Many nights there’s a cookout at the family’s favorite spot, simply called the Lookout, with its commanding view of Wilson Peak. Everyone assembles at the fire pit, its stones stacked and shaped by the children. The family gathers around the fire and talks, trading stories while sitting on hewn-timber benches. One night it’s hot dogs and s’mores; another night, back at the house, a barbecue is followed by 39 flavors of ice cream’.
Miss Sarkin ate nearly every meal with them and Tom’s mom and sis and Kate’s mom and pop and brothers and sisters and their kids who had come from Ohio for this summer visit. One enormous happy family. She and the kids ‘flopped around in the master bedroom, making jokes, chatting and just hanging.’
The ever-watchful celebrity gazing papers had been concerned at the way Katie had disappeared with Suri like the Marie Celeste for nearly six months after the child was born, but Tom was able to allay any gossip with the explanation that he had been abroad doing publicity for ‘Mission: Impossible 111’. When he got back to Los Angeles he and Katie forswore restaurants in favour of takeaway meals with friends such as Penelope Cruz and Will Smith and Jada Pinkett, who kept a Trappist silence about the new baby.
The reporter Jane Sarkin had been pressing to do this profile. "They wanted to just stay home, take care of their family and then, finally, I called and called and called and they said, 'OK, can you come to Telluride next week?’ she said in a TV interview. “And we went and we were so excited to be there. Katie actually took me aside and said 'I want to talk to you privately about how all the rumors in the press have really hurt me, hurt my family. I just want to be happy. I just want to take care of my children. I'm planning a wedding. I'm so excited. I'm so in love with Tom. We're so happy together.' The rumours hurt her very much." Sarkin observed that the couple were very "hands-on" and had "very little help in the house. It was amazing to see the biggest movie star in the world trying to cuddle his little baby, feeding the baby, putting the baby to sleep."
Not the right time, then, to mention jumping on sofas or the Today Show interview or poor Brooke Shields or even Scientology, although little Suri, it was later revealed, was embraced by that church and not christened a Catholic as the extended members of the Holmes family might well have wanted.
Tom had to return to Hollywood to work with director Robert Redford on the ‘Lions for Lambs’. At the same time he was in secret talks with the droll and hot comedy actor/director, Ben Stiller, whom he knew when Ben had parodied a upwardly mobile stunt double for him in a Web video that began with John Woo’s ‘Mission: Impossible’ and gradually became a little less funny as Ben extended it to Tom’s early career.
Stiller had had an idea since he had acted in Spielberg’s ‘Empire of the Sun’ that maybe some actors on location making a war film might find themselves in a real war. He enlisted the actor/writer Justin Theroux, at the time of writing the fortunate paramour of Jennifer Anniston, to put this into a Vietnam context. Ben showed an early draft to Tom and offered him his choice of parts: Stiller himself was to play the action hero and Robert Downey Jr. was to become an Australian method actor who decided to play his soldier as a black man. Tom opted for a smaller part but certainly a screen stealer – Lee Grossman, the studio executive running the film from Los Angeles. Obsessive as ever, Cruise went through four days of make-up tests to create the character.
The name Grossman indicated that he might be Jewish to which he added a bald head and a fat suit. What emerged as an all dancing, all firing, foul-mouthed boss. Aware of his conflict with Sumner Redstone, some writers felt he was sending him up but this was not so; he and Sumner had already made up and had started to lunch together at the Beverly Hills Hotel. Miss Fortunata’s influence had declined and they were to divorce a couple of years later.
Tom had performed a naughty comedy cameo before. ‘Goldmember’ (2002) began with a film within a film with Tom as Austin Powers asking of Gwynneth Paltrow: “Shall we shag now, or shag later?”
‘Tropic Thunder’ was in wonderfully bad taste, appealing to all, except recovering drug addicts, pandas, Russell Crowe, the overweight, the flatulent and small Burmese children. Downey got all the best lines – ‘I don’t read scripts, they read me’ was his Method approach, telling his fellow cast members that he saved his flat-out performance for the DVD voice-over. Both he and Tom were nominated for Golden Globes that year. The mood of the press was that, after his questionable behaviour, Tom had somewhat rehabilitated himself in their eyes by being a good team player and a fun guy.
Nevertheless, after the lacklustre start with ‘Lambs for Lions,’ it was imperative that United Artists came up with a film to give Cruise deal-credibility. In fact, it was presented to him on a plate. The writer, Christopher McQuarrie, had gone to school with the director, Bryan Singer, and in the holidays they would make amateur films in their back gardens in New Jersey. When this collaboration turned professional they enjoyed critical and public acclaim for their film, ‘The Usual Suspects’, for which McQuarrie won an Oscar. His knowledge of detective work had been acquired first hand having been one for four years in New York.
But their childhood films had always been about the Second World War. In 2002 McQuarrie visited Berlin and came across the memorial to the German Resistance in the Bendlerblock, just south of the zoo. Under the leadership of the Infantry General Friedrich Olbricht, the Bendlerblock was the focus of military resistance to the Nazi regime. It was here that Olbricht developed the ‘Valkyrie’ operation plan for a coup d'état against Hitler.
In October 1943, Colonel Claus von Stauffenberg was transferred to the General Army Office as Chief of Staff. His position gave him direct access to situation briefings in Hitler's eastern headquarters, the ‘Wolf's Lair’ in East Prussia.’ On July 20, 1944, he set the fuse of a bomb when Hitler was at a meeting there and returned to Berlin.
The bomb went off, but it didn’t kill Hitler. When news of the Fuhrer’s survival spread, the conspirators were unable to implement their plan to take control of Germany. Following their arrest in the Bendlerblock, General Olbricht, Colonel von Stauffenberg, Werner von Haeften, and Albrecht Ritter Mertz von Quirnheim, all members of the uprising, were executed by firing squad that same night in the courtyard of the building. A fifth plotter, Generaloberst Ludwig Beck, was allowed to shoot himself.
Throughout the world and, especially in the USA, many people failed to realise there had been such a movement but there were, in fact, nine unsuccessful attempts on Hitler’s life by Germans who didn’t believe in what he was doing.
When McQuarrie researched the July 20 1944 plot, he was fascinated by the fact that the conspirators were fully aware of what would happen if their assassination attempt failed and he wanted to make the story more well-known. Singer had even bigger ambitions for the film insisting it to be “more than old men in rooms talking. The true story had all the making of a classic assassination thriller. I knew if I could keep the audience with Klaus von Stauffenberg and his mission they would go with the flow and be less inclined to start hypothesising on things from history.”
McQuarrie suggested they bring the project to Cruise and Wagner at United Artists who were known to be looking for original material. Almost immediately they agreed to finance the film. Cruise wanted to play von Stauffenberg; the timing was good for him to portray a brave, aristocratic colonel, a noble hero for his attempt to blow up the Fuhrer and a valiant officer who faced his executioners with pride. Not only that, he had only one eye and one hand thanks to the Allies; Academy voters were traditionally drawn to actors playing people with disabilities.
The irony was that Tom’s espousal of ‘Valkyrie’ was to cause a host of problems in Berlin, the film’s primary location. The German government had not actually banned Scientology but they refused to accept it as a religion and there was widespread hostility to its German members, estimated as 6000 by the Germans and 30,000 by the Scientologists.
On learning of the project, von Stauffenberg’s grandson was i
mplacably opposed to Scientology’s figure-head portraying his grandfather, as were local politicians to the notion of the Americans invading Berlin – once again. But the dollar has a loud voice and by the time the Deutscher Filmforderfonds and Babelsberg Studios had been written into the deal, all opposition melted away. Evidently it was now a good thing that a big Hollywood star could let the world know about this German hero.
In fact, when Tom and Katie and Suri landed in Berlin in July 2007, one of the first things they did was to spend six hours in the vast new Scientology Centre – not before they took Suri to visit Knut, the abandoned baby polar bear, in Berlin Zoo. Knut was to become a world celebrity, even making the cover of Vanity Fair, but sadly he died in March 2011.
For the substantial German cast Singer rounded up some unusual suspects: cross-dresser Eddie Izzard as General Erich Fellgiebel, Bill Nighy as General Friedrich Olbicht, Terence Stamp (greatly garlanded for his Bernadette in ‘Priscilla, Queen of the Desert’) as General Ludwig Beck and David Bamber (Bristol University and RADA) as Herr Hitler.
Although von Stauffenberg was a Bavarian aristocrat, Singer counselled Cruise against playing him as that. His public just wanted to see him as the Tom Cruise hero. He was right. When Robert Redford wanted to play Denys Finch Hatton in ‘Out of Africa’ with an Etonian accent, the director, Sydney Pollack, pointed out that audiences would just think ‘there’s Robert Redford with a silly voice.’
The most significant member of the Brit-pack was Kenneth Branagh playing Major-General Henning von Tresckow, who masterminds the plot. Branagh, already hailed as a great screen Hamlet and Henry V, hands out a lesson in character acting and no amount of Cruise giving the ‘Heil Hitler’ salute with his handless arm or popping his artificial eye could match that mastery.
The critical reception was mixed but the box-office flourished. The $83 million in the US was brought up to $200 million by strong foreign grosses: $11 million in Germany; $9 million in the UK and $12 million in Japan. It had been a bold decision against the current trend for comic-book films and it paid off.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
Before Katie Holmes had hooked up with Tom in the spring of 2005, she had taken a giant step forward in her career moving from the backwaters of ‘Dawson’s Creek’ to Gotham City. Warner’s Batman franchise had moved into more talented hands for its fourth outing with two Englishmen to the fore: director Chris Nolan had the clever ‘Memento’ under his belt and Christian Bale, who made the rare translation from child actor in Spielberg’s ‘Empire of the Sun’ to formidable and dangerous adult star, taking on the role of the Caped Crusader. Katie played his childhood sweetheart, Rachel Dawes, now an assistant D.A. in the City, partnered by yet another Brit, Gary Oldman. She more than held her own with these forceful talents and a major movie career looked assured.
But along came Tom, and then Suri, and then marriage, so plans were put on hold. When she returned to the screen it was in a remake of an old British TV film, ‘Mad Money’ (2008), which had three impoverished women stealing money that was about to be shredded from a Federal Reserve Bank. Sadly director Katie Khouri had never again found the magic touch that had made ‘Thelma and Louise’ so alluring and this new female buddy movie (the other two being Diane Keaton and Queen Latifah) lacked drama, tension and, sadly, fun.
Help for Katie’s career was at hand, however, from an unlikely direction. The Broadway impresario, Eric Falkenstein, was putting together a revival of the 1948 Arthur Miller play ‘All My Sons’ - about the exposure of an American who sold defective aircraft parts during the war – and had engaged another Englishman, Simon McBurney, to direct. McBurney had been in the Cambridge Footlights revue with Hugh Laurie and Emma Thompson but then went off to Paris to study mime and founded the ‘Theatre de Complicite’. He had already won an Olivier in London and been nominated for a Tony in New York. To fill the thousand seat Gerald Shoenfeld theatre for a straight play for four months you needed movie stars. They already had John Lithgow and Dianne Wiest but were missing a cherry on that cake. Thanks to the press, Mrs Tom Cruise was one of the biggest names in the showbiz world and, as the nearly sold-out run and hundreds of fans at the stage door every night testified, she was somebody everybody wanted to see.
Falkenstein was more eager to insist it was for her thespian talent alone. “Simon McBurney, my casting director and I came up with a list of names. Katie’s not really a celebrity type. She’s done brilliant work in films like ‘The Ice Storm. Ann starts out as a simple, sweet, average Midwesterner, and by the finale gets up the gumption to stand and confront what’s wrong. Katie is a natural sweetheart who can sniff out phonies – the exact moral fiber of her character in the play. ”
She and Tom were committed to keeping the family together so they moved to an apartment in New York. Between taking Suri on trips to the toyshop FAO Schwartz and Central Park, Tom made sure Katie’s dressing room was filled with red roses and even attended rehearsals. There were plenty to choose from as McBurney spent eight weeks running them. In the eyes of the critics this may not have been enough.
Ben Brantley of The New York Times wrote: ‘The neophyte Ms. Holmes is a sad casualty of director Simon McBurney's high concept approach to the play’ - McBurney had had it start controversially with Lithgow reading Miller’s stage instructions - adding ‘she delivers most of her lines with meaningful asperity, italicising every word’. The New York Daily News was kinder: ‘Holmes, a TV and film vet, makes a fine Broadway debut. Her rather grand speech pattern takes getting used to, but she seems comfortable and adds a fitting glint of glamour.’
There was a touch of envy, one feels, in the critics sent from her home state. Chris Jones of the Chicago Tribune complained: ‘Holmes does not embarrass herself in any way. But you wish she channeled a little more of her modest origins in Toledo, Ohio, and a little less of her current heightened reality." And Elysa Gardner in USA Today summed it up: ‘At best, she exhibits a girlish exuberance that could serve her well in certain stage roles, provided she finds a director who can ease her obvious self-consciousness and get her to focus on the often-intricate process of character development. Sadly, Simon McBurney, who helms this production, is not that director.’
The notices didn’t deter audiences when a celebrity of Katie’s new-found magnitude was in town and the producers had little cause to regret their star casting. She had long been a favourite of David Letterman and readily returned to his late-night show to promote the play. For Thanksgiving David and Victoria Beckham flew into town with their sons Romeo, the relevantly named Cruz, and the eldest, Brooklyn, whom the press said was taken by his parents to see the Borough in which he was conceived. The families watched the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade from the Trump International Hotel and took a walk in Central Park where they did not go unnoticed by several thundred photographers, professional and amateur.
Tom’s elder children came to the play and to stay for part of the time. They had warmed to Katie; Nicole Kidman was later to complain that they referred to Katie as ‘mom’ and her as ‘Nicole’. The handsome Connor, now 13, took a tentative step towards a career as an actor by playing the young Will Smith in the film ‘Seven Pounds’. There may have been a touch of nepotism here (not unusual with children in the cinema – I was guilty of it myself in ‘A Fish Called Wanda’) as Will and Jada Smith were the Cruises’ best friends, having given a joint party for the Beckhams when they arrived in Los Angeles. Connor was to continue in this career direction a couple of years later with a more substantial role in ‘Red Dawn’ as a teenage alien fighter. Bella preferred art. Although at one stage it was rumoured she had tired of Scientology and wanted to live more with Nicole and her new husband; in fact she was to join Katie in a clothing line Holmes initiated called ‘Holmes and Young’.
Her surprise divorce from Cruise had little effect on Nicole Kidman’s film career. She got an Oscar nomination for her role in Baz Luhrman’s ‘Moulin Rouge!’ (2002) and won Best Actress for her Virginia Woolf in
‘The Hours’ (2003). In private she shared the children with Tom and in public she had relationships with singers Robbie Williams and Lenny Kravitz and in 2007 married New Zealand country singer Keith Urban whom she had met at ‘G’Day LA’. Bella and Connor were at the ceremony. In 2008 she gave birth to their daughter, Sunday, and in 2010 they had another child, Faith. She was born through IVF to a surrogate mother in Nashville and after the Golden Globes Awards Ceremony Nicole and Keith thanked "everyone who was so supportive throughout this process, in particular our gestational carrier".
Tom Cruise: All the World's a Stage Page 29
