Just a few years after busing tables, he now had a $9.75 million, five-bedroom house in fashionable Pacific Palisades, employing a plethora of nannies, chefs, gardeners, housekeepers, and security staff. It was said that many were Scientologists who were carefully vetted by Scientology officials, the procedure often taking months in order to find a suitable candidate with the right background and attitude to work for Scientology’s poster boy. Candidates would be interviewed on videotape by a Scientology executive before being approved. A Scientology executive later dismissed the claim as “preposterous.” There was also a degree of liaison regarding staff matters between Tom’s office and that of fellow Scientologist John Travolta. Loyalty and hard work were rewarded—at Christmas and birthdays, staff members at the Cruise home were asked to list their ten favorite “must have” presents, ranging in value from, say, a car to a board game. The couple would pick an item off the list, based on how well they considered a member of their staff had worked during the year.
However loyal his staff, life with “Tom Terrific” was demanding and stressful. He had exacting standards, testing staff on their knowledge of tasks he had previously asked them to perform, insistent that everything be done precisely the way he wanted. If a staff member ever used his initiative to change an order, however slightly, Tom would go “ballistic.” It was his way or the highway—no questions asked. “You always had to be on your toes with him, anticipating answers for any questions he had,” a former insider said. While Nicole was more disengaged and aloof, she was the kind of employer who would pick up on one fault but never acknowledge how smoothly her home was run. Even though she was a recent convert, Nicole was not above using Scientology techniques to admonish staff.
On one occasion she was infuriated about a flattering but accurate story in the British tabloids about her shopping habits. She was determined to find out who had leaked the information and ordered all the staff to write what Scientologists call a “knowledge report,” outlining any involvement in the incident. Both Tom and Nicole read and reviewed the statements by the staff before signing off on them. Staff could be forgiven for thinking that it was like being back at school. The culprit was Nicole’s personal shopper, who did not face the same strictures as household staff.
All staff members, whether or not they were Scientologists, had to sign an eight-page confidentiality agreement in which they waived their First Amendment rights to free speech. A word out of place, however innocent, to a friend or family member about life on Planet Tom could lead to huge fines and legal fees. If a staff member ever dared reveal all on TV or in print, they faced huge financial penalties—$5 million for each broadcast and $1 million for every newspaper or magazine featuring an interview.
While the internal discipline and endless demands by their employers were irksome, most difficult was the constant transition from friend to employee. The Cruises, particularly Tom, wanted both service and companionship. When people were visiting the house, Tom and Nicole would treat their staff as friends, but as soon as the visitors left they expected them to return to their duties. Holidays were most difficult, employees trying to do their jobs without looking as if they were working. Even when they had finished for the day, Tom liked his staff to hang around simply in order to have, as he put it, “a warm body in the house.” This was a man who hated to be alone for a moment, a man with a desire for companionship that was almost tangible. In that regard, his private persona bears remarkable similarities to former President Bill Clinton—also brought up by an abusive, alcoholic stepfather—who will spend all night carousing and chatting. It seems neither man ever wants to be alone.
One question that was always on Tom’s lips was, “Where is Nic?” He liked to know where she was and who she was with every second of the day. It was a constant refrain. “Was he a control freak? Certainly,” recalls one insider. “He was always checking up on Nic especially.” In time she bridled under the constant attention—and inquisition.
Yet Tom, as boisterous and noisy as their Labrador puppy, was no match for Nicole’s subtle feline skills. Whatever Tom may have wanted, Nicole always got her way in the end. Around Christmas or for her June birthday, for example, she would often consult with art dealer Barbara Guggenheim, the wife of Tom’s lawyer Bert Fields, who provided much of the artwork in their home. Nicole was always keen to know about any interesting auctions of paintings or objets d’art and then ensured that her staff kept Tom apprised of what she wanted. She got it, too. Tom was a generous husband, always happy to please the woman he loved. “She was very manipulative,” recalls an insider. “He always bowed to what Nic wanted.”
If Nicole was traveling, often flying to Australia to see her parents, Tom’s mother or sisters came to stay; or his cousin, actor William Mapother, who had worked as a production assistant on Tom’s movies, would hang out. While his mother’s generous nature and irrepressible spirit added gaiety and laughter to the normally subdued household, the arrival of her oldest daughter, Lee Anne DeVette, changed the domestic dynamic. A few months before the couple adopted Isabella, Tom had hired his elder sister, a fellow Scientologist, to deal with the deluge of press clippings and serve as liaison with charities linked to Scientology. It was not long before Lee Anne, who was seen by others as rather tough and mean-spirited, clashed with Nicole. While Lee Anne, whose two-year marriage had ended in 1981, liked everyone to know that she was Tom’s sister—and threw her weight around accordingly—Nicole treated her with ill-disguised disdain, viewing her as a servant rather than a sister-in-law. It was not long before neither could bear the sight of the other. As one insider said, with emphasis, “Lee Anne hated Nicole. And she had every reason because Nic treated her like a second-class citizen. But she wouldn’t stand up to Nic—no one ever did!”
The final piece in the domestic jigsaw puzzle was an infrequent visitor, but a constant presence—Scientology leader David Miscavige, who was represented in the household by the man Tom called “the Dovenator,” his chief of staff, Michael Doven. Tall, well-built, and with the square-jawed good looks of a movie star, Doven was something of a Renaissance man. A world-class skier, fitness fiend, and talented photographer, he could have chosen any career he wanted. Yet he chose to stay by Tom’s side, the Colorado-born Scientologist dedicated to ensuring that his faith’s most valuable recruit stayed locked down inside the church. His fanatical loyalty to the cause—sacrificing his own career for his faith—was crucial to ensure that Tom or Nicole never strayed off purpose.
No one appreciated Doven’s vital role more than the Scientology leader. While Miscavige spoke to Tom a couple of times a week on the telephone, he was in daily contact with Doven, assessing the actor’s mood, making plans, calibrating his message, and fine-tuning his control over Tom and Nicole. Doven, who married Tom’s assistant Andrea Morse, was first noticed on the set of A Few Good Men, where Tom insisted that all members of the crew refer to him as “the communicator.” Doven effectively kept Tom’s “lines” clear, controlling all the information that reached Tom, filtering everything down to essentials. In a purposeful life, Doven was the man who kept Tom focused on his work—and on his faith.
Not that Tom needed much convincing. “Let’s go to CC,” he often said to Nicole, his shorthand for Celebrity Centre, the Gothic mansion on Franklin Avenue in Hollywood that was a hangout for Scientology stars. Even within the Hollywood elite, Tom and Nicole were special. They had their own private entrance into an underground garage, their own rooms for auditing, and, of course, dedicated waiter service. Scientology, it seemed, was truly an Orwellian faith in which all men were equal, but some were more equal than others. At Gold, in addition to their VIP bungalow and personal chef and butler, Tom kept two motorcycles, a Mercedes convertible, and a motor home garaged in the compound, while Nicole had her own private garden.
When Tom and Nicole wanted to play tennis, there was a private court built by Sea Org laborers. Just as David had gotten Tom interested in shooting, so Tom encouraged the Scien
tology leader to see the value of exercise. Not only did Miscavige stop smoking, but he had a gym built for himself and Tom at Gold, which could be used only by senior executives and only when the actor was not around. After the Scientology leader instructed that his father organize the purchase of gym equipment, Ron Miscavige confessed himself “flabbergasted” at the cost to the church, especially when his son’s tinkering with the plans for the gym and the bodybuilding apparatus added to the expense, estimated at $150,000. The ecclesiastical largesse did not stop there. Not only did Miscavige send Tom regular gifts of fine wine, but on at least one occasion he dispatched his assistant Shelly Britt with a picnic hamper to Tom’s Gulfstream jet for his enjoyment. While Tom bought his friend a Motorola mobile phone and expensive speakers for his apartment, he found that nothing was ever too much trouble for the Scientology leader. When Tom bought his first private jet, his Scientology friend ensured that in-house engineers installed their own Clearsound system.
Tom’s exceptional and privileged treatment was matched by the friendship he enjoyed with Miscavige. They were guys’ guys, hanging out with each other, smoking Cuban cigars, watching movies, racing their motorbikes at high speeds, challenging each other at basketball or softball or skeet shooting. Everything was a macho competition to see who could be fastest, quickest, bravest . . . the best. Miscavige, who hated to lose anything anyway, always tried to ensure that his teams had the best players. When Tom and Nicole went skiing in Colorado, David would be there, too, trying to outdo his buddy on icy black runs. “They were like glue,” recalls Jesse Prince, “two little people who really enjoyed each other. They laughed the same and acted the same. They were like glove puppets, he was a big star and he was head of a religion. They loved each other but it was not gay. It was way more complicated than that.”
In this backslapping world inside a macho religion that claimed to cure homosexuality and where the women dressed like men and were addressed as “sir,” Nicole tried her best to fit in. As tomboyish as she was, she began to see David—or more accurately Scientology—as the third wheel in her marriage. “She became very frustrated about it,” claims Jesse Prince, who says that, in his capacity as deputy inspector general, he was her case supervisor and read her confidential files where she voiced her concerns. “She was tired of David Miscavige being around all the time. She felt that her husband was spending too much time with him. Why do we have to have this constant monitoring?”
Even David Miscavige began to wonder whether he was neglecting his faith for his friend, a concern shared by his father, Ron. Certainly throughout 1993, Miscavige was highly focused on Scientology, primarily on the long-running battle with the IRS to win charitable status. He chaired daily meetings in the base’s windowless high-tech “situation room”—based on the underground military nerve center in the White House—where lawyers, Scientology executives, and private investigators met to discuss tactics. At one point the cult was said to be spending $1.5 million a month on lawyers and investigators who were hired to probe the private lives of IRS senior staff to give them bargaining leverage in their quest for charitable status.
Although Scientologists like to perpetuate the myth that the Scientology leader walked in unannounced to see the director of the IRS, the reality was that it took years of intense negotiations before tax officials granted them tax exemption. As New York tax lawyer Robert Fink, who reviewed the agreement, observed, “The IRS normally settles on tax issues alone. What the IRS wanted was to buy peace from Scientology. You never see the IRS wanting to buy peace.”
This led to fevered discussion, possibly ill informed, that the unusual tax exemption was granted less because of any legitimate charitable status than because Scientology had dug up enough dirt on senior IRS officials to effectively blackmail them into submission. This gossip mattered little to the ten thousand cheering Scientologists who were told by Miscavige in October 1993 that “the war” was over. It was truly a triumph of the will, David Miscavige’s finest hour, the moment the image of Scientology began the transition from a shadowy criminal cult to a law-abiding church. One of the first people he told about his audacious victory was his friend Tom Cruise.
Yet just a few weeks before, the actor had publicly bridled when John H. Richardson, in an article published in the September issue of Premiere magazine, questioned his friendship with Miscavige and his involvement with Scientology. The actor was affronted that his religion was up for discussion, dismissing interest in his “good friend” David Miscavige as “off the wall.” He denied that Scientologists visited him on film sets, found the idea that he had “handlers” repulsive, and admitted to visiting Gold only once for nonrecreational purposes.
This angry rebuttal came as a surprise to Scientologists at Gold, not least L. Ron Hubbard’s son-in-law Guy White, who vividly recalls struggling to carry a refrigerator on his own to Tom’s VIP bungalow prior to one of his many visits. As Tom himself said in his tart response to Richardson, who spent two years investigating the “sinister” organization and its “vindictive” gospel, “I know more about Scientology and the Church and its staff than any reporter I’ve ever met.”
Certainly Tom had every reason to claim expertise about the secret inner workings of his faith. By then he had progressed to what Scientologists call “the Wall of Fire,” or Operating Thetan III, where the secrets of the universe according to Hubbard were revealed. At that time Scientology’s creationist myth was a closely guarded secret, disciples told that the knowledge could prove fatal if they learned about it before they were ready. In the theatrical buildup, candidates were thoroughly audited and warned that they would have to pay huge damages if they ever divulged the secrets. Then they were given a clear plastic folder containing OT III materials as well as a key that they had to use within a matter of seconds to open the confidential cache. For some, it was an experience that was not so much Mission: Impossible as Mission: Implausible, as they sat in a special room and read, in a facsimile of Hubbard’s own handwriting, the hidden truth about the origin of man.
The story, which has since been widely parodied, notably on the TV cartoon South Park, revealed that 75 million years ago an alien ruler named Xenu solved the overpopulation in this part of the galaxy by sending 13.5 trillion beings to Earth, then called Teegeeack, and vaporizing them with nuclear bombs after first dumping them in volcanoes. These millions of lost souls, known as thetans, were implanted with numerous false ideas about God, Christ, and organized religion. They later attached themselves to human beings and, Hubbard argued, were the cause not just of an individual’s problems but of all the divisive issues in the modern world.
As Tom read this material, he learned that the next stage of his progress up “the bridge to total freedom” was to clear his body of these thetans. While the Hubbardian myth is now widely derided, the story is a test of belief, a leap of faith that vaults over rational doubts. For Tom to make further progress, he had to swallow every last drop of Hubbard’s theological Kool-Aid. “When you join OT III you are in a members’ only club where you are going all the way with Timothy McVeigh [the Oklahoma bomber],” observes Jesse Prince.
Like many other Scientologists who reach this level, Tom found the knowledge he had just received disturbing and alarming, as he struggled to reconcile the creationist myth with the more practical teachings contained in the lower levels of Scientology. This is not an unusual response. Those who have read the Wall of Fire story are very closely monitored for signs that they are backsliding, becoming disenchanted with their faith. Former Scientologists recall that, during this difficult time, Tom seemed uncharacteristically dazed and out of sorts, with dark rings around his eyes. “He went from a firecracker to a wet noodle,” said one insider. It was recalled that around this time relations became “ugly” between David Miscavige and the Hollywood actor, Tom complaining that he had studied all these years and the whole faith was about space aliens. He was treated with kid gloves, carefully wooed back into the fold. A team of senior
Scientologists worked diligently to “recover” him, calling the actor into the president’s office at Celebrity Centre in Hollywood for auditing and counseling.
Once Tom had been “handled” to cope with the implications of this bizarre myth, the next stage of the lengthy—and expensive—process of enlightenment was to rid his body of thetans. Three or four times a day he had to go into a quiet, sealed room and locate and remove the thetans clinging to his body. As the thetans are invisible and often in a catatonic state, he could only find them telepathically, using his “E meter” to help detect them. Using his telepathic powers, he then asked each thetan a series of questions. The first question was always “What are you?” The thetan might answer, telepathically, in an infinite number of ways, claiming to be anything from a car to a dust mite or even Napoleon. Whatever the reply, Tom had to continue asking the same question until the thetan finally responded, “I am me.” Once the thetan had recognized itself, Tom would have successfully rid himself of an unresolved spirit, which would theoretically float away and inhabit another being.
During the twenty-minute session of telepathic conversation he could remove up to ten body thetans. As odd as the process seemed, it had the effect of sending practitioners like Tom into a mild but euphoric trancelike state, the actor feeling good about that day’s “wins.” As former studio executive Peter Alexander, who attained the level of Operating Thetan VII, recalls, “The theory is that the more you exorcise your body thetans, the more you become yourself. It is a very self-absorbed process. It’s all about me, which is why actors love it. It appeals to the narcissist in you. You begin to feel more certain of yourself, that you, and you alone, have the answers to the secrets of the universe. During this time I was walking around spellbound from an endorphin rush. I now realize that I put myself in a light hypnotic trance.”
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