Realizing the damage to recruitment and existing membership, Miscavige launched an aggressive $3 million counterattack, claiming that the Church of Scientology was the victim of a bizarre and complicated plot involving the cult’s bête noire, the drug industry. A subsequent libel action against Time was comprehensively defeated. Nonetheless, when Miscavige visited Tom and Nicole on the film set in Ireland in July to celebrate Tom’s twenty-ninth birthday, he was prepared, if asked, to deliver a coherent rebuttal of Behar’s thesis and soothe any concerns expressed by the Hollywood couple.
Tom and his faith were clearly in the crosshairs. Around the same time, Scientology victim Nan Herst Bowers wrote separately to Tom, in care of his publicist, on the Far and Away set, asking him to intervene in her unfolding family tragedy. In a polite, two-page missive, she explained how she had, as far as she was concerned, been falsely accused of revealing that Tom was a member of the Church of Scientology to the media. Her subsequent trial and excommunication meant that she could no longer see her family, who were still members of the church. She wrote, “I felt that maybe if he was made aware of the injustice and grief caused by the Church in their well-intentioned attempt to protect him, he might want to contact them and discuss the situation and the effect it has had on my family. I can’t believe Tom would condone breaking up a family on his behalf.” She received no acknowledgment, even though she had sent the letter by registered mail. When formally asked about it by journalist John Richardson two years later, Tom denied all knowledge of the letter or of Nan Herst Bowers’s plight.
While one family was being broken up, Tom and Nicole were a couple very much in love, referring to Far and Away as their “honeymoon” movie. On the set, director Ron Howard was moved to comment: “There was a lot of kissing going on—all day long.” Tom was especially attentive toward his new bride, his affection for Nicole proud and public. “He was always taking care of her,” extra Tony Leone noted. “He would put a towel around her, making sure that she was feeling good.” At organized events they held hands tightly, pressed their bodies close together, and Tom always seemed to be whispering sweet nothings in her ear. As Nicole suffered from panic attacks, their public canoodling was as much to soothe her jangled nerves as from any romantic impulse.
For once this was not an act for outward show, Tom constantly expressing his adoration for his young bride in the roses he sent her virtually every day and the brief yet tender love notes, some written on yellow Post-its, which he left for her wherever they were in the world. (One householder in Toronto who rented her house to the Cruises was bemused to find several love notes in her sofa cushions when she moved back in. At first she thought her husband was being uncharacteristically affectionate. Then she realized they were penned by Tom.) In the early years of their marriage Nicole was enchanted by the way he wooed her. “He’s amazingly romantic,” she said. “He puts so much work into us.”
That work was expressed in lavish gifts of jewelry, the top-of-the-line Mercedes, and even an adorable Labrador puppy. The last gift showed that he had much to learn about his wife—she is no animal lover. When Nicole told her husband that she didn’t like clothes shopping, he took over, buying her designer outfits himself or occasionally employing wardrobe mistress Kate Harrington at a thousand dollars a day to find Nicole appropriate attire. As one admiring and rather envious female friend recalled, “I have never met a man who was so loving, caring, and compassionate about another woman. He simply adored Nicole.”
Both were keen to start a family. Nicole talked about having children as a certainty rather than a possibility, the actress whimsically remarking that they would have to be raised in Australia “to keep their feet on the ground.” On the set, though, Nicole, who celebrated her twenty-fourth birthday during filming, revised her thinking when she saw director Ron Howard and his wife, Cheryl, in action with their four children. She saw them as role models of how to bring up healthy, well-adjusted children in the Hollywood hothouse. That she wanted a child with Tom, married or not, was never a question in her mind. As she confessed some years later, “I was desperate to have a baby with him. I didn’t care if we were married. That’s what I wish I’d done.”
Tom had never made any secret of his ambition to start a family, a desire that was urgent and at times almost visceral. It was as if by becoming a father himself he could expunge the heartache of his childhood, especially his problematic relationship with his own father. Of course, when he did become a dad, he was going to be, like everything else he tackled, the best dad in history. For a man who liked having his family around him—his mother, Mary Lee, visited the newlyweds in Ireland—fatherhood would be a kind of solace and completion. “I would love to have kids,” Tom said during his romance with Nicole. “I would turn down an Oscar to see my boy at a baseball game or my girl at a song recital.”
For a time it seemed that the extended honeymoon while filming in Ireland had worked according to plan. That summer Tom was quoted as saying, “It’s a miracle. She’s pregnant. I’m going to be a dad. I can’t wait to hold my firstborn in my arms.” While these fevered newspaper reports were briskly dismissed by the couple’s publicist, it seems that the tabloids had for once gotten something right.
In October, once Far and Away had wrapped, Nicole flew to New York on her own to reshoot scenes for Billy Bathgate. During the filming, Nicole suffered stomach pains and was taken to a local hospital for treatment. Immediately afterward, she flew to St. John’s Hospital in Santa Monica, near her Hollywood home. At the hospital, where she was admitted under a false name, she underwent, according to a widely quoted hospital source, “minor abdominal surgery to remove scar tissue that was causing her pain.”
While the real nature of her illness remained a closely guarded secret, the truth was that Nicole was indeed expecting their first child. The couple’s joy was brief, as tragically she suffered a potentially life-threatening ectopic pregnancy. This meant that the fertilized egg had settled in the Fallopian tube instead of in the uterus, a condition that resulted in painful bleeding in the abdomen. While ectopic pregnancies can now be dealt with by special drugs, in those days the fertilized egg had to be removed by keyhole surgery to prevent further bleeding. More severe conditions result in the entire Fallopian tube being removed, seriously affecting a woman’s chances of becoming pregnant again. While around half of the women who suffer ectopic pregnancies subsequently have successful pregnancies, there is still, according to gynecologist Dr. David Farquharson of Edinburgh Royal Infirmary, a one-in-ten chance of having a second ectopic pregnancy.
The medical prognosis for Nicole was further complicated by her family history. Her mother, Janelle, had believed that she was unable to have children and, after six years of marriage, had become increasingly discouraged about her ability to conceive. While Nicole’s birth came as a wonderful surprise, her own gynecological issues may have been passed on to her actress daughter. If that was the case, it truly was a miracle that Nicole had become pregnant at all. It seemed, however, unlikely that she could conceive without miscarrying again. Doctors warned that it would be dangerous to even try, as another pregnancy could be potentially fatal. It was a devastating verdict for the couple, who seemed so eager to start a family. Exhausted and emotionally drained, Nicole flew to Australia alone to spend time recovering with her own family. “It was,” she admitted years later, “really very traumatic.”
The options facing Tom and Nicole were bleak; if they tried for a baby, they were aware that, even if she was successful in becoming pregnant, Nicole was risking her own health. Ironically, it was a situation that would have far-reaching repercussions not only for their image as a happy, loving couple, but also for the perception of Tom as an all-action screen hero. But that was the least of their worries as they privately struggled to come to terms with Nicole’s medical condition.
With unintentional cruelty, a January 1992 Parade magazine article reported that Nicole was expecting a baby the following month. While the s
tory was flatly denied by the couple’s representative, there was a grain of truth in the yarn, as they were now actively discussing adopting a baby as one of their future options. As Nicole’s biographer James Dickerson noted, “The story had gotten twisted in the telling and retelling. Horrified by the story, Nicole and Tom put their secret adoption plans on hold.”
For the moment they plunged into work, fielding thousands of questions as they mounted a concerted campaign to promote Far and Away. Perhaps bruised by the hurtful and endless speculation surrounding the marriage of Hollywood’s most glamorous couple, Tom brought another woman into his life—publicist Pat Kingsley, a media operator with a formidable reputation for the ruthless way she controlled her client’s publicity. Control was the language Tom clearly understood, his new publicist ensuring that in the media circus she was the undisputed ringmaster. Before journalists could interview Tom or Nicole, they had to sign contracts about where, when, and how material from the interview was to be published. Those who refused were escorted from the big top. “Increasingly there are indications that he is petulant and demanding, something of a control freak who shows flashes of prodigious ego,” noted writer Rod Lurie of Hollywood’s golden boy. “Many journalists are coming to believe that they’ve been bought with an engaging smile.”
However much Kingsley cracked the whip, when the circus for Far and Away did come to town in April 1992, the critics and paying public were not keen on the performance of Hollywood’s latest married double act. There was to be no repeat of the Tracy–Hepburn pairing. Indeed, when the movie was shown at the Cannes Film Festival, some critics loudly groaned their disapproval, even though Tom and Nicole were guests of honor. The public stayed away, too, the film, which cost more than $30 million, grossing only $60 million in America. Hurt by the critical panning—“doddering” and “hackneyed” were two descriptions of the film—Ron Howard retreated into his family, spending the summer reading books and watching movies. Nicole, admitting that she should not have worked with Tom so soon after Days of Thunder, auditioned, unsuccessfully, for the female leads in Ghost, Silence of the Lambs, Sleepless in Seattle, and Thelma and Louise. Out of work for several months, Nicole was philosophical. “Rejection used to be very difficult to take but, as an actor, you learn to deal with that. My mum calls me tenacious.”
In a curious case of art imitating life, Nicole finally landed a supporting role in a mystery thriller called Malice about a professor’s wife who is keen to have children. When her character is rushed to the hospital with severe abdominal pains, a drunk surgeon removes her ovaries, leaving her infertile. It was a scenario that was painfully close to her recent ordeal. A cathartic experience or an acting challenge—either way, it put her back on the Hollywood map, the movie doing brisk business at the box office. Not that the money really mattered—Tom had told her early on in their relationship that he would churn out the blockbusters, leaving her to concentrate on riskier art films.
He was true to his word. In spite of the debacle of Far and Away, “Tom Terrific” proved that he was simply Teflon coated. Early in 1992 he walked straight into the movie version of the Broadway show A Few Good Men, about abuses of power at the now notorious Guantánamo Bay military base in Cuba. Not only did he command top dollar, earning a reported $12.5 million fee, but once again he called the shots on the sound system used in the courtroom drama. As producer Lindsay Doran said diplomatically, “All I know is we sound-recorded two different ways. I was told one of the ways was a brand-new process and the way of the future.”
While Tom had concerns about his voice, there were few doubts about his acting ability, the young man going head to head with the legendary Jack Nicholson, playing a flawed but brilliant military lawyer goading and probing the larger-than-life base commander. As director Rob Reiner noted, this was a high-powered ensemble cast, including stars Kevin Bacon and Demi Moore, which made it Tom’s “biggest acting challenge to date. . . . There were no scenes where he could turn on the charm,” Reiner noted. “There was no romance.”
In this battle of Hollywood’s big beasts, the young tyro proved himself king of the jungle. To underscore his status, in September 1993 he and his agent, Paula Wagner, founded their own production company, Cruise/Wagner Productions, which gave Tom even greater control over future projects—and a bigger slice of the financial pie. They moved into the old Howard Hughes offices on the Paramount lot, with a staff of ten sifting the weekly pile of scripts in search of the pearl that would be suitable for Tom. Paramount president Sherry Lansing was hopeful that their collaboration with the young star would be as fruitful as that between Warner Bros. and Clint Eastwood.
The partnership paid off within months, when Tom starred alongside veteran Gene Hackman in a movie adaptation of John Grisham’s legal drama The Firm, which Paramount had optioned even before it was written. As a sign of his power in the industry, only Tom’s name appeared above the title when the movie was released. Irritated and hurt, his Oscar-winning costar Gene Hackman angrily requested that his name be removed from all publicity materials. It did little to dampen the film’s success, the studio giving Cruise a $100,000 Mercedes 500 SL in gratitude when the movie raced past the $100 million mark in a matter of days.
During filming, Tom and Nicole were actively taking steps to start a family, a process that had seemingly been put on hold earlier in the year. Having quietly bought a condo on Marco Island in Florida, they were eligible to adopt in the state that happened to be the East Coast headquarters of Scientology, the town of Clearwater controversially infiltrated by the organization. In December 1992, while Tom was filming The Firm, the couple filed formal adoption papers in Palm Beach, Florida. Unlike many hopeful couples, they had to wait only a matter of weeks before being told they were parents. In January 1993 they went to a Miami hospital and picked up a healthy, dark-haired baby girl born a few days earlier, on December 22. The thrilled parents called her Isabella Jane Kidman Cruise. There was no family link; they just liked the name Isabella. As Nicole later recalled, “My mother has an adopted sister, so it’s been part of our family, and I knew it would probably play out somewhere in mine. I didn’t think it would happen so soon, but it did.”
Given the couple’s decision to adopt in Florida rather than in their home state of California, there was considerable speculation both inside and outside Scientology that the episode had been engineered by their faith. People close to David Miscavige at the time believe that he was instrumental in orchestrating the quick adoption. Nicole declined to address the speculation, saying, “Some things are personal. We adopted Isabella because she was meant for us.”
That failed to stem the swirl of sexual speculation surrounding the couple. There were tabloid stories suggesting that the world’s sexiest man was sterile, doubts about his sexual orientation, and rumors that Nicole was unable to bear children. The gossip became superheated a few weeks later when Tom’s ex-wife, Mimi Rogers, discussed his desire to be a monk in the March issue of Playboy. While she later recanted, publicly stating that Tom was not gay—“I slept with the man for four years; I should know”—the damage was done. Her off-the-cuff remarks became a major fable in the growing body of folklore surrounding the actor’s sexuality. For a time the couple tried to let the ill-informed gossip wash over them, as they maintained a discreet silence about the real reasons behind their decision to adopt so early in their marriage. Instead, Nicole discussed her desire of giving birth one day and adopting more children.
For the most part, the couple just blissed out over their new baby, enjoying the daily miracle of bringing new life into their home. Even though the couple had two nannies on call twenty-four hours a day, Tom was very much a hands-on dad, wanting to be the kind of father that he had always longed for, the man whom Isabella could rely on completely. As he grew into fatherhood, he began to realize what he had missed from his own childhood, measuring his father’s behavior against his own. It is noticeable that there was now an angrier, less sympathetic edge to hi
s public comments about his own father, observations that perhaps reflected his own experience.
Characteristically Tom, like millions of fathers before him, became an instant and infallible expert on child care. In the Cruise household, it was father who knew best. When he was out, he called home constantly to make sure that baby Isabella was properly fed, bathed, and cared for. He wanted to make sure that everything was just perfect, vetting Isabella’s diet, feeding times, and sleeping patterns. In time her daily menu was inputted into a computer and included a long list of ingredients that were banned from her diet. “Being a father is what I always dreamed of, only a hundred times better,” he said. “I’ve never been happier.” When he wasn’t working, he read to her every night, and when he was at meetings or on set, he was known to take her along with him. “He was born to be a dad,” noted a friend who knew the couple at the time. “He absolutely wanted her, he’s a wonderful father, very loving, just adored Isabella.”
Baby Isabella was entering a household with a routine that was controlled and consistent. Every morning Tom and Nicole were woken at eight o’clock by their staff, who returned ten minutes later to make sure that they were fully awake. Models of healthy living, Tom and Nicole worked out in the mornings following a breakfast of oatmeal while reading The New York Times. She liked a regular massage after a workout or a beauty treatment, her stylist and colorist regular visitors to the compound. He read few books apart from the Scientology texts that filled the bookshelves, while spending his days poring over film scripts or reading flying manuals to study for his private pilot’s license. In his downtime he played volleyball, went for a round of golf, or simply watched sports on TV, especially the fortunes of the New York Mets, the baseball team he’d supported as a kid.
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