It was not long after the split that the Hollywood rumor mill was linking Tom to actress Jennifer Garner, who divorced her actor husband Scott Foley around the time Tom and Penélope announced their own parting. One story suggested that he had become smitten with the chemistry graduate after seeing her in his favorite TV show, Alias. Legend has it that he left messages on her voice mail asking “if she knew what freedom was,” sentiments so trite that Garner apparently read them to her girlfriends. One wildfire story that made the rounds inside the higher echelons of Scientology was that Tom learned of Jennifer’s fascination with tigers and had sent one around to her house in a cage. Naturally, Garner’s representatives dismiss the notion—after all, real live tigers are hard to come by even with a Neiman Marcus charge card—but it demonstrates how all eyes inside Scientology were continually locked on pleasing Cruise.
While his association with Scientology may have harmed his love life, his faith seems to have helped him understand his movie characters. During the filming of Collateral during 2004, he explored the personality of Vincent, a coldhearted hired killer, by studying Hubbard’s examination of antisocial behavior and personalities. “In Scientology there is a large body of knowledge about antisocials. So I worked to create Vincent’s moral code from that.” He omitted to mention that in Hubbard’s view, these antisocial “merchants of chaos” included politicians, police, journalists, and, bizarrely, undertakers.
Scientology as character background was one thing, but by the fall of 2004, he was literally building a base for his faith on the set of his latest movie, War of the Worlds. Tom, his sister Lee Anne DeVette, agent Kevin Huvane, and director Steven Spielberg had to appeal personally to the president of Universal Studios, Ron Meyer, to allow a Scientology tent to be erected at the studio. Permission was given, provided the tent was not used for recruitment purposes.
As a result, throughout filming, Scientology Volunteer Ministers were on duty in the large tent in order to give “assists” to actors and members of the film crew. The delicious irony of a new religion that believes in reincarnation inveigling itself onto the movie set for a film based on a book written by H. G. Wells, an outspoken atheist who categorically rebuffed the idea that either he or his body was immortal, was apparently lost on Tom Cruise—and everyone else, for that matter. When asked about the religious tent, Spielberg rather shamefacedly argued that no one was compelled to visit it. Typically, Tom was much more aggressive when pressed by the German magazine Der Spiegel. “The volunteer Scientology ministers were there to help the sick and injured. People on the set appreciated that.” Ignoring the traditional role played by doctors and nurses, he moved effortlessly into his new role as omnipotent preacher and healer.
“I don’t care what someone believes. I don’t care what nationality they are. But if someone wants to get off drugs, I can help them. If someone wants to learn how to read, I can help them. If someone doesn’t want to be a criminal anymore, I can give them tools that can better their life. You have no idea how many people want to know what Scientology is.”
Tom’s zeal was in keeping with his persona as an indestructible godlike figure, able to solve all the world’s problems on and off the screen. This was a man who, when he was not saving the planet on the silver screen, was rescuing damsels in distress in real life. Stories were legion: In 1996 he stopped to help a hit-and-run victim in Santa Monica and paid her hospital bills. “If he’s not Superman,” said a grateful Heloisa Vinhas, “he can be my Batman.” That same year he pulled to safety two children who were being crushed in an excited crowd at the London premiere of Mission: Impossible, sent a tender from his yacht to assist five people who had abandoned a sinking boat off the island of Capri in the Mediterranean, and consoled a sobbing housewife who had just been mugged of expensive jewelry outside her home near Tom’s rented house in central London. During the filming of The Last Samurai in 2003, he stopped to change the flat tire of a couple stranded in the remote New Zealand countryside.
A year later, in November 2004, he explained why he was a Good Samaritan in a long congratulatory interview before he was awarded Scientology’s first-ever Freedom Medal of Valor at a gala event at Saint Hill Manor in England. He told his audience, “You can’t drive past an accident, because as a Scientologist you are the only one who can help.” While his assertion confirmed fellow Scientologists in their assumptions that they were a superior species—and that Tom was supreme among these advanced beings—his tone of arrogant, self-righteous certainty was beginning to play badly in the outside world.
That evening, though, everyone was there to worship Tom, his achievements lauded in a lengthy video preceding his award being presented by his great friend David Miscavige. The bond between the star and his spiritual leader was on show for everyone to see. As they met on the stage, they looked each other straight in the eyes, unblinking, then traded effusive words and crisp salutes. Miscavige said that Tom was “the most dedicated Scientologist I know,” before presenting him with his unique award. The adulation did not stop there. Miscavige went on to describe his friend in terms befitting a prophet: “Across ninety nations, five thousand people hear his word of Scientology—every hour. Every minute of every hour someone reaches for LRH technology . . . simply because they know Tom Cruise is a Scientologist.” That Tom had also donated more than $2.5 million warranted a second award, the Platinum Meritorious.
Even though he doesn’t believe in heaven, Tom looked as if he had died and gone there as he soaked up the adulation of this huge congregation. Then it was his turn to laud David Miscavige. “I have never met a more competent, a more intelligent, a more tolerant, a more compassionate being outside of what I have experienced from LRH. And I’ve met the leaders of leaders. I’ve met them all.” He then turned his verbal firepower on SPs—Suppressive Persons—before announcing that as Scientologists, “We are the authorities on the mind.”
When the cheers had faded, however, there were mutterings of discontent among Scientology’s most committed followers. Sea Org members know what sacrifice means. They have all signed billion-year contracts, promising to put the advancement of the organization before anything else: money, family, fame, prestige. They are the elite. Yet here was a man who already had it all, being showered in glory and awarded honors because of his celebrity rather than his sacrifice. It was as if their unseen, unstinting efforts behind the scenes counted for nothing against the glamour of Tom Cruise.
A month later, Scientology’s poster boy was asked, together with Oprah Winfrey, to host a concert in Norway to honor the Nobel Peace Prize winner, Kenyan environmentalist Professor Wangari Maathai. Before the event, Tom spoke not as an actor but as a man of religion. “One of the things that we believe in [as Scientologists] is peace, freedom. I’m just proud to be here, and very proud to be a Scientologist here and to be part of this.”
If Cruise expected the kind of reception in Oslo that he had received at the Scientology gala, he was mistaken. Noisy protests were staged against the choice of such a controversial figure for the occasion. The newspapers quoted one priest from Stockholm as saying, “They’re a manipulative sect that takes over people’s lives and finances.” Another Scientology foe, Andreas Heldal-Lund, also spoke out: “It’s very wrong to let Cruise lead the gala. I’ve met tons of people who have had their lives devastated by Scientology, and this is such an important event.”
These critics meant as little to Tom as any others. They were so far beneath him, he barely heard them. He was on top of the world, at the top of his game. Celebrity advocate, expansive donor, skillful lobbyist, human-rights activist, medical expert, education guru, healer, inspirational preacher: There was nothing this man could not do. He was a full-fledged master of the universe.
CHAPTER 11
The temperature in Montreal had plummeted, but her work there was nearly done. Stunning actress Sofía Vergara was shooting the final scenes of a bloody family revenge movie, Four Brothers. While on the set with former boyfriend Ma
rk Wahlberg, the Colombian-born model received an intriguing invitation to join actor Will Smith and his wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, at the pre-Oscar party they were hosting in Los Angeles. Their friend Jamie Foxx had been nominated for his performance as the blind jazz pianist Ray Charles—this was an A-list congratulatory bash. The sun and glamour of Hollywood would be a welcome change from the subzero February chill in Canada.
On a balmy Tuesday evening in February 2005, Sofía walked up the steps of the Los Angeles Museum of Modern Art, where the party was already under way. She was wearing a black-and-white print silk dress and chunky turquoise jewelry that offset her olive skin and dark hair, but even more striking than her looks was the absence of a man on her arm. Although she had been voted one of the one hundred sexiest women in the world by FHM magazine, Sofía was arriving on her own. No man meant little interest from the press. There were hundreds of beautiful people in L.A. Sofía might have been famous in Latin America as a TV host, a model, and an actress, but she had yet to make it to the next level. Tonight the paparazzi had other prey in their sights.
Tom Cruise arrived as part of a perplexing trio, making his entrance alongside his former girlfriend, Penélope Cruz, and her new boyfriend, actor Matthew McConaughey. Cruise was smiling and waving patiently as Penelope showed Matthew off to the cameras. Hollywood heartthrob Tom Cruise without a date: Now, that was a story. It was not, however, a story that would last for long. There was a plan in place. Inside the party, Tom had eyes only for one person: Sofía Vergara. As soon as he spotted the Colombian beauty, he left Penélope and Matthew and introduced himself. He was charming and friendly, frequently flashing his famous megawatt smile.
Maybe he knew that a guy’s smile was the way to the heart of this onetime dental student. As her aunt Lilita Jamarillo observed, “For Sofía the most important thing in a man is that he has good teeth.” Whether or not he knew about her dentistry past, he did seem to know a lot about her career. The flattery rolled off his tongue.
Caught up in the moment, she accepted his invitation to go for coffee at Jerry’s Famous Deli in Hollywood. It was a classic late-night celebrity hangout—a professional Tom Cruise look-alike is a regular—and the paparazzi would always swing by there as a last call after the Ivy or Mastro’s. When celebrities turn up at Jerry’s, they know they are likely to get “papped.” Sure enough, they were photographed, Tom waving as his “mystery” girl, a pashmina shawl over her slender shoulders, walked by his side. In one evening, Sofía had gone from party outsider to talk of the town.
Pictures of the new couple hit the gossip columns the following day, pushing talk about Penélope Cruz and Matthew McConaughey down the page. Maybe this was what Tom Cruise had in mind. The next day, Sofía faced a blizzard of phone calls, text messages, and e-mails from the remorselessly romantic Mr. Cruise, who sent her flowers, notes, and chocolates. She was flattered and excited—as were her friends, giggling over his texts and admiring the bouquets he sent her.
Naturally, Vergara’s publicist, Karen Tenser, was delighted, eager to see her client’s name in the headlines with a star of this magnitude. Sofía was cooler. She took Tom’s wooing in her stride, airily dismissing him as “the shortest guy she had ever dated.” After all, the shapely Ms. Vergara—at five feet, seven inches the same height as her new beau—had already dated some very eligible bachelors. Her first boyfriend had been Latino superstar Luis Miguel, the South American equivalent of a young Frank Sinatra. Nonetheless, Tom’s charm offensive was working.
Sofía agreed to delay her return to Montreal, accepting Tom’s offer to hang out at his Hollywood home. She brought her son, Manolo, born when she was eighteen, along, too. Manolo played with Cruise’s children, Connor and Isabella, and was thrilled when Tom took him out on the back of his trail bike. If this relationship was going to work, both Tom and Sofía knew that their children would lie at the heart of it. Sofía once told an interviewer that her favorite date was a night in with her twelve-year-old son. As a close friend noted, “She is a mother first, not a careerist.”
Besides being single parents, the couple had much else in common, beginning with early fame. When Sofía was seventeen, a photographer “discovered” her as she lay on a Colombian beach. That first modeling session earned her other deals, notably the starring role in a Pepsi commercial shown all over Latin America. Like Tom, she had a passion for adventure, growing up on a cattle farm in Barranquilla, Colombia, where she spent her childhood riding horses and swimming in rivers. This headstrong girl, who her family nicknamed “La Toti,” was an ideal choice to host a travel show called Fuera de Serie (Out of the Ordinary) in which she was sent to extreme locations around the globe. For a guy who listed skydiving, jet planes, and trail biking among his hobbies, Tom recognized that this was a woman who spoke his language.
Their spiritual pasts were similar, too. Both Tom and Sofía had been brought up in the Catholic faith. As she embarked on her acting career, she had relied on the guidance of the nuns at her school, following their advice to turn down big-money offers from Playboy magazine to display her 32DD assets. Tom, however, no longer found guidance from his Catholic past. He now had a very different moral compass.
It was not long before Cruise casually suggested that Sofía join him on a trip to what he calls “CC,” the Celebrity Centre in Hollywood. When she arrived, David Miscavige, the diminutive head of the church, was there to greet her and show her around. He was charming and attentive. She was given some Scientology literature to leaf through. It was a pleasant introduction to the world of Scientology.
But it was on this trip that Sofía realized something else: Tom was never alone. Everywhere he went, he was surrounded by Scientologists. They were at his home, they were in his car, they were at the restaurant. They were never short of smiles, but she found them “powerful and authoritarian.”
At the end of February, when she returned to Montreal to complete filming, Cruise bombarded her with calls. He was obsessed with the new woman in his life. After she flew back to Hollywood in early March 2005, the couple spent every moment together. If they were not at his home, they were at the Celebrity Centre. Sofía even took her mother, Margarita, along for a look around the palatial Scientology mansion. Unlike her daughter, this devout Catholic was not given an armful of literature as she left. All conversion efforts were focused on Sofía—they had been ever since she first met Cruise.
Although they had known each other only for a matter of weeks, the relationship had become so intense that marriage looked like the logical next stage. One friend told me: “She met his children, there is no doubt he was auditioning her for the part of his wife. If she had been interested, she would today be the next Mrs. Cruise. Was it going to go further? No doubt about it. He wanted to marry her—that was the idea.” The “audition” was going according to plan. Cruise had found a feisty, athletic, adventurous woman. The winning factor was that she had a child. Vergara had a proven track record; she could provide him with exactly what he was after. They could be together forever—Scientology’s poster boy and first lady.
As the days passed, however, Sofía started to connect the dots, and didn’t much like the pattern that was emerging. As affectionate and attentive as Tom was, she found his world cloying and suffocating, and was never quite sure if his actions were motivated by passion or were part of a well-practiced performance. She felt she was being followed or watched and that her phone calls were being monitored. It was as if he and Scientology were trying to take over her life. Certainly her longtime manager, Luis Balaguer, and his team thought their days were numbered, fearing that they would be replaced by management chosen by Cruise.
It was made clear that if their relationship were to continue, she would have to renounce her Catholic faith and convert to Scientology. For Tom, this was supremely important. It would be unacceptable for Hollywood’s and Scientology’s leading man to be married to anyone other than a member of his faith. “She was fundamentally terrified by Scientology,” reca
lls a friend. “She sincerely believed that she would be struck down by God and burn in hell if she joined. That is what she said.” The lighthearted frivolity that had characterized her early discussions with friends was replaced by their genuine concern for her well-being. “Her friends got scared for her,” admits one of her close circle.
They need not have worried. Although educated by nuns, Sofía had graduated from the school of hard knocks. Not only was she a single mother, but her brother had been killed in a botched kidnap attempt and she had survived thyroid cancer three years before. As she later admitted, “It was terrifying. But I knew I’d beat it.” Sassy, street smart, and obstinate, she proved immune to the blandishments of Cruise and Scientology. Her friend said, “Sofía comes from Colombia, where the women have balls. There is no sense you can control her. If you know her, it makes perfect sense. . . . She had plenty of opportunity to hitch her wagon to Hollywood and to Tom. She is not swayed by that—she is her own person.”
Sofía told her friends that she had been deliberately targeted not only as a possible bride for Tom, but as a high-profile Scientology recruit who would be an alluring figurehead for a future recruitment drive in Latin America. The unexpected invitation to Will Smith’s party, the “impromptu” decision to go to Jerry’s Famous Deli, the “casual” visits to Celebrity Centre—they all began to make sense. They were to impress and ultimately win her over.
Instead of impressing her, all this drove her away. Tom’s constant “love bombing”—the endless texts, calls, and e-mails—was too much. She saw it as a performance to serve the higher purpose of his faith. On Easter weekend—March 27, 2005—she and Tom had arranged to go to Clearwater, the Scientology center in Florida. Instead, she stood him up, packing a bag and “disappearing” for a few days. For five days he left messages and texts, but she resolutely refused to return his calls. Even now, the location is kept secret in case she needs to use the same bolt-hole again. As one friend put it, “The guy’s a freak and she ran for the hills.”
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