic action. As Zwick outlined the movie with expansive gestures in the screening room of Cruise's house, he knew he had a spellbound audience.

  'We talked about honor, integrity, loyalty and compassion,' Cruise recalls. 'Virtues that Ed held true and that were very important in my life.'

  Zwick agrees. 'We both had sons, and this movie would deal with what we hope to teach them.'

  Indeed, filial piety was high among the virtues required by bushido, as well as frugal living, kindness and honesty. But the supreme requirement was martial spirit, honed by athletic training, and a total fearlessness towards the enemy in battle. Cruise not only agreed to play the part but he and Wagner came in as co-producers of the project. Knowing that it was questionably commercial, since most of the leading players apart from Tom were Japanese and the story was a step into new territory, Cruise agreed to forego his fee in return for a back-end deal. They worked together on the script. Zwick was of the opinion that ideas and action do not have to be mutually exclusive - as was the case in most Hollywood product - citing films by David Lean such as ‘Lawrence of Arabia’ and ‘The Bridge on the River Kwai.’

  “I like a movie that operates on various levels,” Cruise declared. “Both action and a deeper message that embraces life fully. Algren had integrity at one point but he became dishonored. I read how some Civil War officers felt about the Indian atrocities. So he is someone who is tortured about where he is, an explosion waiting to happen.”

  In the movie, Captain Algren is recruited to train the Japanese government army but it is ill-prepared for a battle with the Samurai and is taken prisoner by Katsumoto (Ken Watanabe, Japan's leading actor in his first English-speaking role). There he is slowly converted to bushido and learns the swordplay of the Samurai. Ultimately he joins their side against the imperial army but, despite their noble bravery, swords are no match for Gatling guns. Katsumoto is mortally wounded and commits seppuku - ritual disembowelling. But, in a Hollywood happy ending, the injured Algren is able to convince the Emperor that the dead Samurai and his ancestors were true patriots. The Emperor is thus dissuaded from signing a treaty with the Americans that would give them exclusive rights to sell firearms to Japan.

  They shot some of the temple scenes in Japan, to the delight of the locals. But they were mainly done on the Warner back lot at Burbank and in New Zealand, where the Japanese army training sequence takes place on a cricket pitch!

  The project became a mission of physical and mental dedication for the actor, who he gave over his life to it. “I worked for eight months to get in shape for this picture. I learned Kendo - Japanese swordplay, Japanese martial arts, all manner of weapon handling. I not only had to ride a horse but I had to effectively fight while riding. I studied Japanese. I had wanted to do this since I was a child. I started feeling like Algren in the village. I got a sense of the emotional and physical transformation he was going through.’

  Cruise altered his entire physique for the part, facing action such as a sabre fight against four assailants which consisted of more than thirty-five consecutive moves.

  “Suddenly I was moving faster and more precisely than I ever thought possible. I changed the way I moved and the way that I carried myself. As time went on I felt the different levels of awareness and how the mind controls the body. Since the twelfth century the Samurai were artists, philosophers and warriors; their training made them more powerful than the average man. But with power comes responsibility. When you knew something was wrong you, must be able to rise above the masses and fight for what is right.'

  For Tom Cruise it is rarely just another movie. Usually it is a life-altering experience - seldom more so than in this instance.

  Zwick felt that Akira Kurosawa was more of an influence on Western cinema than Brando (certainly his films converted fluently into ‘The Magnificent Seven’ and ‘A Fistful of Dollars’), so the Japanese actors found themselves at home in an American film. But Zwick is no David Lean. He is more a documentarist than a seasoned story-teller, so the page-turning element of 'What on earth is going to happen now?' proved lacking in the final film.

  Although he placed his figures poetically in the landscape and his battle scenes were convincingly frenetic, his pacing was patchy and the ending decidedly soft. The truth of the matter is that at the time of the story the Samurai had become dinosaurs, sadly out of kilter with the evolving world.

  Tom was powerful in the part, using his intensity to its utmost to become the most credible Californian Samurai. When it came to the Oscars, Ken Watanabe got a
nomination as Best Supporting Actor, while Tom's own superb performance was ignored.

  But not by the public. The film made $456 million worldwide, including an unprecedented $125 million in Japan alone, so presciently his decision to forego a pay cheque for a healthy percentage of the gross was prudent and - as ever - his choice of subject was pioneeringly in advance of studio caution, where the suits fear the shock of the new and relish a remake or a continuing series like Harry Potter.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Despite Cruise's unalloyed adherence to L. Ron Hubbard and Scientology, he was astute enough as a film producer not to turn to his master's voice when it came to his professional projects. John Travolta, a fellow Scientologist, had made that mistake. With dozens of stories to choose from ranging from ‘The Doomed Planet’ to ‘Voyage of Vengeance’, Travolta settled on Hubbard's ‘Battlefield Earth’. The year was 3000. A race of aliens known as the Psychlos, led by Terl (Travolta), have taken over the earth from mankind by gobbling up all the natural resources. Fortunately Jonnie ‘Goodboy’ Tyler emerges from his eyrie in the Rocky Mountains to save mankind.