tom cruise scientology history

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The hollowness of Tom Cruise

How Tom Cruise went from superstar to laughingstock and back again.

by Constance Grady

Tom Cruise has spent this year flying high, literally.

At CinemaCon in April, when Mission: Impossible 7 screened its first trailer for theater owners, Cruise sent along a video intro that he’d filmed while standing on top of a biplane flying over a canyon in South Africa. It ended with him launching into a barrel roll. When he arrived at the premiere of Top Gun: Maverick in San Diego in May, he flew there in a helicopter he piloted himself , emblazoned with his own name and the title of his film.

He’s also flying high on a metaphorical level. Cruise turned 60 on July 3, and he shows no signs of slowing down. Top Gun: Maverick has made over $1 billion since it came out in May , the first film of Cruise’s career to do so and just the second film to manage the feat since the pandemic began in 2020. (The first was Spider-Man: No Way Home .)

In the pandemic era, a lot of movies are making only the most cursory appearance in theaters before they hit streaming, if they make it to theaters at all. Not Tom Cruise movies. The idea of Top Gun: Maverick premiering on streaming instead of in theaters? “Never going to happen,” Cruise said at Cannes in May , even though the completed film languished for two years before seeing the light of day. When Paramount told Cruise that Mission: Impossible 7 would play in theaters for only 45 days instead of the three months Cruise was used to, Cruise hired a lawyer .

For his efforts, Cruise is being hailed as the savior of the cinematic experience.

“Can Tom Cruise save the old-fashioned blockbuster?” asked the Telegraph .

Empire magazine described Cruise’s fight as “the battle to save cinema,” with “the biggest movie star in the world” at the vanguard.

“Cruise is here to remind us that the industry will not die on his watch. Not if he can help it,” said the LA Times . “And honestly, who among us won’t be thrilled if Cruise triumphs in life as in the movies?”

It seems clear that Cruise sincerely sees himself as the savior of the big screen, and all the jobs that depend on it. (Or at the very least, he sees himself as the savior of Tom Cruise movies appearing on the big screen.) During the pandemic, he told audiences at Cannes, he called up theater owners to say , “Please, I know what you’re going through. Just know we are making Mission: Impossible , and Top Gun is coming out.” In December 2020, leaked audio footage from the set of Mission: Impossible 7 showed Cruise upbraiding crew members who violated Covid social distancing policies.

“They’re back there in Hollywood making movies right now because of us,” Cruise can be heard to shout on the footage . “Because they believe in us and what we’re doing. I’m on the phone with every fucking studio at night, insurance companies, producers, and they’re looking at us and using us to make their movies. We are creating thousands of jobs, you motherfuckers.”

“That’s what I sleep with every night,” Cruise concluded: “the future of this fucking industry!”

By now we should know: Tom Cruise is the hero of a movie that never ends. It’s one where he always, always saves the day.

That wasn’t always the case. Cruise’s stock plummeted in the 2000s after Oprah’s couch and Brooke Shields’ antidepressants . Yet today, Cruise is once again considered a bankable and iconic star. He is no longer a publicity liability for a movie studio.

There’s only one thing that Cruise might not be able to save. That’s the nagging, persistent sense that if the movie were ever to stop, when the lights came up, there would be nothing left of Tom Cruise at all.

“Cruise’s own laugh,” concluded Alex Pappademas in the New Yorker this May, “is the best Tom Cruise impression you’ve ever heard.”

But who says the movie ever has to stop?

Tom Cruise saves chivalry

“I like treating a woman the way that she deserves to be treated.” Tom Cruise to Oprah Winfrey, 2005 .

Here’s an oddity in the latest spree of killer Tom Cruise publicity: For once, the press is really into the way he’s interacting with women.

Over the course of his Top Gun press tour, Tom Cruise has been handed one positive headline after another for his chivalrous habit of taking charge of all ladies present, from Kate Middleton to his co-stars. If there is a woman in the same space as he is, Cruise will escort her up and down stairs and through doorways, present her to the camera, and make sure she is taken care of. It makes for incredible press. In her coverage of Cannes, gossip maven Elaine Lui remarked on how carefully Cruise looked after Top Gun co-star Jennifer Connelly. “I’m told he was never not attentive,” Lui wrote , “always focused on making sure she was looked after, never not ready with a hand to guide her from one place to another, never missing an opportunity to talk about how spectacular she looked, seemingly enthralled by her so that the cameras would pick up on his eyeline and transfer their focus to her.”

This display of “chivalry,” Lui concluded, was “very Tom Cruise.”

Chivalry is part of the old-fashioned action-hero masculinity Tom Cruise has long represented: the hero with the square jaw and faultless manners, kind and attentive to everyone around him. It’s also been central to Tom Cruise’s personal mythology for a long time, in both good ways and bad.

On the good side, Cruise used to be in the press on a regular basis for rescuing regular people: saving a family from a burning sailboat; getting the victim of a hit-and-run to the hospital and then paying her medical bills. Every actor who’s ever worked with him seems to have a Tom Cruise story about him making them some impossibly thoughtful gesture or gift .

On the bad side, quoth Elaine Lui , “Remember how he used to ‘present’ Katie Holmes?”

Cruise’s 2005 marriage to Katie Holmes was marked by its public displays of affection. Cruise was constantly presenting Holmes to the camera, cuddling up to her in public, proclaiming his love for her in ever more enthusiastic ways. Even before he jumped up and down on Oprah’s couch and sent his career into a precipitous downslide, he told Oprah that he covered a hotel room in rose petals for Holmes, and that he took her on a motorcycle ride on the beach.

“I’m a romantic, okay?” Cruise said at the time. “I like treating a woman the way that she deserves to be treated.”

Romantic or not, that marriage also represented a low point in Cruise’s professional life. In the wake of his couch moment with Oprah, Cruise’s popularity plummeted, his reputation took a hit, and he almost lost the Mission: Impossible franchise.

Then came the enormous and damaging wave of publicity in 2012, when Katie Holmes divorced Cruise. Stories rolled out by the day: that Holmes had planned the divorce for two years in order to make sure she would retain custody of the couple’s daughter, Suri; that she had to orchestrate the whole thing with burner phones and secret laptops and lawyers in multiple states ; that she had done it all — developed this whole two-year master plan — because that was how badly she wanted full custody of Suri . Specifically, the story went, Holmes wanted to save Suri from Scientology.

Cruise has since worked diligently to move past the so-called TomKat years. He’s been so effective that all his gentlemanly gestures on his current press tour tend to read as charming, not creepy. But there’s a clear and strong connection between Cruise’s love of chivalry then and his love of chivalry now. They are part and parcel of what appears to be a driving force behind Tom Cruise’s quest to be a hero, win the girl, and save the world: Scientology.

Tom Cruise saves mankind (from thetans)

“That’s what drives me: is that I know we have an opportunity to really help, for the first time, effectively change people’s lives. And I am dedicated to that. I am absolutely, uncompromisingly dedicated to that.” Tom Cruise, Scientology recruitment video, 2004 .

The controversial Church of Scientology, founded by the science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard in 1953, appeals to the sort of worldview Cruise embodies. The world is under attack from evil forces, Scientology teaches, and all that stops them is one good man who’s not going to let petty rules get in his way.

Scientology is also, despite the number of celebrities it boasts among its ranks, a publicity liability. It’s widely suspected of being a pyramid scheme at best and at worse alleged to be an abusive cult profiting from forced labor and human trafficking , according to lawsuits and reports from former members. Its central cosmology, which teaches that human beings are plagued by immortal alien souls called thetans brought to Earth by the galactic emperor Xenu billions of years ago, is ripe for mockery.

The reporting that exists on Cruise’s connection to the church is both lengthy and damning. In September 2012, Vanity Fair published an exposé by Maureen Orth on the way Cruise outsourced management of his romantic life to the church. Tony Ortega, the closest thing there is to a beat reporter on Scientology, has a dedicated Tom Cruise tab on his website. In 2013, celebrated New Yorker reporter Lawrence Wright expanded his existing Scientology reporting into the book Going Clear , which prominently delved into Cruise’s status in the church. In 2015, Going Clear was adapted into an Emmy-winning HBO documentary by the director Alex Gibney, again featuring plenty of Cruise stories. The story they told is dramatic, and it plays heavily on Cruise’s apparent understanding of himself as a savior figure. (The Church of Scientology has strongly denied all these accounts , describing them as lies from disgruntled former members and journalists with grudges.)

Cruise joined the Church of Scientology during his first marriage to Scientologist Mimi Rogers, after Top Gun had already made him a star. According to now-defected former church officials, allegedly he began to drift away from active practice during the ’90s and his marriage to Nicole Kidman, only to drift back as that marriage foundered in the late ’90s. The clincher came, those former Scientologists say in Going Clear , when Cruise said he wanted to tap Kidman’s phone , and the Church of Scientology obliged.

Keeping Cruise happy apparently became a priority for the Church of Scientology. When Cruise needed a new love interest, the church reportedly recruited a young member for the job , gave her a makeover to Cruise’s specifications, and then broke up with her for him after he tired of her. When the woman told a friend what had happened to her, the church reportedly sentenced her to months of menial labor in punishment.

Around the same time that Cruise was making his grand return to the church, he fired his longtime Hollywood publicist, allegedly because she told him to stop talking about Scientology so much when he was on the publicity trail for The Last Samurai . He brought on his Scientologist sister to manage his image instead.

As Cruise was becoming more and more committed to the church, the tabloid industry was beginning to go rabid . By 2004, Us Weekly had gone from monthly trade magazine to weekly gossip rag, pitting itself against People magazine. In Touch Weekly, Life & Style Weekly, and OK! had all emerged. These magazines thrived on an endless diet of outrageous celebrity soundbites, and as Tom Cruise made the publicity rounds for The War of the Worlds , he kept offering them up, one after another.

“Some people, well, if they don’t like Scientology, well, then, fuck you,” he told Rolling Stone . “Really. Fuck you. Period.”

Citing Scientology’s distrust of psychiatry, Cruise criticized Brooke Shields for taking antidepressants to treat her postpartum depression, and then told Matt Lauer he was being “glib” when Lauer suggested he might have overstepped his bounds.

Cruise’s public behavior became more and more erratic. On the same War of the Worlds publicity tour, Cruise infamously jumped up and down on Oprah’s couch, enthusiastically declaring his love for Katie Holmes.

Holmes seemed to be getting caught up in the Scientology swirl herself. A W magazine profile of Holmes saw her conduct an interview with a “Scientology chaperone,” who prompted Holmes with phrases about how much she adored Cruise when she seemed to fumble for words.

The spree of outré quotes took their toll. In 2006, one report found that between the spring and summer of 2005, Cruise fell from 11th most-liked celebrity in the US to 197th .

Fox News predicted the end of Cruise’s career. “It will be all but impossible now for a new generation of film fans to see past his erratic public behavior, the Oprah couch shenanigans, the decrying of psychiatry and now the rejection of Catholicism for a religion invented by a science-fiction writer,” they opined .

Cruise, seeing the writing on the wall, veered away from talking about his religion during his movie publicity tours. But for the next 10 years, Scientology would continue to haunt his public image.

In 2008, a video leaked to the press that was reportedly a Scientology conversion effort, filmed in 2004 . It featured Cruise glassy-eyed and grinning in a black turtleneck, talking about all the ways Scientology has changed his life. “Being a Scientologist, when you drive past an accident, it’s not like anybody else,” he explains. “You know you have to do something about it.”

“Let me put it this way,” said Gawker, which broke the news of the video : “if Tom Cruise jumping on Oprah’s couch was an 8 on the scale of scary, this is a 10.”

In 2012, the Cruise-Holmes divorce cracked open the door of Tom Cruise Scientology stories. A host more came pouring out — and not just in the tabloids, but in legacy print magazines and prestige cable shows: Vanity Fair, the New Yorker, the Village Voice, HBO.

According to former Scientology officials, the Church has continued to manage Cruise’s life. Reportedly, it’s granted him the full benefits of its more unsavory enterprises, including the Church’s alleged use of slave labor .

Former Scientologist John Brousseau says the church has custom-built luxury vehicles and sound systems for Cruise and provides the staff who manage his many homes. Because this labor is provided by the Church, it’s done through Sea Org, the Scientologist association that’s been accused of human trafficking and forced labor . ( The Church has described these claims as “both scurrilous and ridiculous.”) According to Ortega , Sea Org members who worked on Cruise’s property “were paid only about $50 a week by the church, even though their hours could reach 100 a week.” Cruise has a net worth estimated at $600 million .

The picture painted of Cruise by former members of the church is not flattering. They tend to describe Cruise as a well-meaning man who, fundamentally, is not curious, and who is happy to have beautiful things handed to him without looking at their cost. Scientology is attractive to Cruise, in this account, because it makes his life easier while simultaneously flattering his ego with the belief that he is a hero.

But as damning as those stories are, they have largely faded out of public memory. In the 10 years since his divorce from Katie Holmes, Tom Cruise has been working hard to change the narrative.

Can Tom Cruise save Tom Cruise?

“People can create their own lives. … I decided that I’m going to create, for myself, who I am, not what other people say I should be. I’m entitled to that.” Parade, 2006 .

Cruise is currently experiencing a late-career renaissance. Cannes Film Festival feted him in May , awarding him an honorary Palme d’Or and marking the occasion with a red carpet air show. The press loves him again. Top Gun: Maverick is a major success, and the next slew of Mission: Impossible films are bound to be as well.

He’s even rumored to have a new girlfriend. If, as the tabloids claim, Cruise actually is (or was) dating his Mission: Impossible co-star Hayley Atwell , she would be his first public girlfriend since his divorce from Holmes 10 years ago.

So did he do it? How did Tom Cruise go from America’s 197th favorite celebrity to a bankable superstar once again?

The answer seems to be deceptively simple: He kept working, and he stopped talking — about Scientology, and about almost everything else too.

Cruise’s PR nadir came during a period of oversharing. Since then, he’s become known for his intense desire for privacy. “When was the last time paparazzi captured Tom Cruise on the street or anywhere but a film set or premiere?” wondered the New York Post in May 2022 . He heavily restricts the questions journalists are allowed to ask him before he agrees to an interview, and both his religion and his family life tend to be off-limits.

Meanwhile, Cruise has kept making movies. Tropic Thunder in 2008 and Rock of Ages in 2012 together proved he had a sense of humor. Edge of Tomorrow in 2014, which saw Cruise ceding much of the spotlight to co-star Emily Blunt, proved he knew how to share the screen with another star. And the Mission: Impossible franchise has churned out hit after reliable hit. “I can attest that I am alarmed at the extent to which I suddenly love Tom Cruise,” admitted GQ entertainment editor Ashley Fetters in 2015 , as Cruise publicized Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation .

Cruise has also benefited from the current cultural shame surrounding the tabloid culture of the 2000s. As the world agrees that tabloid targets like Britney Spears were hard done by in the heady, tacky days of Y2K, everything from the era has been painted with the same shade of remorse. Vilifying Tom Cruise for jumping on Oprah’s couch can feel like the same toxic impulse that led to a decade of mocking Spears for having her mental breakdown in public, even though what Cruise has been accused of abetting within the Church of Scientology is far worse than anything Spears has ever been accused of.

In most ways, this strategy has been successful. The tabloid spectacle of Tom Cruise, Scientologist has been covered over by four decades of hard work from Tom Cruise, one of the last great movie stars .

But it’s not clear that Cruise can ever again reach the heights of public adoration he enjoyed in 2003. There’s a persistent strangeness around Tom Cruise’s image that has never quite resolved itself, a sort of falseness that he’s never been entirely able to weed out. It’s a falseness that’s rooted not in his Scientology but in his movie star core. From the beginning, the world has refused to believe Tom Cruise when he breaks out his giant movie star smile. It especially refuses to believe him when he laughs.

In an early pan of 1983’s Risky Business , Cruise’s breakout film, New York magazine took aim at the young star’s mannerisms. “Cruise has a slight, undeveloped voice and a nervous smile, which he relies on whenever the script reveals one of its innumerable holes,” the review ran .

In HBO’s Going Clear , footage of Tom Cruise laughing in his Scientology recruitment video plays while one ex-Scientologist declares, “Scientologists are all full of shit.”

A 2004 Rolling Stone profile devoted paragraph after paragraph to the oddness of “the famous Tom Cruise laugh.”

“It comes on just fine, a regular laugh by any standards. You will be laughing too,” wrote Neil Strauss . “But then, when the humor subsides, you will stop laughing. At this point, however, Cruise’s laugh will just be crescendoing. And he will be making eye contact with you.”

It’s as though there’s a hollowness at the center of Cruise’s image, some sort of vacancy that he is forever restlessly seeking to fill. As though if he can only save enough people, enough industries, enough worlds — maybe then, at last, he can finally be whole. But can anyone, even Tom Cruise, do that much saving?

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• 2006 was the lowest point in Cruise's career.
• Audiences had enough of him talking about Scientology and his relationship with Katie Holmes.
• Here, we chronicle Cruise's downfall and his rise back to stardom thanks to "Mission: Impossible."

In August 2006, it seemed like Tom Cruise was finished.

In an announcement unprecedented by the head of a major conglomerate, Viacom's chairman at the time, Sumner Redstone, publicly ripped into the star — who for years was one of the most profitable actors and producers at Viacom's movie studio, Paramount Pictures.

"We don't think that someone who effectuates creative suicide and costs the company revenue should be on the lot," Redstone told The Wall Street Journal . "His recent conduct has not been acceptable to Paramount."

It was likely the toughest and strangest time of Cruise's career. The then-43-year-old actor had a lifetime box-office gross of over $1.5 billion , but his flawless transition from young heartthrob to respected dramatic actor to gargantuan action star seemed to self-destruct as quickly as one of the messages his character, Ethan Hunt, received in the "Mission: Impossible" movies.

The studio he'd called home for 14 years was parting ways with him following a string of bizarre outbursts.

Now, in 2023, that all seems hard to imagine.

Cruise is not only the face of one of the biggest action franchises ever, but film, "Top Gun: Maverick," might just have saved Hollywood following the pandemic.

This month, he's back with another "M:I," Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1," yet another must-see title from one of the last movie stars the industry has left.

But there was a time the veteran actor's career was at a low point.

The couch jump, 'TomKat,' and Scientology

Cruise's strange downfall and subsequent rebirth as one of the most bankable movie stars all began with a seemingly innocent act of love.

When Cruise agreed to go on " The Oprah Winfrey Show " in May 2005 to promote his film, "War of the Worlds," it was a big deal. Cruise rarely did interviews, especially on daytime TV.

As Cruise walked onto Oprah's stage, the crowd went wild. Oprah playfully tousled Cruise's hair, and the actor was clearly in a great mood.

During the interview, Oprah brought up Cruise's latest love interest, Katie Holmes, who was off-stage where no one, especially the cameras, could see her. The excitement of talking about his new girlfriend led him to leap up on Oprah's couch with joy (he did it a second time for good measure).

After the couch-jumping, Oprah even got Cruise to chase down Holmes and get her to come onstage.

It seemed harmless at the time, but thanks to a very young internet video-posting site called YouTube, the image of Cruise on top of Oprah's couch became a pop-culture phenomenon. To some, it felt off. 

A month later, Cruise agreed to go on the " Today " show to continue promoting "War of the Worlds" and also talk about his religion, Scientology. When now-disgraced interviewer Matt Lauer talked about Scientology, and specifically to Cruise not agreeing with psychiatry, the tone changed. Cruise offered his opinion on Brooke Shields' use of antidepressants for postpartum depression .

Here's an excerpt of Cruise and Lauer's uncomfortable exchange:

Cruise: "Do you know what Adderall is? Do you know Ritalin? Do you know Ritalin is a street drug? Do you understand that?" Lauer: "The difference is — " Cruise: "No, Matt, I'm asking you a question." Lauer: "I understand there's abuse of all of these things." Cruise: "No, you see here's the problem: You don't know the history of psychiatry. I do."

Later in the conversation:

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Lauer: "Do you examine the possibility that these things do work for some people? That yes, there are abuses, and yes, maybe they've gone too far in certain areas, maybe there are too many kids on Ritalin, maybe electric shock — " Cruise: "Too many kids on Ritalin?" Lauer: "I'm just saying — but aren't there examples where it works?" Cruise: "Matt, Matt, Matt, you're glib. You don't even know what Ritalin is. If you start talking about chemical imbalance, you have to evaluate and read the research papers on how they came up with these theories, Matt. OK? That's what I've done. You go and you say, 'Where's the medical tests? Where's the blood test that says how much Ritalin you're supposed to get?'" Lauer: "It's very impressive to listen to you, because clearly you've done the homework and you know the subject." Cruise: "And you should. And you should do that also, because just knowing people who are on Ritalin isn't enough. You should be a little bit more responsible … "

Minutes later, the exchange was on loop all over the world.

Within a few weeks, Cruise had gone wild on Oprah and lashed out at Lauer, and by then, the tabloids had gone into overdrive with the Cruise-Holmes relationship, which they called "TomKat."

It was time for Cruise to get off the grid, but he couldn't.

Cruise's star power takes a hit

For most of his career, an experienced publicist named Pat Kingsley reportedly kept Cruise's private life out of the tabloids. According to a 2014 LA Weekly story, she even talked Cruise out of being more vocal about Scientology when he did press for his 2003 film "The Last Samurai."

A year later, according to the LA Weekly story, Cruise let Kingsley go after 14 years and formed a publicity team that included his sister, Lee Anne De Vette, and fellow Scientologists.

Now in a typhoon of backlash that Cruise had never experienced before, his team may have been too inexperienced to protect him.

Despite all the negative attention, "War of the Worlds" still went to No. 1 at the box office during its opening weekend ( $65 million ), and ended up with a worldwide take of $592 million.

It would be the last time a film starring Cruise would make over $500 million worldwide for the next six years .

Following the "War of the Worlds" release, TomKat was still daily tabloid fodder, especially with the news that the two were expecting a child. And then, in March 2006, Cruise went global again with the controversial "South Park" episode "Trapped in the Closet."

The episode originally aired in November 2005 and revealed what Scientologists believe is the origin of life, but it also depicted Cruise as an insecure person and played on rumors of his sexuality .

In the episode, one of the main characters on the show, Stan, is thought by Scientology to be the second coming of its founder, L. Ron Hubbard . This leads Scientologists, including Cruise, to flock to Stan's house to pay their respects. But when Stan insults his acting ability, Cruise hides in Stan's closet, leading to Stan saying, "Dad, Tom Cruise won't come out of the closet."

Comedy Central delayed reairing the episode in March 2006 because allegedly Cruise declared he would not promote "Mission: Impossible 3" unless Viacom (which owns the film's studio, Paramount, and Comedy Central) canceled the rebroadcast.

Cruise's reps denied he ever threatened not to promote the film.

The controversy made headlines all over the world and led "South Park" fans to declare they would boycott "Mission: Impossible 3" until Comedy Central aired the episode.

The episode was finally reaired in July of that year.

"Closetgate," in what it would become known, was the last straw.

The constant tabloid coverage of TomKat, plus rumors that Cruise and Holmes' relationship was allegedly arranged by the church had turned people off. (Cruise and Holmes married in November 2006 and divorced six years later.)

The bad press soon began to affect Cruise's career. "Mission: Impossible 3" opened in theaters in May 2006 and Cruise's Q score — the appeal of a celebrity, brand, or company to the public — was down 40% .

Though the film was No. 1 in the US on its opening weekend ( $48 million ), it lost appeal as the weeks passed. Ticket sales dropped 47% during its second week in theaters and 53% in its third week.

"Mission: Impossible 3" is the lowest-grossing film in the franchise to date, with a $400 million worldwide gross.

It was at this point that Redstone gave Cruise his wake-up call: "We don't think that someone who effectuates creative suicide and costs the company revenue should be on the lot. His recent conduct has not been acceptable to Paramount."

The long road back to superstardom

After being kicked off the Paramount lot, Cruise hired a publicist with more experience and buckled down for a comeback. He brought his production company over to MGM and took partial ownership of the iconic United Artists studio.

Cruise also became less vocal about Scientology in public, though he was apparently still very much involved privately. In 2008, a Scientology-produced video went viral on YouTube of the actor explaining what the religion meant to him.

Cruise hit the pause button on doing action movies, turning to dramas like "Lions for Lambs" and "Valkyrie."

In between those films, he agreed to star in pal Ben Stiller's 2008 comedy " Tropic Thunder " as the overweight, bigger-than-life movie exec Les Grossman. It was the best move Cruise had done in years. In doing something so out of character, he began to win back fans.

"Tropic Thunder" reunited Cruise with his former studio, Paramount. Although Cruise's production company was kicked off the lot, it didn't mean he couldn't still be cast in the studio's films. The wheels were now in motion for Cruise to get back on Paramount's good side so he could make more "Mission: Impossible" movies.

Being a hit in "Tropic Thunder," the biggest comedy of the year for Paramount, was a good starting point.

Director J.J. Abrams, who directed Cruise in "Mission: Impossible 3" and was in Paramount's good graces after directing the studio's hit "Star Trek Into Darkness," was also working to get Cruise back in the franchise.

In the summer of 2010, news broke that Cruise would be starring in "Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol," with Abrams as producer. But this installment in the franchise would not be titled "Mission: Impossible 4," because the idea was that the film would be a refresh on the franchise, with Cruise stepping aside as the lead and giving way to rising star Jeremy Renner.

Cruise didn't get the message.

Back in the Ethan Hunt role, Cruise cemented his place in the franchise by scaling the tallest building in the world, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, without a stunt double.

That, and the other insane stunts featured in the film, led to "Ghost Protocol" earning the biggest worldwide box office in the franchise's history — $695 million . It was also the second-highest earning film for Paramount in 2011, just behind "Transformers: Dark of the Moon."

Following "Ghost Protocol" it wasn't all box-office wins for Cruise. " Knight and Day " and the " Jack Reacher " franchise didn't do as well as expected. And he could not help Universal's Dark Universe get off the ground as 2017's "The Mummy" bombed at the box office.

However, he laid the seeds of what could be another profitable franchise with 2014's "Edge of Tomorrow, which — even with a slow start when it opened — ended up passing the domestic $100 million mark (the first time in nine years that a non-"Mission: Impossible" Cruise film hit that landmark number) and only grew in popularity when it got onto home video and streaming.

And then there are the "M: I" movies.

In 2015, "Rogue Nation," with its insane stunt of Cruise hanging from the side of a plane as it took off, earned over $682.7 million worldwide and was the top-grossing film for Paramount that year. And 2018's "Fallout" did even better, taking in over $791 million worldwide .

Despite Alex Gibney's explosive 2015 HBO Scientology documentary "Going Clear," in which Cruise is criticized for being the face of the controversial religion, Cruise remains one of the world's top movie stars. 

And with "Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One" out this month, it doesn't seem likely that he'll be knocked off that mantel anytime soon.

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How Tom Cruise Got Us to Forget About His Scientology Ties

By Jon Blistein

Jon Blistein

There are movie stars and then there is Tom Cruise . Forty years a star, enough classics to make listing even a few here pointless, and, now, someone who can stake a legitimate claim to saving Hollywood (or at least jolting some life into that lazy, bloated monstrosity). Last year’s Top Gun: Maverick , with its millions at the box office, helped rescue the movies and movie theaters from the brink of Covid-19 and streaming. This year’s Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One , the seventh and ostensibly penultimate installment of the secret agent series, should reach similar heights. Tom Cruise is as big as he’s ever been — a feat as staggering as any Ethan Hunt stunt. 

And yet, none of it’s ever really caught up with Cruise, let alone dragged him down. Even Alex Gibney, who directed the damning Scientology doc Going Clear (based on Lawrence Wright’s book of the same name), admitted to Rolling Stone recently that he was “surprised” Cruise had avoided any kind of reckoning.  

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With Tom Cruise, it’s yet to reach the point where we, as a culture, are devastated, disheveled, distraught, screaming, “He can’t keep getting away with it!” He remains deeply beloved, and not even in an unsettling, upsetting way , like some of our other prominent problematic actors. And it has everything to do with the way Cruise has thrown himself completely into his work over the past 10 years or so — the way he’s effectively replaced Scientology with a different public-facing religion : The Movies.

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Shockingly, this didn’t exactly endear Cruise or the Church to the culture at large. A 2008 incident is telling: Hackers obtained and leaked an internal Church video that featured Cruise, full Steve Jobs mode in a black turtleneck, extolling the virtues of Scientology; there was also footage of Cruise accepting the Church’s “Freedom Medal of Valor” and saluting Miscavige. In response , the Church not only tried to wipe the video from the web, but cast doubt on its authenticity, claiming it was “pirated and edited.” By the end of that year, Cruise was apologizing to Lauer for acting “arrogant” and declining to answer interviewer questions about Scientology. 

But by that point, Cruise had weathered the worst of the storm he’d largely wrought upon himself. His M.O. was simple: keep quiet and make movies — and the movies he made were good. Thanks to a creative partnership with writer/director Christopher McQuarrie, he revived the Mission: Impossible franchise and also dropped a few fan favorites, like Jack Reacher and Edge of Tomorrow . (The two also worked together on The Mummy , though, so clearly no one’s perfect.)

Action flicks have always been a core component of the Cruise oeuvre; but after a versatile first 20 years as an actor, his focus narrowed on them in the 2000s, and since then, that focus seems to have only hardened into a raison d’être . There’s little doubt Cruise loves these kinds of movies and the work that goes into not only doing the stunts, but building the characters and stories to make those set pieces worthwhile. But “Tom Cruise, Action Hero” is also an appealing prospect and PR win: If you’re an organization beset by controversy and accusation, why wouldn’t you want your poster boy constantly saving the world?

But action flicks have suited Cruise similarly well in this era of muted public association with Scientology. Amidst the ceaseless rise of green screen tech and CGI tricks, and the Marvel-ization of blockbuster cinema, Cruise remains one of the crazy, blessed few still willing to throw himself out of a plane in service of the noble causes of storytelling and entertainment. That willingness to fully embody Ethan Hunt or Pete “Maverick” Mitchell is a great way to make people not necessarily forget, but stop worrying so much about L. Ron Hubbard, or Xenu, or Shelly Miscavige. Or from wondering, when was the last time Tom Cruise saw his daughter? 

Cruise would’ve probably kept chugging along like this, but Covid-19 added a new dimension. When audio leaked in late 2020 of Cruise upbraiding Mission: Impossible crew members for not following pandemic protocols, the overall reaction was less shock, more awe. His dedication to making this movie was absolute, imbued with a clear-eyed understanding of the existential threat Covid-19 posed to the film industry. He backed up those words with the fight to keep Top Gun: Maverick off streaming and ensure it safely landed in theaters. He was handsomely rewarded with box office receipts, rave reviews, and respect from his peers. “You saved Hollywood’s ass,” Steven Spielberg told him at an Oscars luncheon earlier this year, “you might have saved theatrical distribution. Seriously.” 

Even at the height of his public association with Scientology, The Movies were like a kind of religion for Cruise. In 2002, when the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences needed someone to validate the existence and value of film and the film industry after 9/11, it called on Cruise , and he delivered. You can see shades of it as far back as 1984 , two years before his introduction to Scientology, in the way he discusses movies as a vehicle for betterment and serenity: “I’m interested in my personal growth, what’s going to make me happy. Not how much money am I gonna make, not what film is gonna really make me more visible.”

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As for the rest of us, we seem to have reached a cordial stalemate with Cruise. We’ve delayed his reckoning — maybe forever, maybe only for now — allowed him to float above the level of a Mark Wahlberg, or worse, a Mel Gibson. And that’s because, as much as Tom Cruise, Action Hero and Savior of the Movies is good PR, it’s also who he is, who he’s always been. Despite everything else he believes, he still believes in The Movies.

There’s a famous tidbit about how Thomas Cruise Mapother IV spent a year in seminary school as a teenager before he started acting. Tom Cruise has always insisted Thomas Mapother was never actually close to becoming a priest, but the episode still encapsulates the zealous streak in his character, an irrepressible yearning for knowledge and understanding, his belief in, or need for, a higher calling or power. And before he found an outlet for all that in Scientology, he found it in acting and making movies. It’s still there. The proof is everywhere, even when he’s just looking a camera dead in the eye, smiling, and saying , “I love my popcorn. Movies, popcorn.” 

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Tom Cruise's Scientology Connection

Related npr stories, an ugly, public split for cruise and paramount.

Cruise gets a kiss from girlfriend Katie Holmes at the May 2006 Hollywood premiere of Mission Impossible III . Mario Anzuoni/Reuters/Corbis hide caption

Scientology in the Spotlight

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The Tom Cruise story is about box office gross, odd behavior -- and, of course, the mysterious and controversial religion called Scientology. Cruise has been a Scientologist for years, but has only recently gone public with his religion. Last year, he raged against psychiatry and psychiatric drugs in an interview with Today host Matt Lauer. And he incurred the displeasure of Steven Spielberg by focusing on Scientology (and Katie Holmes) in interviews when he was supposed to be talking about War of the Worlds .

NPR's Kim Masters looked into the star's relationship with Scientology for an article that appeared in a 2005 issue of Radar magazine. Masters spoke with host Madeleine Brand about her findings -- read excerpts below:

Not many reporters take on the Church of Scientology. It's known for being quite litigious.

They have been quite hostile to media scrutiny in the past. They have now said that they're trying to be more welcoming to the press. They've taken several reporters on tours of their celebrity center here in Los Angeles. But they made it very clear that they don't like what I did because I interviewed quite a number of fallen-away Scientologists, and they feel that that just taints the journalism in the piece.

Because they had an ax to grind.

Well, they did. They're hostile to the Church of Scientology. No one is arguing that point. The [Church feels] that these fallen-away Scientologists are people who did not live up to the church's ethical standards and that what they're saying is false. Many of them, the [Church alleges], are paid to lie.

Let's go back -- tell us a little about what Scientology is and how it was founded.

Scientology was created by L. Ron Hubbard. It starts out as a self-help kind of thing where you talk about issues that are bothering you. And you are audited with an E-Meter, which is a sort of a lie detector-like device. And the [Church is] looking to remove the issues that are plaguing you. The Church of Scientology has attracted a lot of Hollywood people who are always looking for a way to have an edge and to conquer their insecurities and to clear whatever problems might be impeding them in their career.

We've known for years that [Cruise has] been a Scientologist, but it seems only recently that he's really come out as a Scientologist publicly. Why is that?

The fallen-away Scientologists say that as you move up the ranks of the church you become what they call an "operating thetan." A thetan is a spirit. And the way it works -- it's kind of complicated to explain, but 75 million years ago -- according to the story that is told -- there was an intergalactic warlord named Xenu who was faced with a serious overpopulation problem in the galaxy, and he gathered up these spirits and put them on planet Earth and then nuked them. And they then became these free-floating spirits who were brainwashed to forget what had happened to them. And again, the church disputes this version that is told by the fallen-away Scientologists, but this is their story. And these thetans, these spirits, have attached themselves -- either singularly or in clusters -- to all of us [and] are the source of many of our problems. And it is the mission of Scientology to awaken and release these thetans so that we can move forward with our lives.

And once you attain higher ranks, you have shed yourself of these thetans?

At the level that Tom Cruise said to be at, OT-VII, you are supposed to spend some time every day seeking out, auditing yourself to find these clusters of thetans and get[ting] them to move on. As you do that, your obligations to the church simultaneously are said to have expanded. You are expected to -- according to one of the Scientologists we talked to who had, again, fallen away -- you are expected to report on what you have done to spread the word about Scientology.

And how is Tom Cruise's public embracing of Scientology being received in Hollywood?

A lot of people in Hollywood feel that he has damaged himself. It hasn't been visible yet because War of the Worlds was his biggest opening ever. And many people in Hollywood do feel there's damage there and many people in Hollywood have gone to psychiatrists, have taken medications that are verboten in the Church of Scientology and it makes them quite uncomfortable.

And do you think that this is something that [Cruise] is worried about?

No. One of the things Scientology does, as was explained to us by the people who left, is that they avoid bad news, and it would be the job of people to keep Tom Cruise from taking in a lot of bad news. And that is what caused one of the former Scientologists that we interviewed to talk about this notion that a celebrity like Tom Cruise is living in what he described as The Truman Show , that he has no idea that there's a whole world out there that's different from what he hears. And any criticism they just dismiss, if they even hear it -- I don't know how much of this Tom Cruise has even heard.

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Tom Cruise and an Explosive Scientology Book

Mike Rinder, former Church of Scientology executive, talks about leaving the church, ‘Top Gun,’ his new book, and more

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Matt is joined by Mike Rinder , former senior executive of the Church of Scientology. They discuss the moment he decided to leave Scientology, Tom Cruise’s current standing in the church, the impact of Top Gun: Maverick , the internet’s damning influence on the future of Scientology, and more—all detailed in his new book A Billion Years: My Escape from a Life in the Highest Ranks of Scientology .

Email us comments, questions, or ideas at [email protected]

Host: Matt Belloni Guest: Mike Rinder Producer: Craig Horlbeck Theme Song: Devon Renaldo

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Tom Cruise’s Dark, Twisted Journey to Scientology’s Top Gun

Photo Illustrations by Luis G. Rendon/The Daily Beast/Getty

As audiences take in Cruise’s latest hit, “Top Gun: Maverick,” top Scientology reporter Tony Ortega looks back on how the star became the Church of Scientology’s Maverick.

Tony Ortega

W ith Top Gun: Maverick debuting in theaters this week, Tom Cruise is available to the press again, which explains why I was seeing video of James Corden at 5 a.m. on a tarmac waiting to join Cruise in his personal jet aircraft.

The Late Late Show host’s antics on Cruise’s plane delivered the intended effect: Tom as cooler-than-you pilot really is like the superheroes he plays in the movies.

But for me, it had another connotation.

Seeing Cruise pilot his aircraft, I couldn’t help thinking of something Marc Headley told me several years ago.

Headley joined Scientology’s Sea Org as a child, signing a billion-year contract before working 365 days a year, cloistered at one of the organization’s secretive compounds known as “Int Base” near Hemet, California.

Around 1990, Headley explained in his excellent book about that period, Blown for Good , Cruise had come to the base to learn Scientology “auditing,” its version of counseling, and Headley was chosen to be his guinea pig.

Years later, in 2009, the FBI began an intense investigation of conditions at the base, interviewing dozens of former Sea Org workers, including Headley, who by that time had escaped.

The FBI was so serious about its investigation of the slave-like conditions at the base, Headley and other former Scientologists told me, that in the summer of 2010 the agency was making detailed plans for raiding the compound, rescuing workers, and seizing documents.

Headley says the special agents assigned to the investigation told him one of their main concerns was that Scientology leader David Miscavige , who lived at the base, would slip through their grasp.

So, planning for any eventuality, they tried to seal off all escape routes Miscavige might try to use—including, Headley said, the airplanes of his best pal, Tom Cruise.

The FBI agents told him they had taken the step of recording the tail numbers of Cruise’s planes that were at his private hangar in Burbank, California, just in case Miscavige tried to make an escape using them.

Ultimately, the FBI changed its mind about raiding Scientology and the investigation was dropped, for mysterious reasons. (Headley and former Scientology spokesman Mike Rinder told me their version of what happened for a piece I wrote years ago. Also, even though I’ve published the full FBI investigative file at my website, Scientology continues to claim that there was never an investigation at all. The Church of Scientology did not respond to request for comment for this story.)

Even if the raid was cancelled, I’ve never forgotten that the FBI figured that David Miscavige and Tom Cruise were so tight the Top Gun actor might use his piloting skills to jet his two-time Best Man to safety from law enforcement.

That isn’t something you’re likely to hear in all of the press celebration of Cruise’s new movie. Top Gun: Maverick is getting almost universally positive reviews (a notable exception that is worth a look ) and is poised to be Cruise’s biggest movie opening ever. We’ll be seeing a lot of him on our screens in the coming weeks.

And it couldn’t come at a better time for Scientology, which, all signs indicate, has been hit hard by the pandemic.

It isn’t the first time that Cruise has come to the church’s rescue at a crucial time.

In 1986, when actress Mimi Rogers began dating Cruise and first introduced him to Scientology, the controversial organization was at a critical juncture: Its founder and source of all its written “scriptures,” science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard , had died on Jan. 24 that year.

For a group so focused on one figure, the death of that person can be an extreme challenge. Would Scientology survive it?

Complicating things was that the person exerting himself to push aside others and take over the reins of Scientology was a 25-year-old who was known only to a small minority of the movement. David Miscavige had joined the organization as a child, and had quickly become a favorite of Hubbard, but for years he had amassed power in the rarefied upper reaches of Sea Org—away from view of the vast majority of Scientologists.

So, when Miscavige stepped forward on the stage at the Hollywood Palladium to announce Hubbard’s death to the hastily gathered crowd of Scientologists on Jan. 27, 1986, many of the people who were in the audience that night had never even heard of him.

Miscavige was still consolidating control of Scientology later that year when Mimi Rogers began bringing Tom Cruise around to a North Hollywood Scientology satellite office. Cruise was already a movie star, with films like Risky Business and All the Right Moves under his belt, and the first Top Gun had hit theaters that summer.

Cruise must have taken to Scientology pretty quickly, because he and Rogers tied the knot a few months later, on May 9, 1987. May 9 happens to be one of the most sacred days on the Scientology calendar, because it was on May 9, 1950, that Hubbard published the book that started everything: his turgid, bizarre look at the human mind called Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health . After its publication, Hubbard turned its popularity into a self-help empire that grew in fits and starts.

In 1955, Hubbard announced “Project Celebrity,” telling his followers that there would literally be a bounty on the head of famous actors and actresses brought into what by then he had decided was the “Church of Scientology” (so much for a “modern science”). Hubbard knew that attracting celebrities might help the organization seem more mainstream, and he encouraged members not to talk publicly about what was actually going on: Scientology was past-life therapy that promised godlike superpowers to those who could retrieve memories from millions or billions of years ago on other planets.

There had been some victories for Project Celebrity since then, with John Travolta (1975) and Kirstie Alley (1979) being among the most well-known bought into the church. But Mimi Rogers had outdone the rest by bringing in a star of Cruise’s stature, marrying him on Dianetics Day 1987, and right when Scientology was on shaky ground following the death of Hubbard.

Just a few years later, Rogers was repaid by being told by Scientology’s leaders to walk away from her marriage to Cruise so he could pursue his new obsession, Australian actress Nicole Kidman .

Kidman wasn’t a Scientologist, but she tried to fit in. Her former Scientology auditor, Bruce Hines, told me that in only a couple of years she was able to rocket up to an auditing level known as “OT 2,” which is pretty astonishing and suggests Kidman was probably putting in daily work to go up the “Bridge to Total Freedom.”

But by 1992, Kidman changed her mind. She soured on Scientology, and not only pulled away from it but pulled Cruise with her . We only found out about this years later, but from 1992 to 2000, former high-ranking executives tell me, Cruise kept Scientology at arm’s length. Mike Rinder has spoken about how much this bothered Miscavige, especially while Cruise and Kidman spent November 1996 to June 1998 filming Eyes Wide Shut in London with Stanley Kubrick.

During this period, Miscavige kept an eye on Cruise with a spy in his household . In 1998, Cruise made a brief return to the Hollywood Celebrity Centre to take a course which had him sitting in a grocery store parking lot with Scientology official Tommy Davis, judging the “tone level” of people walking by, which Lawrence Wright wrote about in his excellent history of Scientology, Going Clear . But it wasn’t until Cruise broke up with Kidman in 2000 that he made his real return to Miscavige’s orbit.

Over the next three years, re-indoctrinating Cruise became Miscavige’s chief mission. And by 2003, Miscavige was ready to test out his newly-zealous celebrity minion.

That summer, Cruise traveled to Missouri to help Scientology hold a grand opening for a new headquarters for one of its numerous front groups, Applied Scholastics, which works to get L. Ron Hubbard’s materials into public schools .

Cruise continued to grow into the role of highly visible Scientology ambassador. The next year, in September 2004, he made his first and only appearance at the grand opening of a new Scientology “Ideal Org” in Madrid, Spain. The year before, Miscavige had begun a program of replacing older “orgs” (Scientology's word for churches) with gleaming new and very expensive “ideal” cathedrals, a project that continues today.

Although he had broken up with Spanish actress Penelope Cruz earlier that year, Cruise was invited to help Miscavige open the new Madrid building, and he even gave a brief speech in Spanish, which you can watch here . And it was also at this event that Cruise reportedly told Miscavige that he was having some trouble finding a suitable new girlfriend. The church leader then put his wife, Shelly Miscavige, in charge of a program that fall to audition actresses, some who were Scientologists and some who were not, without telling them that it was actually a tryout to be Cruise’s new mate.

By this time, October 2004, Miscavige was thrilled with how dedicated Cruise had become, and that he was willing to be the public face of Scientology. So that month he rewarded Cruise by giving him special recognition at the annual gala held in England each October when a few exemplary church members are bestowed “Freedom Medals.” For Cruise, Miscavige made a special showing, with a 30-minute video extolling Cruise’s qualities—which included a 9-minute interview with the actor talking about the privilege of being a Scientologist. At the conclusion of the video, Miscavige gave Cruise the unique, larger medallion he’d had made just for him, the Freedom Medal of Valor.

Four years later, video from the event would be leaked to the public in one of Scientology’s most embarrassing PR disasters. But for now, Cruise was being celebrated as the most gung-ho Scientologist in the world.

Meanwhile, Shelly Miscavige’s project had produced a winner: An attractive British-Iranian Scientologist-actress named Nazanin Boniadi was selected from the auditions, and she dated Cruise from October 2004 to January 2005, when, Alex Gibney reported in his HBO documentary Going Clear , things soured. Nazanin admitted she was having a hard time understanding David Miscavige’s thick New Jersey accent, and it was giving her headaches. Scientology had Tommy Davis break up with her for Cruise.

Only a few months later, in April 2005, Cruise and Katie Holmes announced that they were dating, and it happened to coincide with Tom’s most visible (and most disastrous) attempts to be promote Scientology. After firing his longtime publicist and hiring his own sister, a Scientologist, Cruise was doing the rounds for Steven Spielberg’s film War of the Worlds . He openly clashed with interviewers in the U.S. and Australia over Scientology, most notably with Matt Lauer during an episode of Today , appearing arrogant and unhinged as he lectured Lauer about the deleterious effects of psychiatric drugs. (Scientology opposes modern mental health treatments with a white-hot fury.)

And while it didn’t appear to have any connection with Scientology, Cruise’s antics jumping on Oprah’s couch declaring his love for Holmes was seen by the public as a sign that the Scientologist actor had lost his marbles.

Mike Rinder and other former executives tell me that Cruise’s bizarre acts during 2005, with his attempt to so aggressively promote Scientology, was pure Miscavige. And it backfired badly. Cruise has never since been so vocal about his involvement in the church.

Like Kidman, Katie Holmes had no experience in Scientology but she was determined, at first, to be involved in it for Cruise’s sake. The couple welcomed a daughter, Suri, twelve months after they announced they were dating, in April 2006, and then were married that November in a castle in Italy .

It was at that wedding that King of Queens actress Leah Remini , who had grown up in Scientology, noticed that Miscavige, who was once again Cruise’s best man, was there without his wife, Shelly. When Remini asked about it, she was told by Tommy Davis that she didn’t have “the fucking rank” to ask such a question.

It turned out that a year earlier, at the end of the summer of 2005, Shelly Miscavige had vanished from Int Base , the secretive compound near Hemet, and was no longer appearing with her husband at Scientology events .

Katie Holmes, meanwhile, was such a dedicated Scientologist at that point, she wrote up a Knowledge Report complaining about how Remini had disrupted the wedding.

Like Kidman, Holmes tried her best initially to immerse herself in Scientology, only to grow away from it, and in the meantime the church experienced several very public disasters.

The video of Cruise talking bizarrely about what it meant to be a Scientologist (which was prepared for the 2004 awards ceremony) was leaked to the internet in January 2008 and became a sensation. When Scientology tried to suppress the video, it motivated the internet collective known as Anonymous to target the church with months of high-profile protests and trolling.

In early 2011, New Yorker writer Lawrence Wright revealed that the FBI had investigated Scientology in 2009-2010.

And the next year, 2012, Holmes decided she’d had enough of both Cruise and Scientology . At that point, with Suri turning 6 years old, she would have been old enough to begin early Dianetics courses. And Katie would also have seen Cruise’s older children, Isabella and Connor, going through Scientology auditing and interrogations.

Katie then made her famous escape from marriage in June 2012 while Cruise was in Iceland shooting scenes for Oblivion , his first collaboration with Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski.

Eleven days later, she and Cruise had worked out a settlement to end their marriage. Katie got primary custody of Suri, and Cruise got generous visitation rights. But in recent years he seems to have largely cut her out of his life.

People often ask me if Tom Cruise is being groomed to take over Scientology from Miscavige, or if he’s the No. 2 figure in the church. But that ignores the basic structure of the Scientology movement—that it is run by the Sea Organization.

The Sea Org is not a legal entity, but it has ultimate control of the church, and the captain of the Sea Org is David Miscavige.

If Miscavige left, another Sea Org official would take his place. But in order to qualify for the Sea Org, a Scientologist has to sign a billion-year contract and work around the clock for the organization for pennies an hour, a commitment that Tom Cruise is not likely to make.

Tom Cruise’s value to Scientology is not as an executive, it’s as an ornament. That’s always what the celebrities have been: symbols. But he’s the most important celebrity, and an incredibly important symbol for the church.

There are plenty of secretive, high-pressure groups that some people call cults, but there is only one Scientology. Why? Because of its celebrities, and primarily because of Tom Cruise. He is Scientology, as far as most of the public is concerned.

And if he were to leave and speak out like Leah Remini has? I doubt Scientology could survive it. That’s how important he is to it.

The tabloids, every few months, publish stories claiming that Cruise is leaving, but it is never backed up with any evidence.

In fact, in 2019, Cruise for the first time since I’ve been watching attended not one but two of those international events, both the LRH Birthday Event in Florida in March and the IAS gala in England in October. And there was evidence that suggested he took his children Isabella and Connor with him to the IAS event, again for the first time ever.

So, based on that, my feeling was that as of 2019, Cruise was more dedicated to Scientology than ever.

It was harder to get information out in 2020 and 2021 because Scientology had to stop holding its international events owing to the pandemic .

People often ask me if Cruise is only staying in Scientology because the church is blackmailing him with information he has given up in auditing sessions. But again, that misinterprets the facts. The real situation appears to be that Tom Cruise is a true believer. He really does believe that L. Ron Hubbard was the greatest human being who ever lived, and that David Miscavige is the greatest human being living today.

In the words of John Brousseau, who worked closely with both men for many years, “Tom Cruise worships David Miscavige like a god.”

I see no reason to change that assessment today.

Finally, Suri. There’s no doubt that the way Katie Holmes left Cruise in 2012 caused a huge public relations disaster for Scientology. That would make it possible that David Miscavige might have declared her a “suppressive person,” which would make Suri a “potential trouble source” because she’s connected to her SP mother—as is common among those who’ve defected.

We don’t know for sure if Miscavige made this determination. However, it’s pretty obvious that if Tom Cruise were not a celebrity, he would probably be instructed by the church to cut off contact with his ex-wife and Suri.

However, Tom is a celebrity, and the most important celebrity, and celebrities get to ignore those rules if they want. As Scientology’s most important celebrity, he could continue to be a part of Suri’s life he wanted to.

But for now, he’s once again the most successful movie star on the planet, and he will face only highly-controlled interviews where none of this history will be raised.

His popularity will be a huge boost for individual Scientologists, who will see the success of Top Gun: Maverick as a vindication of Scientology, even if the movie has nothing to do with it.

They love it when a Scientology celebrity gets positive press.

And Miscavige will be beside himself.

Got a tip? Send it to The Daily Beast  here .

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Scientology’s seduction of tom cruise, role in nicole kidman split detailed.

THR's exclusive excerpt from Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Lawrence Wright 's new book reveals how the church came between Cruise and Kidman, leader David Miscavige's intense courtship of the star, Bill Clinton's advice to the actor on how to lobby Tony Blair, and how Cruise once told Miscavige, "If f--ing Arnold can be governor, I could be President."

By Lawrence Wright

Lawrence Wright

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Seduction of Tom Cruise Illustration – H 2013

This story first appeared in the Jan. 18 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.

The past year hasn’t been kind to the Church of Scientology. Katie Holmes divorced Tom Cruise . A Vanity Fair cover story that revealed the Scientology-run “audition” process to be Cruise’s wife included an interview with one of Cruise’s original candidates who was forced, she claims, to scrub toilets with a toothbrush as punishment. Meanwhile, Scientologist John Travolta was hit with several lawsuits (albeit unrelated to the Church) that spawned endless Internet speculation. Behind those sensational headlines, details of an organization whose secrecy long has been guarded began to seep out with detractors using the Internet to expose the Church’s sacred documents and allege wrongdoing. Now, Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Lawrence Wright , who profiled ex-Scientologist Paul Haggis for The New Yorker in 2011, delves fullon into the history and inner workings of the Church of Scientology in his book Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, and the Prison of Belief .

Despite bad publicity and questions about its size — one survey puts U.S. membership at 25,000 (the Church claims 8 million worldwide), with the largest concentration in L.A. — Scientology continues to survive, with ex-members claiming it has assets of about $1 billion. As many as 5,000 people belong to the Sea Org, its elite clergy. Adherents are drawn to Scientology’s emphasis on self-improvement, though the Church’s theology and practices remain unknown to the public. (Since 1993, the IRS has classified Scientology as a tax-exempt religion.) Wright’s account, which is detailed through Church documents, court records and hundreds of interviews, including many with ex-members, is disputed by Scientology, which declined to give interviews for the book. 

Karin Pouw , a representative for Scientology tells THR that, “The one thing ‘clear’ about Lawrence Wright’s book is that he continues to carry water for a handful of angry, bitter individuals … [who] regurgitate six decades of false, bizarre tabloid allegations about the religion’s founder, its leadership and its prominent members.” Far from being in decline, she says Scientology opened 30 new churches in 2012. (Read Pouw’s complete response here .)

Wright argues that the Church’s mystique rests mainly on its celebrity members. Early on, founder L. Ron Hubbard recruited Hollywood notables like Gloria Swanson . David Miscavige , who has headed the Church since Hubbard’s death in 1986, followed this strategy by cultivating Cruise, who has become the public face of the Church and one of its largest donors. Cruise, now 50, became a Scientologist in 1986 and the biggest celebrity to join the Church since Travolta. Cruise admired Miscavige’s confidence and bravado. Miscavige , in turn, was seduced by Cruise’s celebrity and opulent lifestyle. But by the mid-’90s , Cruise and wife Nicole Kidman drifted away from the Church, which frantically scrambled to win him back. In this exclusive excerpt, Wright details the relationship between Cruise and Miscavige , the star’s renewed commitment to Scientology following his divorce from Kidman and his emergence as possibly the second most- powerful figure in the Church. — Andy Lewis

For five days in October 1998, Tom Cruise, one of the biggest movie stars in the world, secretly drove into a private parking lot in the back of the historic Guaranty Building on Hollywood Boulevard, with the yellow Scientology sign atop. Charlie Chaplin and Rudolph Valentino used to have their offices here — now the lobby is a shrine to the life and works of L. Ron Hubbard. A giant bust of the founder greets the occasional visitor.

Cruise went in a back door that led to a basement hallway and went directly to the “secret” 11th floor, where senior Church officials like David Miscavige and Marty Rathbun maintained offices. “He was not in good shape, spiritually or mentally,” Rathbun observed. “He was personally very enturbulated ,” Scientology terminology for agitated.( 1 )

Rathbun , then the Inspector General at the Religious Technology Center, which oversees the Church’s spiritual materials, had gone to Los Angeles to meet Cruise for auditing, the Church’s system of religious counseling. ( Rathbun is no longer connected to Scientology and is now one of its most outspoken critics. The Church has dismissed his accounts and refers to him as part of a “posse of lunatics.”)

Cruise, the Church’s most visible adherent, had been drifting away. According to Rathbun , Miscavige — Scientology’s de facto head since Hubbard’s death — blamed the actor’s wife, Nicole Kidman, and viewed her as a gold digger who was faking Scientology. He says that Miscavige was hopeful that if they portrayed Nicole Kidman as a Suppressive Person, Cruise could be peeled away from her.( 2 )

After that episode of auditing, Cruise went quiet again. He and Kidman were in England filming Eyes Wide Shut for Stanley Kubrick . Suddenly, in January 2001, Rathbun said he got a call from the actor asking for help. Cruise said that he and Kidman were finished. Cruise never offered a public explanation for the divorce, and Kidman herself was clearly surprised by his decision.

This was a decisive moment in Cruise’s relationship with Scientology. Rathbun provided the star with more than 200 hours of auditing over the next couple of years. From July through Thanksgiving 2001, Rathbun was with Cruise at the Celebrity Centre frequently, doing auditing rundowns. He paired Cruise with another actor, Jason Beghe , to do training drills; for instance, Beghe would think of a hypothetical date, which Cruise had to figure out using the E-Meter, a Scientology device that measures a body’s electrical resistance by gripping two metal rods, a guessing exercise Cruise found really frustrating. (Cruise’s attorney says, “Cruise may have had a chance encounter with Beghe at the Celebrity Centre but had no such meeting with him.”)( 3 )

First footnote:  Interview with Mark “Marty” Rathbun .

Second footnote:  Interview with Mark “Marty Rathbun .

Third footnote:  Interview with Jason Beghe .

At the same time, 29-year-old Tommy Davis began acting as Rathbun’s assistant. He brought sandwiches and helped out with Conor and Isabella , Cruise’s two children with Kidman, making sure they were receiving Church services. Despite his youth, Davis was already a unique figure in the Church: He was a second-generation Scientologist , a member of the Sea Org, an elite group of about 3,000 that functions in effect as the Church’s clergy, and a scion of the Hollywood elite.

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His mother was Anne Archer , a popular actress who had been nominated for an Academy Award for Fatal Attraction . She had always been proud to associate herself with Scientology in public, speaking at innumerable events on behalf of the Church, and her son Tommy embodied the aspiration of the Church to establish itself in the Hollywood community. He had known Cruise since he was 18 years old, so it was natural that he soon became the Church’s liaison with the star. Rathbun assigned Davis to sit with Cruise in the parking lot of a Home Depot in Hollywood while the star was doing his Tone Scale drills — guessing the emotional state of random people coming out of the store.( 4 )

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Rathbun was opposed to the endless courtship of Cruise. In his opinion, there was no need for it once Cruise was securely back in the Church’s fold. He told Miscavige , “I think I’m done with this guy.” Miscavige responded, “He’ll be done when he calls me.” Rathbun believes the leader was galled by the fact that Cruise had never contacted him when he came back for counseling.( 5 )

During the actor’s early years in the Church, Cruise and Miscavige , who are two years apart in age (Cruise was born in 1962, Miscavige in 1960), had been exceptionally close, drawn together by a similar meteoric rise to success. They were both short but powerfully built, “East Coast personalities,” said Sinar Parman , Miscavige’s then-private chef. They shared a love of motorcycles, cars and adventurous sports. Cruise had been a movie star since he was 21, with two popular movies in the same year, The Outsiders and Risky Business . By age 25, he was the biggest star in Hollywood, on his way to becoming a true movie legend. At the same age, Miscavige rose to his position atop Scientology. Each of these men assumed extraordinary responsibilities when their peers were barely beginning their careers, so it was natural that they would see themselves mirrored in each other.( 6 )

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Miscavige got involved in Scientology through his parents, who joined a Church near their Cherry Hill, N.J., home in the early 1970s and moved to its then-headquarters in Saint Hill, England, in 1972, where at the age of 12 David became one of the youngest auditors in the history of the Church — the “Wonder Kid,” he was called.( 7 )

On his 16th birthday in 1976, he dropped out of 10th grade and formally joined the Sea Org, whose members dress in military-style uniforms — a remnant of its original purpose as Hubbard’s private navy. Less than a year later, he was transferred to the Commodore’s Messengers in California, an even more elite inner circle that enforced religious doctrine and served as Hubbard’s personal assistants. Here he continued to capture the attention of the Church hierarchy with his energy and commitment, renovating one of Hubbard’s houses and ridding it of fiberglass (which the founder said he was allergic to). Miscavige filled a spot in the founder’s plans that once might have been occupied by his troubled son Quentin Hubbard , who died in 1976 at age 22, although Miscavige displayed a passion and focus that Quentin never really possessed. Miscavige was tough, tireless and doctrinaire.( 8 )

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He was just 19 when Hubbard promoted him to Action Chief, the person in charge of making sure that the founder’s directives were strictly and remorselessly carried out, and then at 23 to head of Special Project Ops, running missions around the world to fix sensitive problems that local Scientologists themselves could not handle.( 9 )

[After Hubbard died of complications from a stroke in January 1986, Miscavige consolidated power by becoming Chairman of the Board (COB) of the Religious Technology Center ( RTC ), which controlled the Church’s intellectual property, and forcing out Hubbard’s designated successors. By April 1988, he was essentially running Scientology, nominally reporting to a figurehead board, but in reality controlling the levers of power.]

When it came to Cruise, Miscavige was bedazzled by the glamour surrounding the star, who introduced him to a social set outside of Scientology, a world Miscavige knew little about, having spent most of his life cloistered in the Sea Org. He was thrilled when he visited Cruise on the set of Days of Thunder , and the actor took him skydiving for the first time. Cruise, for his part, fell under the spell of Miscavige’s commanding personality. He modeled his determined naval-officer hero in 1992’s A Few Good Men on Miscavige, a fact that the Church leader liked to brag about.( 10 )

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In the early ’90s, Miscavige surrounded Cruise and Kidman with a completely deferential environment as spotless and odorless as a fairy tale at Gold Base, Scientology’s desert outpost near Hemet, Calif. Miscavige heard about the couple’s fantasy of running through a field of wildflowers together, so he had Sea Org members plant a section of the desert with them; when that failed to meet his expectations, the meadow was plowed and sodded with grass. When a flood triggered a mudslide that despoiled a romantic bungalow specially constructed for the couple, Miscavige held the entire base responsible and ordered everyone to work 16-hour days until everything was restored.

Miscavige showed his instinctive understanding of how to cater to the sense of entitlement that comes with stardom. It was not just a matter of disposing of awkward personal problems, such as clinging spouses; there were also the endless demands for nourishment of an ego that is always aware of the fragility of success; the longing for privacy that is constantly at war with the demand for recognition; the need to be fortified against ordinariness and feelings of mortality; and the sense that the quality of the material world that surrounds you reflects upon your own value, and therefore everything must be made perfect. These were qualities Miscavige demanded for himself as well.( 11 )

Fourth footnote:  Interview with Jason Beghe. Interview with Tommy Davis.

Fifth footnote:  Interview with Mark “Marty” Rathbun. Interview with Tom De Vocht.

Sixth footnote:  Sinar Parman, personal communication.

Seventh footnote:  Interview with Karen de la Carriere.

Eighth footnote:  Deposition of David Miscavige Larry Wollersheim vs. David Miscavige and Church of Scientology California , Oct. 30, 1999; Deposition of David Miscavige, Bent Corydon vs. Church of Scientology , July 19, 1990.

Ninth footnote:  Deposition of David Miscavige,  Bent Corydon vs. Church of Scientology , July 19, 1990.

Tenth footnote: Interview with Mark “Marty” Rathbun.

11th footnote:  Affidavit of Andre Tabayoyon, Aug. 19, 1999. Interviews with Marc Headley. Interview with Amy Scobee. Karen Pressley interview on One Day One Destiny , a French documentary produced by Magneto Presse, 2009.

Miscavige also cultivated Cruise to be a spiritual leader, not just a follower, having him trained as an auditor at Gold Base. Sixteen-year-old Sea Org member Marc Headley says he was among the first people audited by Cruise. He reported to a large conference room and right away noticed Kidman, who was also receiving auditing, and Kirstie Alley , whom he later came to believe was there mainly as a “celebrity prop,” since she did little other than read.

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“Hello, I am Tom,” Headley remembers Cruise saying, vigorously shaking his hand. (Cruise, through his attorney, says he has no recollection of meeting Headley.) The actor handed Headley the metal cans that were attached to the E-Meter and asked if the temperature in the room was all right. Then he instructed Headley to take a deep breath and let it out. This was a metabolism test, which is supposed to show whether the subject was prepared for the session. Apparently, the needle on the E-Meter didn’t fall sufficiently. Headley was so starstruck that he was having trouble focusing.

“Did you get enough sleep?” Cruise asked.

“Yeah.”

“Did you get enough to eat?”

“Did you take your vitamins?”

Headley said he never took vitamins.

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“That might be the problem,” Cruise said. He went into the pantry, which was filled with snacks for the celebrities. Headley was used to the meager Sea Org fare, and he was taken aback by the cornucopia laid out. The actor found several vitamins and then asked, “Do you take a lot of bee pollen?”

Headley had no idea what he meant.

“Never had bee pollen?” Cruise said excitedly. “Oh, that will do the trick for sure.”

He led Headley to his Yamaha motorcycle and rode the two of them to the base canteen. It was dinnertime, and the canteen was filled with Headley’s gawking co-workers. Headley was surprised to learn that there was bee pollen for sale, though he says Cruise didn’t pay for it; he just grabbed it, and they went back to the conference room. This time, Headley passed the metabolism test, though he privately credited a Danish he ate over the bee pollen.

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According to Headley, Cruise helped him through the Upper Indoctrination Training Routines. “Look at the wall,” Cruise would have said, according to Hubbard’s specifications. “Thank you. Walk over to the wall. Thank you. Touch the wall. Thank you.” The purpose of this exercise, according to Hubbard, is to “assert control over the preclear and increase the preclear’s havingness.” (“Clear” is the state novice Scientologists aspire to that signals their subconscious, or “reactive,” mind is free.)

Cruise went on to ask Headley to make an object — such as a desk — hold still or become more solid. Another exercise involved telling an ashtray to stand up, at which point the novice stands and lifts the ashtray, thanks the ashtray and then commands the ashtray to sit down. With each repetition, the commands get louder, so soon he is yelling at the ashtray at the top of his voice. The purpose is to come to the realization that your intention is separate from your words and the sound waves that carry them. These procedures went on for hours as Headley robotically responded to Cruise’s commands. “You learn that if you don’t do what they say, they’ll just ask the same questions 5 million times,” Headley recalled.( 12 )

12th footnote:  Headley, Blown for Good , pp. 116-18. Hubbard, “Training and CCH Processes,” HCO Bulletin, June 11, 1957, reissued May 12, 1972

After becoming associated with Cruise, the style of Miscavige’s life came to reflect that of a fantastically wealthy and leisured movie star. He normally awakens at noon, with a cup of coffee and a Camel cigarette. Then he takes breakfast, the first of his five meals.( 13 )

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According to Parman, the chef, he was eating “three squares and a snack at night” until the late-’90s, when he said he wanted to “get ripped and have six-pack abs” like bodybuilders featured in magazines. At the time, Miscavige changed physical trainers, began taking bodybuilding supplements and adopted a diet that requires each meal to be at least 40 percent protein and to contain no more than 400 calories. Soon, he was looking like the men in the magazines.

To maintain Miscavige’s physique, chefs have to enter each portion size into a computer. Miscavige often starts the day with an omelet of one whole egg and five egg whites. Two-and-a-half hours later, lunch is provided. Two choices would be prepared daily, for both him and his wife. Dinner is a five-course meal, and once again, dual entrees are prepared for him to choose from. Miscavige’s favorite foods include wild mushroom risotto, linguine in white clam sauce and pate de foie gras. Several times a week, a truck from Santa Monica Seafood delivers Atlantic salmon or live lobster. Corn-fed lamb is flown in from New Zealand.

When guests such as Cruise come to dinner at his well-appointed house, the kitchen goes into extravagant bursts of invention, with ingredients sometimes flown in from different continents. Two hours after dinner, the first evening snack arrives, with lighter offerings such as Italian white bean soup or clam chowder. After midnight, there is a final late-night snack — a selection of nonfat cheeses, an apple crisp or blueberry crepes, often garnished with edible flowers. Two full-time chefs work all day preparing these meals, with several full-time stewards to serve them. According to Headley’s wife, Claire, who oversaw the finances for the Religious Technology Center between 2000 and 2004, the food costs for the Miscaviges and their guests would range between $3,000 to as much as $20,000 a week.( 14 )

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At the end of the evening, Miscavige retires to his den and drinks Macallan scotch and plays backgammon with members of his entourage or listens to music on his $150,000 stereo system (he loves Michael Jackson) or watches movies in his private screening room (his favorite films are Scarface and The Godfather trilogy). He usually turns in around three or four in the morning.( 15 )

He collects guns, maintains at least six motorcycles and has a number of automobiles, including an armor-plated GMC Safari van with bulletproof windows and satellite television and a souped-up Saleen Mustang that Cruise gave him to match his own. Until 2007, when he traveled, Miscavige would often rent Cruise’s Gulfstream jet, but he has since upgraded to renting a roomier Boeing business jet, at a cost of $30,000 to $50,000 a trip. His uniforms and business suits are fashioned by Richard Lim , a Los Angeles tailor whose clients include Cruise, Will Smith and Martin Sheen . Miscavige’s shoes are custom-made in London by John Lobb , bootmaker to the royal family. His wardrobe fills an entire room, and two full-time stewards are responsible for his cleaning and laundry. Cruise admired the housecleaning so much — even Miscavige’s light bulbs are polished once a month — that the Church leader sent a Sea Org team to Cruise’s Telluride retreat to train the star’s staff.( 16 )

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Miscavige keeps a number of dogs, including five beagles. He had blue vests made up for each of them, with four stripes on the shoulder epaulets, indicating the rank of Sea Org Captain. He insists that people salute the dogs as they parade by. The dogs have a treadmill where they work out. A full-time staff member feeds, walks and trains the dogs and enters one of them, Jelly, into contests, where he has attained championship status.( 17 )

13th footnote:  Reitman, Inside Scientology , p. 290.

14th footnote:  Reitman,  Inside Scientology , p. 290. Interviews with Tom De Vochit and Mark “Marty” Rathbun. Information about David Miscavige’s diet comes from his former chefs, Sinar Parman and Lana Mitchell.

15th footnote:  Reitman, Inside Scientology , p. 319. Interview with Mark “Marty” Rathbun. Interview with Tom De Vocht. Lana Mitchell, “Hot and cold Running Servants,” June 27, 2011, www.scientology-cult.com/hot-and-cold-running-servants.html. Sinar Parman says that when Miscavige is in Clearwater, he generally rises at 9 a.m.

16th footnote:  Interviews with Mike Rinder, Janela Webster, John Brousseau and Noriyuki Matsumaru. John Brousseau, personal correspondence. Lana Mitchell, “Hot and Cold Running Servants.”

17th footnote:  Interviews with Marc Headley, Claire Headley and John Brousseau.

One of Miscavige’s favorites, a Dalmatian/pit bull mix named Buster, went on a rampage one day and killed 10 peacocks on the property, and then the dog proudly laid out his kill for all to see. Buster also attacked various members of the staff — sending one elderly woman to the emergency room — before being transferred to another base, causing staffers to joke he had been sent to the dog equivalent of Scientology rehabilitation.( 18 )

The contrast with the other Sea Org members is stark. They eat in a mess hall, which features a meat-and-potatoes diet and a salad bar, except for occasional extended periods of rice and beans. The average cost per meal as of 2005 (according to Headley, who participated in the financial planning each week) was about 75 cents a head — significantly less than what is spent per inmate in the California prison system.

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When members join the Sea Org, they are issued two sets of pants, two shirts and a pair of shoes, which is their lifetime clothing allotment; anything else, they purchase themselves. Although the nominal pay for Sea Org members is $50 a week, many are fined for various infractions, so it’s not unusual to be paid as little as $13 or $14.( 19 )

There are lavish exercise facilities at the base — an Olympic-size pool, a golf course, basketball courts — but they are rarely used. Few are permitted to have access to computers. Every personal phone call is listened to; every letter is inspected. Cultural touchstones common to most Americans are often lost on Sea Org members at Gold Base. They may not know the name of the president of the United States or be able to tell the difference between the Republican and Democratic parties. It’s not as if there is no access to outside information; there is a big-screen television in the dining hall, and people can listen to the radio or subscribe to newspapers and magazines; however, news from the outside world begins to lose its relevance when people are outside of the wider society for extended periods of time. Many Sea Org members have not left the base for a decade.( 20 )

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Cruise’s renwed dedication to Scientology following his divorce from Kidman permanently changed the relationship between the Church and the Hollywood celebrity community. Miscavige and Cruise became closer than ever. The Church leader flew with Cruise in the Warner Bros. jet to a test screening of The Last Samurai in Arizona. In July 2004, Miscavige hosted a 42nd birthday party for Cruise aboard the Scientology cruise ship Freewinds. Musicians (including Miscavige’s father) played songs from the actor’s movies as clips played on giant screens. Cruise himself danced and sang “Old Time Rock and Roll,” reprising his famous scene from Risky Business .( 21 )

Cruise later said of Miscavige: “I have never met a more competent, a more intelligent, a more compassionate being outside of what I have experienced from [studying L. Ron Hubbard]. And I’ve met the leaders of leaders. I’ve met them all.”( 22 )

18th footnote:  Interview with Marc Headley. Claire Headley, personal correspondence.

19th footnote:  Dan Koon, personal correspondence. Interviews with Janela Webster, Daniel Montalvo and Sandy Kent Fullerr. Mike Rinder, Lana Mitchell, Mariette Lindstein and John Brousseau, personal communication. http://markrathbun.files.wordpress.com/2011/11/transcript_of_bryan_seymour_interview_with_lana_mitchell_17b1u9r-17b1u9t.pdf

21st footnote:  Tony Ortega, ‘Scientology’s Cruise Ship as Prison,”  Runnin’ Scared  (blog)  The Village Voice , Nov. 29, 2011. http://blogs.villagevoice.com/runninscared/2011/11/valeska_paris_chris_guider_scientology_freewinds.php.

22nd footnote:  2004 International Association of Scientologists Freedom Medal of Valor Ceremony. 

[In 2004 Miscavige assigned a team to help Cruise in his search for a girlfriend. The search came up with an aspiring actress Nazanin Boniadi , a 25-year-old Iranian born, London-raised woman whose mother was also a Scientologist. She was given intensive auditing and security checks by the Church and flown to New York and Telluride in late 2007 for elaborate dates with Cruise.]

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But the relationship ended when Miscavige addressed comments to her and she couldn’t quite understand what he said. She had to ask him to repeat himself more than once.

The next day both Davis and Cruise dressed her down for disrespecting the Church leader. Naz had embarrassed Miscavige because he wasn’t able to get his message across. With his characteristic intensity, Cruise himself later explained the seriousness of the situation:( 23 )

“You don’t get it, it goes like this,” Cruise said. He raised his hand over his head. “First there’s LRH.” He moved his hand down a few inches. “Then there is COB.” Bringing his hand down to his own eye level, he said, “Then there’s me.” (Cruise’s attorney denies that this exchange took place or that the Church set him up.)( 24 )

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A few months later, in April 2005, Cruise met Katie Holmes . The two were married in November 2006. Miscavige was Cruise’s best man. [Though she was often seen with Scientology officials, it has never been revealed how much, if any, Scientology training Holmes engaged in before she and Cruise divorced in 2012.]

Cruise poured millions of dollars into the Church — $3 million in 2004. He was not simply a figurehead; he was an activist with an international following. He could take the Church to places it had never been before. Whenever Cruise traveled abroad to promote his movies, he used the opportunity to lobby foreign leaders and American ambassadors to promote Scientology.( 25 )

Cruise repeatedly consulted with President Clinton , lobbying him to get Prime Minister Tony Blair ‘s help in getting the Church of Scientology declared a tax-deductible charitable organization in the U.K. Rathbun was present for one telephone call in which Clinton advised Cruise he would be better served by contacting Blair’s wife, Cherie, rather than the prime minister because she was a lawyer and “would understand the details.” Later, Cruise went to London, where he met with a couple of Blair’s representatives, though nothing came of those efforts.( 26 )

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In 2003, he met with Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage and Vice President Dick Cheney ‘s chief of staff, Scooter Libby , to express the Church’s concerns over its treatment in Germany. Cruise had access to practically anyone in the world.( 27 )

That same year, Cruise and Davis lobbied Rod Paige , the secretary of education during the first term of President George W. Bush , to endorse Hubbard’s “study tech” educational methods. Paige had been impressed. For months, Cruise kept in contact with Paige’s office, urging that Scientology techniques be folded into the president’s No Child Left Behind program.( 28 )

23rd footnote:  Maureen Orth, “What Katie Didn’t Know,”  Vanity Fair , Oct. 2012.

24th footnote:  Interview with Mark “Marty” Rathbun. Rathbun,  The Scientology Reformation , p. 86.

25th footnote:  Reitman,  Inside Scientology , p. 286. 

26th footnote:  Mike Rinder interview.

27th footnote: Reitman,  Inside Scientology , p. 286.

28th footnote:  Reitman, Inside Scientology , p. 286.

One day, Cruise flew his little red-and-white-striped Pitts Special biplane, designed for aerobatics, to Hemet, along with his Scientologist chief of staff, Michael Doven . Miscavige and Rathbun picked them up and drove them to Gold Base. Rathbun was in the back seat and recalls Cruise boasting to COB about his talks with the secretary.

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“Bush may be an idiot,” Miscavige observed, “but I wouldn’t mind his being our Constantine,” referring to the first Roman Emperor to convert to Christianity.

Cruise agreed. “If f–ing Arnold can be governor, I could be president.”

Miscavige responded, “Well, absolutely, Tom.”

(Cruise, through his lawyer, denies this exchange and says he has no political ambition.)( 29 )

Cruise turned his attention to the other Scientologists in the industry. Many had gone quiet following the negative publicity surrounding several high-profile exposés of the Church or had never openly admitted their affiliation with Scientology to begin with. Cruise called a meeting of other Scientology celebrities and urged them to become more outspoken. The popular singer Beck, who had grown up in the Church, subsequently began speaking openly about his faith. Erika Christensen, a rising young actress who was also a second-generation Scientologist, called Cruise her spiritual mentor.

Gun Scene Cut From Tom Cruise Movie Marketing in Wake of School Shooting

By the mid-2000s, Cruise was considered the unofficial Ethics Officer of Hollywood. He was the embodiment of Hubbard’s vision of a Church with temples dedicated to celebrity rather than God. Cruise’s intensity and commitment, along with his spectacular ambition, matched Miscavige’s own. It was as if Miscavige had rubbed a magic lantern and Cruise had appeared, a genie who could open any door. He was one of the few people Miscavige saw as a peer. Miscavige even wondered if there was some way to appoint Cruise the Church’s Inspector General for Ethics — Rathbun’s job.( 30 )

“He’d say that Tom Cruise was the only person in Scientology, other than himself, that he would trust to run the Church,” one former Sea Org member recalled. Rathbun observed: “Miscavige convinced Cruise that he and Tom were two of only a handful of truly ‘big beings’ on the planet. He instructed Cruise that LRH was relying upon them to unite with the few others of their ilk on earth to make it onto ‘Target Two’ — some unspecified galactic locale where they would meet up with Hubbard in the afterlife.”( 31 )

Lawrence Wright is a staff writer at The New Yorker and the author of six books , including The Looming Tower: Al Qaeda and the Road to 9/11 , which won the 2007 Pulitzer Prize.

Excerpted from Going Clear  by Lawrence Wright. Copyright (c) 2013by Lawrence Wright. Excerpted by permission of Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc. All rights reserved.    

twitter: thrbooks, andyblewis email: [email protected]    

29th footnote:  Interview with Mark “Marty” Rathbun.

30th footnote:  Morton,  Tom Cruise , p. 337.

31st footnote:  Reitman,  Inside Scientology , p. 290.

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How Scientology broke up Tom Cruise and Mimi Rogers: The story you haven’t heard

If the Church of Scientology was so active helping to break up Tom Cruise’s second marriage, how involved were they in ending his first, to actress Mimi Rogers?

In 2012, Rathbun told Vanity Fair writer Maureen Orth that Scientology had a hand in ending both relationships: “I participated in the Mimi divorce and in the Nic divorce. Both women got cold on Miscavige. He was integral to the breakup of the marriages,” Rathbun said. But Orth offered no more details on what had happened with Rogers. In Lawrence Wright’s 2013 book, Going Clear , which Gibney’s film is based on, there are a few more details about the split, including a quote from Rathbun about how he took divorce papers to Mimi and told her it was the best thing for Scientology.

But Rathbun tells us that there’s a much more involved story than has ever been published about how Scientology was involved in the breakup of Cruise and Rogers. With the help of Rathbun and several other sources, some of whom have never spoken for publication before, we’ve put together a story that should fill in some important gaps in the record.

Mimi Spickler was the daughter of a Scientology mission holder, Phil Spickler, who had taken up Dianetics in 1952 and had worked with L. Ron Hubbard at the Founding Church of Scientology in Washington DC. He was part of the old guard who helped Hubbard build Scientology, in part through the mission network, which funneled new members into the organization and could be lucrative for the mission holders themselves.

But after Hubbard went into total seclusion in 1980, the missions were targeted by a new cohort of leadership in the church, which included a very young David Miscavige. Miscavige and other members of the Sea Org held an infamous meeting in San Francisco in 1982 which decimated the missions. Phil Spickler left the church in disgust, but he didn’t abandon his interest in Hubbard or the subject of Scientology itself. (By church standards, that made him a “squirrel,” someone who practices Scientology outside of official channels.)

Mimi had grown up training in her father’s Palo Alto mission, becoming a Class VIII auditor. In 1977, she married Scientologist Jim Rogers, and they opened a field auditing office in Sherman Oaks they called the Scientology Enhancement Centre. She divorced Rogers in 1980 and sold the Enhancement Centre, but she still used it with one of her best friends, Kirstie Alley.

In 1985, Mimi Rogers met Tom Cruise, who was already becoming a major Hollywood star. They started dating in 1986, and she introduced him to Scientology, taking him to the Enhancement Centre.

  A close family friend to Mimi tells us that part of the reason Mimi wanted to get Cruise Scientology training was that she thought it would help him handle what she perceived to be his major flaw — his philandering. “Tom was fucking everything that moved,” the friend tells us. “But they were all women. I know why the gay rumors started later, but it had nothing to do with who he was having sex with. He slept with women, and he slept with a lot of them.”

Mimi was six years Tom’s senior, and two inches taller, but she accepted when he asked her to marry him. They had a small, secret ceremony in upstate New York with just a few people present, including Emilio Estevez, who was Tom’s best man.

The date: May 9, 1987, a date that is very important to Scientologists. On May 9, 1950, L. Ron Hubbard first published the book that changed his life and led to the Scientology movement, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health . The family friend says that Tom and Mimi then tried to have children, and when she didn’t get pregnant, the gay rumors started, and Cruise has never shaken them. Rogers later had two children with her current husband.

As Lawrence Wright explains in Going Clear , Cruise’s involvement in Scientology presented David Miscavige with a bit of a dilemma. On the one hand, after L. Ron Hubbard’s death in January 1986 Scientology desperately needed a new celebrity of Tom’s stature to improve its image. But on the other hand, he had got in through Rogers, who was connected to her “squirrel” father. “It would be one thing to have Tom Cruise as a trophy for Scientology, but it would be a disaster if he became a walking advertisement for the squirrels,” Wright pointed out.

If Mimi Rogers was hoping Scientology would help cure Tom of his predilection to sleep around, Marty Rathbun tells us that Miscavige was determined to use Scientology to encourage Tom’s adventures as a way to push Rogers away.

In 1989, Miscavige brought Cruise to Scientology’s secretive 500-acre “Int Base” near Hemet, California and assigned the church’s “Inspector General” — Sea Org executive Greg Wilhere — to be Tom’s auditor. Rathbun says that he and Wilhere shared an office in one of the compound’s buildings known as “The Villas” (Miscavige had another of them all to himself as his residence) and he was privy to the daily discussions as Miscavige told Wilhere what he wanted said to Cruise during his counseling sessions.

  “Miscavige was micromanaging the living hell out of it behind the scenes,” Rathbun says. “Miscavige wanted to own Tom. He didn’t want Spickler to have any connection to him. Dave was maneuvering himself into being Tom’s opinion leader and best friend. He needed Wilhere to convince Tom that anything good that happened to him, you have to attribute to Dave. The purpose was to make Dave a god in his eyes.” (John Brousseau, who escaped from the base in 2010, tells us Miscavige eventually prevailed .)

Filming for Days of Thunder began in the Charlotte area in the fall of 1989, and Cruise moved into a secluded lake house provided by Rick Hendrick of Hendrick Motorsports. About two weeks later, some household staff came into the dwelling and were surprised to see one of Cruise’s assistants waving at them, warning them not to come any further, and to keep quiet.

“He’s in there with a woman. We need to get out of here,” the assistant said. “He’s in bed with Nicole. I saw her arm and her hair, I know it’s her.”

Cruise had convinced producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer to cast Nicole Kidman for Days of Thunder after he’d seen her in Dead Calm . As Wright points out in Going Clear , her presence on the cast doesn’t make a lot of sense — at 22, she was too young to be the neurosurgeon she plays in the movie. But Cruise wanted her in, and he got her. And then, two weeks into the shoot, they were sleeping together back at his lake house.

Soon they were inseparable on the set, but because Cruise was still married to Rogers, they made some concessions to propriety. When the production moved to the Daytona area and a party was thrown at a local nightclub, they were careful to arrive separately.

A few weeks after that relationship started, however, Mimi Rogers was scheduled to visit the set. And Wilhere was ready for her. He was also on set with Cruise, and was auditing him, encouraging him about Nicole, as Miscavige wanted. When Mimi arrived, one member of the crew tells us, “The Scientologists were waiting for her. And they ‘handled’ her, in their language.”

When she realized what was going on, Mimi demanded that she and Cruise go through Scientology’s version of marriage counseling. We’ve written in the past about Scientology’s marriage counseling, which is as odd as you’d probably expect it to be. Mimi and Tom would be asked to sit down with an auditor, with each of them taking turns being quizzed. In Mimi’s case, for hour upon hour, she would be asked only two questions: “What have you done to Tom?” and “What have you withheld from Tom?” Then, it would be Tom’s turn to answer the same questions about Mimi, over and over.

  Rathbun tells us this process took place after the filming of Days of Thunder ended in May 1990, and at the International Base. He remembers that it took about a week, and Mimi left unsatisfied. “Both sides on that co-audit have to end up saying that they’re happy. That doesn’t mean that they have to stay married. But they never got there — Miscavige made sure of that,” he says.

After the counseling failed, Rathbun then stepped in to deliver the church’s instructions to Mimi that it was time for the marriage to end. He visited her, carrying divorce papers, and with an attorney whose very presence he knew would carry an unmistakable message. It was Sherman Lenske , who had been L. Ron Hubbard’s personal lawyer. Rathbun says the visit was intended to intimidate Mimi, and it worked. As he explained to Lawrence Wright, Rathbun told her something about how it was the best thing for Scientology (“the greatest good for the greatest number of dynamics,” is how Scientologists are convinced to give up their own interests to the group). But visiting her with Lenske sent a more subtle message, that she would regret not signing the papers. She signed, and Mimi was out of the picture.

Disgusted with how she was treated, Mimi quit the Church of Scientology that year, 1990. But her close family friend says that to this day, she still talks about the “tech” with her close friends. Like her father, she still has an interest in the Hubbard philosophy she grew up with. But she isn’t talking about her experiences. “She’s made it very clear she’s not going to talk about Scientology and Tom Cruise. She signed an agreement with Tom not to to talk about it,” the family friend tells us.

Meanwhile, Rathbun says that while the operation Miscavige had put in place through Greg Wilhere had produced the desired result, there was a new problem — it had worked too well. Now, Tom was talking about wanting to marry Nicole Kidman, and she had her own unsavory connections.

“It just shows you how twisted and corrupted Scientology is,” Rathbun says. “Why would Scientology want to promote Tom’s promiscuity? Because Mimi was connected to her father Phil Spickler, and Miscavige wanted to own Tom outright. But then, only a few months later, Wilhere got pummeled because he reported that Nicole had got her claws in, and Miscavige was now worried that she was going to lead him away.”

As Wright and Gibney explain in the film Going Clear , Kidman was “PTS” — a potential trouble source — because her father was a prominent Australian psychologist — a “suppressive person” or “SP” by Scientology’s standards. (Scientology hates psychology and psychiatry with a passion.) As Nicole began her own training in Scientology at the International Base, Rathbun says, it was his job to get her through the “PTS/SP Course,” which explains what it means for someone to be suppressive or a potential trouble source.

“I had to make my best effort to educate her that her father was an SP,” Rathbun says. “That didn’t fly too well.”

During one meeting when Miscavige came to the office shared by Rathbun and Wilhere, the Scientology leader asked Wilhere to drop a suggestion the next time he was auditing Cruise.

“He made this comment for Greg to try to get Tom to take another look at Nicole before getting married,” Rathbun says. “When they were together, Tom was saying how much he was into Nicole, and Dave was encouraging him. But behind his back, he told Wilhere to plant a seed to break them up.” And Rathbun says Miscavige expressed it in his usual tough-guy style.

“He thinks this Nicole thing is for real!” Rathbun says Miscavige screamed at Wilhere. “You son of a bitch, you better start planting a seed!”

But when Wilhere did try to suggest that Tom reconsider his plans, it backfired. “It pissed Tom off, and he reported it to David Miscavige. So then Miscavige made a public show of demoting Wilhere from his post as Inspector General. He was just like Captain Renault in Casablanca . He was shocked to learn that Wilhere would dare tell Tom such a thing. And the next thing you know, Dave is best man at the wedding of Tom and Nicole.” They were married on Christmas Eve, 1990.

Rathbun says Miscavige made a big show of stripping Wilhere of his position. “Wilhere was blown away. All of his certs were cancelled. And Miscavige was bragging to Tom that he’d busted him down,” Rathbun says. The role of Inspector General was then left open for seven years, from 1990 to 1997, until Rathbun himself was promoted into it. Wilhere then was rarely in a position to run anything — but Miscavige later used him to run the Nazanin Boniadi operation in 2004, as portrayed in Going Clear . (Wilhere was also one of the executives who ended up in “The Hole,” Miscavige’s bizarre office-prison, where his employees spent years at a time. Wilhere today is still working at the International Base.)

Meanwhile, Miscavige’s fears about Nicole’s commitment to Scientology proved prophetic. After a couple of years with Cruise, the two of them began pulling away from Scientology and then had very little connection to it from about 1993 to 2000, when their relationship came apart — and then in several ways that mirrored what had happened ten years earlier with Mimi Rogers.

Rathbun, who left Scientology in 2004, tells us he now regrets the part he played in the operation to separate Mimi and Tom. “I wrote to her and apologized for all that. She didn’t know the details of what we’d done, but she was generally hip to what was going on,” he says.

  In 1993, Rogers posed for Playboy , and was asked by the magazine why she and Cruise had split up. “Well, here’s the real story. Tom was seriously thinking of becoming a monk. At least for that period of time, it looked as though marriage wouldn’t fit into his overall spiritual need. And he thought he had to be celibate to maintain the purity of his instrument.” The magazine said that she added, drily, “My instrument needed tuning.”

Ever since, this quote has been repeated to explain why the couple split — because Tom Cruise was some sort of celibate seeker.

But her close family friend assures us that wasn’t the case.

“Mimi has a wry sense of humor, and that was just a joke.”

  ——————–

Audit your toddler now!

Mace-Kingsley Family Center in Clearwater is doing videos now. We bet you can’t wait to get your little one on the cans!

Posted by Tony Ortega on April 12, 2015 at 07:00

E-mail your tips and story ideas to [email protected] or follow us on Twitter . We post behind-the-scenes updates at our Facebook author page . Here at the Bunker we try to have a post up every morning at 7 AM Eastern (Noon GMT), and on some days we post an afternoon story at around 2 PM. After every new story we send out an alert to our e-mail list and our FB page.

Learn about Scientology with our numerous series with experts…

BLOGGING DIANETICS : We read Scientology’s founding text cover to cover with the help of LA attorney and former church member Vance Woodward

UP THE BRIDGE : Claire Headley and Bruce Hines train us as Scientologists

GETTING OUR ETHICS IN : Jefferson Hawkins explains Scientology’s system of justice

SCIENTOLOGY MYTHBUSTING : Historian Jon Atack discusses key Scientology concepts

PZ Myers reads L. Ron Hubbard’s “A History of Man” | Scientology’s Master Spies | Scientology’s Private Dancer The mystery of the richest Scientologist and his wayward sons | Scientology’s shocking mistreatment of the mentally ill The Underground Bunker’s Official Theme Song | The Underground Bunker FAQ

Our Guide to Alex Gibney’s film ‘Going Clear,’ and our pages about its principal figures… Jason Beghe | Tom DeVocht | Sara Goldberg | Paul Haggis | Mark “Marty” Rathbun | Mike Rinder | Spanky Taylor | Hana Whitfield

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Lawrence Wright: Why Tom Cruise Is Most Important Scientologist Since L. Ron Hubbard

"Going Clear" author Lawrence Wright on why Tom Cruise and John Travolta bear some responsibility for Scientology's alleged abuses

Scientology is one of the world’s most secretive religions. For decades, the controversial faith has used legal threats and intimidation to combat its critics and any reporters hoping to shine a light on its practices and beliefs.

Enter Lawrence Wright. The author of “The Looming Tower,” a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigation of al Qaeda, has produced an unflinching and densely researched look at the Church of Scientology, its self-aggrandizing founder, L. Ron Hubbard, and troubling allegations that some members suffer physical and psychological abuse.

Also read: ‘Inside Scientology’ Author: ‘They Have the Goods on Everybody’

Reviews of the book have been favorable, but not everyone is a fan. The Church of Scientology has struck back forcefully at Wright, launching a website it claims is dedicated to correcting mistakes in his reporting, and the book’s U.K. publisher dropped “Going Clear” after seeking legal advice. Libel laws in that country make it easier to successfully sue for defamation.

“Lawrence Wright’s book is so ludicrous it belongs in a supermarket tabloid,” the church said in a statement. “The book is an error-filled, unsubstantiated, bigoted anti-Scientology book.”

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Tom cruise’s p.r. coup: from wacky scientologist to ‘top gun’ golden boy.

For all the crazy aerial maneuvers and tricky stunts in “Top Gun: Maverick,” the most impressive one takes place on the ground.

Tom Cruise has piloted his way back into America’s hearts and made everyone forget his days as an unhinged Scientology ambassador with a penchant for jumping on Oprah’s couch.

The sequel — which was delayed multiple times due to the COVID pandemic — raked in a record-breaking $156 million its opening weekend.

Now 59, Cruise hardly looks like he’s scraping his sixth decade. He’s still performing his own stunts, showing off his impossibly ripped torso on-screen and flashing his trademark smile that seduced audiences early in his career. He’s been ubiquitous, working international red carpets in Japan and Cannes and even hobnobbing with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge, whom he helped up the steps at the film’s London premiere .

Cruise’s fingerprints are on every aspect of the movie, including the intense flight training for actors and pushing for an in-theater release — the timing of which couldn’t be more perfect. Moviegoers are even welcomed with a prerecorded message from the actor thanking them for making the trip to see it in theaters.

It’s been such a triumph and testament to Cruise’s enduring movie magic that it’s difficult to remember the “Jerry Maguire” star had become almost toxic two decades ago and branded a wacky zealot.

While promoting “War of the Worlds” in 2005, the usually private star infamously stood on Oprah’s couch and proclaimed his love for then-fiancée Katie Holmes, whom he’d marry before divorcing in 2012 . He then sat down with Matt Lauer of “Today” and lambasted him over the use of antidepressants, saying, “You don’t know the history of psychiatry. I do.”

The damage to his reputation was amplified at a time when celebrity blogs and YouTube were coming into existence, allowing his bizarre antics to go viral. He also was increasingly seen as the face of Scientology, which was starting to endure a p.r. crisis of its own. (An embarrassing video in which Cruise extolled the virtues of Scientology was leaked in 2008.) It didn’t help that he had parted ways with Pat Kingsley, his hard-nosed, controlling publicist, in favor of his sister, Lee Ann DeVette.

However, that was only part of the story.

At first, what happened off-screen didn’t affect his big-screen appeal. In fact, the Steven Spielberg-directed flick opened to $64.9 million. But then, the following year, Viacom head Sumner Redstone briefly ended Paramount’s working relationship with the actor’s production company , citing his “unacceptable” fanatical behavior, which he said negatively impacted ticket sales for “Mission: Impossible III.”

The effect on Cruise was profound.

“It was like he came out in front of the curtain, and he had tomatoes tossed at him, so he closed the curtain. He made his world very small,” Amy Nicholson, the author of “ Tom Cruise: The Anatomy of an Actor ,” told The Post.

He dropped his sister for veteran publicist Paul Bloch, who passed away in 2018.

Nicholson said Cruise, who had previously taken supporting roles in offbeat Oscar vehicles like “Rain Man,” instead opted for the safe blockbusters that continued to pull in money and adoration from the masses.

While he shut down any attention on his personal life, he used red carpet premieres to charm audiences across the world.

“I think Tom was always savvy about publicity. He was always that person who was going to do more country visits and more red carpets and set the template for the global star. Then Will Smith followed,” said Nicholson.

Cruise has also pushed back against the trend of celebrities becoming accessible and relatable on social media — and it’s been to his advantage.

“There’s a lot of pressure to make pasta on Instagram Live,” Nicholson added. “Do you want to be people’s friends or a movie star?”

Even people like Smith, who was riding in Cruise’s wake, joined in his wife’s salacious tell-alls — airing their dirty laundry and details about their open marriage — before slapping Chris Rock at this year’s Oscars . Add in Johnny Depp’s grotesque warts-and-all defamation trial against his ex-wife Amber Heard, and we’re watching the unraveling of our Hollywood A-listers in real-time.

According to Matt Belloni of Puck News , the “Top Gun: Maverick” premiere was highly controlled and media outlets were vetted to ensure they wouldn’t ask about Scientology issues.

“It’s almost exclusively TV, and outlets were informed they must use professional-grade cameras, no iPhone footage allowed. That’s unusual, but Tom is Tom, and Tom’s got to look great,” Belloni said.

If shaky iPhone footage appears, it’s Cruise with a fan, said Nicholson.

“When you work with Tom Cruise, you know it’s going to be a first-rate event,” said a veteran publicist who has worked many junkets and premieres with the actor. “Everything will be buttoned up. He is very focused.”

The publicist explained that he’s a singular force during the premieres.

“He’s genuinely a nice person to staffers, publicists and fans,” she said, recalling a junket in Vienna for a “Mission: Impossible” where it was roasting hot.

He wrapped up an interview, looked over at her and noticed she wasn’t comfortable. “He asked if I was OK and if I wanted to go stand in the shade. He’s very aware of his surroundings.”

And his controversial religion aside, he still has the clout of the a bonafide Tinseltown titan.

“When you are in his presence, you feel like you are in the presence of a movie star,” the publicist said. “There’s not many actors I can say that about.”

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Should We Separate Tom Cruise’s Scientology Beliefs From His Movies?

Plus some other random thoughts about ‘Mission: Impossible — Fallout’

In the wake of Harvey Weinstein and #MeToo, audiences have been put into the new position — if they weren’t before — of having to grapple with the relationship between the artist and his art. For anyone who’s enjoyed a Woody Allen movie, a Louis C.K. stand-up set or a Kevin Spacey performance, it’s no longer simply a question of reflexively excusing the performer’s questionable personal life to enjoy his terrific work. This isn’t to say that you can’t or shouldn’t enjoy their work, but to pretend that the two realms — the creative and the personal — are completely separate moral spheres is naïve. I know, because I used to feel that way about problematic artists, and while I don’t think there’s a one-size-fits-all rule for evaluating creative work from such performers, I realized I needed to be more cognizant of the people who were taken advantage of by these artists.

But the way we feel about problematic artists isn’t uniform, partly because what makes them problematic isn’t. Case in point: This weekend saw the release of the summer’s best action movie — the best one in a few summers, actually — featuring one of Hollywood’s most reliable stars. Mission: Impossible — Fallout is an excellent film , and a lot of its pleasure comes from watching Tom Cruise do his own stunts, sprint with breakneck urgency and generally give 110 percent in every single scene. As Ethan Hunt, the seemingly ageless leader of the Impossible Missions Force, Cruise is compelling and inspiring. I love this franchise, I love this film and I hope it makes a trillion dollars.

But in an era where we hold entertainers to a higher standard — refusing to overlook what might be troublesome about them — why have the media, in the buildup to Fallout , hardly mentioned the fact that Cruise is a Scientologist? Why has his association with the controversial religion barely registered amidst the movie’s buzz?

Daily Beast ’s Kevin Fallon wondered the same thing , writing a piece this past week entitled “Why Is No One Talking About Tom Cruise and Scientology?” In his essay, Fallon makes clear that he loves Cruise’s movies, but he’s surprised that there’s been little recent acknowledgment (let alone criticism) of Scientology’s alleged history of harassment and abuse . As Fallon admits, press tours for big stars are often fawning affairs, “[b]ut that doesn’t make [Scientology’s legacy’s] erasure any less aggravating, the media complicity in fostering an inaccurate image of an influential member of a reportedly oppressive organization any less irresponsible and our collective willingness to accept all of this in the name of enjoying a badass movie any less damning.” Other performers have been scrutinized for their questionable acts, but Cruise apparently gets a pass.

Let’s first acknowledge that Cruise himself hasn’t been accused of harassment, assault or abuse. And so, on one level, blasting Cruise for his long, sometimes publicly passionate association with Scientology would be like condemning a movie star who’s Catholic just because of the Church’s history of hiding sexual assault. And yet, since Cruise is a highly decorated, high-profile member of Scientology, he presumably has more clout in how the organization conducts itself. It’s Cruise’s prerogative not to talk about Scientology if he doesn’t want to, but it’s the media’s (and audience’s) prerogative to criticize its behavior and hold him at least partly accountable.

Now that I’ve said all that, it’s time to admit my own complicity in these matters. I’ve read the reports from Paul Haggis and others about how toxic the Church of Scientology can be. I’ve watched Alex Gibney’s sobering documentary Going Clear . And yet, I find myself absolutely untroubled watching Cruise on-screen. I’ve already seen Fallout twice and am considering seeing it again. Why doesn’t it bother me that Cruise is a Scientologist?

I think my answer goes back to what I was saying earlier about why I like Cruise so much in the Mission: Impossible films. It’s not just that he runs and jumps and risks his life in elaborate, bravura action sequences — it’s that he exudes so much effort in the name of entertaining me. He suffers for my pleasure. And, in a weird way, I equate that with some form of penance on his part. He gives 110 percent because he knows he has to make amends.

BuzzFeed News critic Alison Willmore touched on this, somewhat, Thursday when she wrote about Cruise’s try-hard aesthetic . “There may be leading men with fresher faces out there in Hollywood,” Willmore observes, “but Cruise seems determined to prove with every second of screentime that none of them will ever work as hard as he does. Trying has become Cruise’s reason for being, or at least his reason for remaining famous.”

Central to Cruise’s appeal is that he gives off the impression that he cares more about entertaining the masses than his fellow stars do. It’s one of the reasons that he lets us know that he does his own stunts — with Cruise, there’s always a sense that he wants us to feel like we’re getting our money’s worth. And so, he puts his body in harm’s way. He breaks bones, like when he performed a Fallout stunt on a busted ankle . He spends years training to fly helicopters just for our amusement. He’ll do whatever it takes to hold on to our love.

There’s something about the rigor and arduousness of doing something physical — and doing it for our approval — that feels akin to a moral cleansing. In sports movies in which the underdog triumphs, part of the process of becoming the champ usually involves facing down some personal demon or deep insecurity — only by winning the big game in some grueling, demanding fashion do they prove (to themselves and to us) that they’ve conquered their internal obstacle as well. Comeback narratives are prevalent throughout society, but in sports they’re especially potent: In society’s mind, a fallen star like Michael Vick somehow redeems his past sins through amazing exploits on the field.

What does one have to do with the other? Nothing, but we’ve been conditioned to believe that hard, physical work ennobles us, improves us, emancipates us from our failings. No (physical) pain, no (spiritual) gain.

I don’t think Cruise consciously thinks about this when he’s mapping out his next gonzo stunt sequence, of which there are several superb ones in Fallout . More likely, he just lives for this kind of high-octane blockbuster — he feeds off the rush of his fans’ adoration. But while being wowed by his latest film, I found myself very consciously separating art from artist, glorious spectacle from troublesome individual. For all my talk of thinking about victims, I permitted myself to just enjoy the sheer balletic thrill of watching an incredible movie star do his thing more joyously than any other actor alive. I wanted to believe in him  — and just forget everything else.

These are the decisions we have to make going forward with “problematic” artists. For some, we’ll be willing to overlook their failings because of the creative work they do. And even for those who can’t overlook some of those failings, if we’re being honest, we’re all pretty hypocritical when we make choices about which artists we’ll give a pass. It’s a complicated conundrum that not even the wily Ethan Hunt can escape.

Here are a few other takeaways from Mission: Impossible — Fallout . (Warning: There will be spoilers.)

#1. So, is the first ‘ Mission: Impossible’ good or what?

It’s now been more than two decades since director Brian De Palma and then-budding producer Tom Cruise worked together to adapt the Bruce Geller television series that ran from 1966 to 1973. At that moment, Cruise was flying high, riding a series of diverse hits that included A Few Good Men , The Firm and Interview With the Vampire . As for De Palma, he was in the midst of a commercial swan dive, its zenith being 1990’s disastrous adaptation of Tom Wolfe’s The Bonfire of the Vanities . As the director himself admitted years later, he desperately needed a hit:

I haven’t seen the first Mission: Impossible since it opened in May 1996, but I was curious to revisit it — particularly because some colleagues (many of them huge De Palma fans) swore by the film. I didn’t remember it that fondly: My memory was that it had a few great action sequences and a really confusing storyline. For my money, the recent M:I sequels were far superior.

But after watching Fallout , in which an arms dealer named White Widow (Vanessa Kirby) is revealed to be the daughter of Max (Vanessa Redgrave) from the De Palma film, I decided to give the original a fresh look.

So, had I been wrong all along about 1996’s Mission: Impossible ? Well, it’s actually better than I remembered. De Palma’s stylish camerawork, cheeky theatricality and playful sense of paranoia make for a fun thriller. But, to my surprise, what really held back the first M:I was Cruise himself.

In the 1996 film, Cruise plays Ethan Hunt for the first time, and in this movie, he’s very much a cocky hotshot in the Maverick/ Top Gun vein. Cruise was still in his early 30s, and back then, he radiated this noxious swagger that could be incredibly off-putting. He didn’t come across as confident — he just seemed like a twit. And having a twit at the helm of a Mission: Impossible film significantly undercuts the drama. Throughout, Hunt just seems too brash and callow to be fully sympathetic, and so, the stakes aren’t as high as they should be.

If anything, the original Mission: Impossible made me appreciate the older Cruise all the more. In the recent films, Hunt is haunted by the choices he’s made, and even though he still carries himself as an invincible warrior, he often fails and gets banged up — he’s remarkably human. Watching the De Palma movie again made me realize the subtle transformation that the character has gone on since the 1990s. In subsequent films, he’s had to let go of the love of his life, and he’s had to say goodbye to people close to him — time has changed him, and made him more interesting and compelling. And along the way, Cruise has become a better actor, more nuanced and emotionally measured.

So, my verdict remains that the first Mission: Impossible is just okay. The 10-minute vault heist, however, is still incredible.

#2. How believable are real-life masks?

The Mission: Impossible films have had a proud tradition of including tons of scenes where characters wear hyper-realistic masks and then, dramatically, rip them off. I can’t get enough of this trope.

The question, of course, is whether or not real-life masks are as flawless as the ones in the Cruise films. While it doesn’t look like you can create them as quickly as the IMF team can, we now have the technology to make scary-accurate silicone masks.

For example, artist and sculptor Landon Meier has a site called HyperFlesh where he shows off his “[d]isturbingly realistic masks that will terrify, confuse and excite the masses.” These masks of Trump and Putin are, indeed, deeply freaky:

The Denver Post interviewed Meier last year to learn about how he made his masks, learning his formula:

He’s a sculptor by trade, and used to push and pull his molds by hand out of clay. Now that he’s switched over to a 3-D printer, which helps him dial in pore-perfect likenesses, he clicks and drags on a digital ball of clay. For celebrities, he references the internet, scouring for photos of the same facial expression from different angles. After he’s shaped the facial structure on his computer, his 3-D printer (made by Loveland’s Aleph Objects ) prints out a mold. Meier then fills the mold with silicon and painstakingly paints each freckle, blemish and mottled cheek by hand. In all, the masks take from 40 to 150 hours to complete.

The key to Meier’s creations is in the name. The skin is semi-translucent, the result of a proprietary blend of silicon, pigments and other top-secret ingredients. He’s constantly refining his mixture, and estimates he’s gone through 100 different combinations of skin recipes in his quest to create what he calls “accurate flesh.”

Meier told The Denver Post that some of his masks have gone for more than $14,000. And thus far, none of the famous people he’s depicted have sued for using their likeness without permission. “I haven’t run into any trouble yet,” he said. “If a celeb asks, I’ll make them one for free. And then we’re usually all good.”

It doesn’t appear that he’s made a Tom Cruise mask yet.

#3. Is ‘ Mission: Impossible’ the best current movie franchise?

Yes. Yes, of course it is. Writing in The Washington Post , film critic Scott Tobias offered an explanation for why, arguing that the series isn’t encumbered by the elaborate world-building that’s become part of so many modern franchises, especially the Marvel superhero films. “Because there’s no interest in a larger mythology,” Tobias notes, “the only true mission the sequels have is to keep topping their predecessors.”

But I think there are other reasons M:I outranks the recent Star Wars movies, the MCU and any other current franchise you could name. Chief among them is that, for as popular as the Mission: Impossible films have been, they’re not so beloved in the culture that they’ve engendered the kind of insane, possessive fandom that’s ruined so many other series. Take The Last Jedi , a great movie almost totally ruined by the toxic nonsense of online fans who were angry that it “ruined” their childhood and dared mess with the formula. Too often, a new superhero film is just an excuse for diehard fanboys to wage petty wars while busily marking their territory. All of that vitriol makes moviegoing feel exhausting.

By comparison, Fallout is just another well-liked, well-made installment in a well-liked, well-made franchise. There’s shockingly little to fight about when discussing a new M:I movie. Were the stunts cool? Were there some fun twists? Was Tom Cruise awesome? Yes, yes and yes — end of story.

Fallout had the highest opening weekend of any movie in the series, but when you look at these films’ commercial track record , their worldwide grosses are relatively minor in comparison to other franchises. The biggest hit, 2011’s Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol , pulled in just under $700 million worldwide. Eleven MCU films have done better than that. In fact, not a single Tom Cruise movie is in the Top 100 worldwide grossers . By blockbuster standards, Mission: Impossible is practically a scrappy indie movie. Fine by me: If it was more popular, fanboys might start taking notice and ruining everything I love about it.

Tim Grierson

Tim Grierson is a contributing editor at MEL. He writes about film and pop culture for Screen International, Rolling Stone and Vulture.

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Inside Scientology's swanky British countryside HQ - where Tom Cruise is spending lockdown

It's one of the most mysterious religions in the world, shrouded in secrecy, but new images give a sneak peek into the luxurious life enjoyed by those living at the UK headquarters of Scientology in East Grinstead, where A-list star Tom Cruise is believed to be staying during the coronavirus pandemic lockdown.

The West Sussex HQ had a cash injection of $16 million in 2016, with the renovation updating it into a crash pad worthy of a world-famous star. Built in 1792, Saint Hill Manor features ivy-strewn turrets fit for a fairytale, as well as chandeliered dining rooms with plush burgundy seating and warm, wooden-floored lounges decked out with tapestries galore.

There's also an all-glass restaurant, run by an unnamed Michelin-star chef who used to work for Gordon Ramsay at his Royal Hospital Road restaurant, ensuring followers get only the best cuisine, plus a state-of-the-art fitness centre, where Cruise et all can undertake the 'Purification Rundown', a test that is believed to remove all toxins.

In terms of study - something which is key to Scientology - the large library is well-stocked with many first-edition books, a lot of them written by Scientology's founding father, L. Ron Hubbard - no doubt good for anyone doing a course here.

Screen Rant

Icons unearthed: tom cruise creator on exploring the movie star’s personal & professional lives.

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Top Gun 3 Story Update Given By Producer Jerry Bruckheimer

The office remake trailer reveals a new cast of disgruntled characters, georgie & mandy's first marriage: release date, cast, story, trailer & everything we know about the young sheldon spinoff.

Vice TV and The Nacelle Company’s Icons Unearthed series steps away from film and TV franchises for the first time with Icons Unearthed: Tom Cruise . Instead of exploring well-known properties like Star Wars, The Simpsons , and Marvel, Icons Unearthed: Tom Cruise charts the rise of one of the world’s biggest movie stars. Starting with Cruise’s origins in movies like Taps and The Outsider, the series aims to highlight a different aspect of Cruise’s life in each of its six episodes, which have titles like “The Stuntman”, “The Producer”, and “The Mentor”.

Icons Unearthed: Tom Cruise marks the 10th season of the series, which was created by The Nacelle Company founder Brian Volk-Weiss. Volk-Weiss has directed every season of the series, from the first Star Wars -focused series to Icons Unearthed: Spider-Man . He also led the charge on The Nacelle Company’s other well-known series like The Toys That Made Us and The Movies That Made Us .

Exclusive: Producer Jerry Bruckheimer provides an update on Top Gun 3's story and when the sequel will be made considering Tom Cruise's busy schedule.

Screen Rant interviewed Volk-Weiss about finally getting to dive into Cruise’s life and work for his series (Volk-Weiss revealed his desire to cover Cruise during a 2022 interview with Screen Rant about Icons Unearthed: Star Wars ). Volk-Weiss detailed the tricky task of choosing which of Cruise’s projects to focus on over the season’s 6 episodes and revealed the movie that inspired his interest in the subject. Plus, Volk-Weiss shared his account of meeting Cruise for the first time.

Brian Volk-Weiss Reveals The Impetus & Thought Process Behind Icons Unearthed: Tom Cruise

“this was the first time we covered a human and not a franchise”.

Screen Rant: When I interviewed you for Icons Unearthed: Star Wars [in 2022], you told me you would love to make an Icons Unearthed: Tom Cruise one day. How long have you been working on this idea and trying to make it come together?

Brian Volk-Weiss: I would say, honestly, 90 seconds or less into Top Gun: Maverick. My favorite movie of the century is Mad Max: Fury Road. My second favorite movie of the century is Top Gun: Maverick, and I’m not even that big a fan of the original Top Gun, believe it or not. It’s funny you said it was apropos Icons Unearthed: Star Wars. I don’t know if you noticed this or not, but there are a lot of similarities between Top Gun: Maverick and Star Wars. I don’t think that’s a coincidence. I always loved Tom Cruise—A Few Good Men is one of my favorite movies of all time—but after Top Gun: Maverick, he might be the first person to dethrone Gene Hackman and Denzel Washington as my favorite actor of all time.

Top Gun: Maverick is pretty recent. How’d you decide on where to pick up and stop with Tom Cruise’s career?

Brian Volk-Weiss: It's really hard, and it's a really tricky formula, because you need to balance a lot of competing interests. Essentially, we need to tell the story. While in 2024, you might not hear people talking about Risky Business every five seconds, you really can't do a Tom Cruise documentary without talking about Risky Business. [That] also covers his life leading up to Risky Business. Consequently, you really can't do a doc about Tom Cruise without talking about Top Gun. So, you really need these story points. Then, this was the first time we covered a human and not a franchise, so there were different rules we had to follow. What we tried to do with Tom Cruise is break him down into sections of his life. There’s the guy who comes to Hollywood and ends up dominating—that’s section one. Section two is about how Tom Cruise decided he wanted to win Oscars, which he never did as an actor, so you can’t do that section without talking about Rain Man. Then, there’s Tom Cruise becomes Jackie Chan, so there’s that part of his career. We broke the rule here, [but] I’m really into failure. I find failure a very interesting topic. Tom Cruise has had some interesting failures. Eyes Wide Shut is a failure on many levels. I think it’s a failure as a movie, and that’s subjective, but I think it’s undeniable that during the two years he spent making that movie—in possibly some of the most bizarre circumstance anybody has ever mada movie in—he lost out on a lot of other jobs. What’s very interesting about Tom Cruise, that I hope we were able to capture, is that as talented as he is, he really is a businessperson. He was very smart about when he would go back to Mission: Impossible or [make] Top Gun: Maverick. He’s had this really interesting career where, other than Steven Spielberg, very few people have been able to balance commerce with entertainment [like that]. That’s what we tried to capture with this season, and that premise really affected how we picked the movies that we picked.

The Series Touches On Cruise’s Personal Life

“it affected the movies he made”.

Did you have to make a decision about how much to even attempt to talk about his personal life?

Brian Volk-Weiss: I don’t think you can do something like this without talking about his personal life, because the personal life affected his career. He and Spielberg didn't talk for, I think, 20 years after the Oprah couch thing. Spielberg said War of the Worlds would've done another 50 million [dollars] had he not done that. His personal life with Scientology and his various marriages are a part of who he is. It's a tiny part of our series, we don't go crazy into it, but it affected the movies he made. After War of the Worlds, he made these strange—strange for Tom Cruise—movies, and a lot of them are now retroactively perceived as classics. Oblivion was absolutely not a classic when it came out. It barely made a profit. He made weird [choices] not compared to other movies but compared to all his other work. Eyes Wide Shut is a good example. He’s made some choices that didn’t work before, but you understand why he took the swing. That’s what we tried to balance in the episodes we picked and in telling the story of the human that he is, and you really can’t do that without talking about Scientology and his various wives, because they affected the movies he made.

Cruise Is “Insanely Intense”, According To His Collaborators

But also a driving force behind the scenes.

You spoke with a lot of his collaborators. Did you feel like there was a prevailing opinion about him that was shared by everyone?

Brian Volk-Weiss: Everybody loves this guy. Everybody said the same thing. We interviewed people who worked with him when he was 21, and we interviewed people who worked with him when he was 58. They said the same thing: He's insanely intense—and by the way, I’ve met him. I’ll tell you a great story—it can make you a little bit uncomfortable and on edge, but you get used to it and realize he will have a lot to do with why you’re working on something that will be important forever. I’m paraphrasing, [but that’s the idea]. And he really took care of people. This is obviously in the doc, but we interviewed Jay Mohr [for the] Jerry McGuire episode. Tom Cruise is doing a scene with Jay, it’s Jay’s scene, and Tom is just standing there so they could do the scene together. All Tom has to do is just stand there and do nothing, [but] while Jay is saying his lines, Tom Cruise, under the frame of the camera, is [making hand motions], telling him where to stand so he looks his best. Everybody had stories like that. They were like, “Is it nice that the biggest celebrity on Earth is there at 4:30 in the morning and you feel like you also need to be there at 4:30? No, that's stressful.” But he was prepared, he was organized, he did his research, and he wanted to do a lot of takes. I didn’t hear anything about him being an a**hole. A couple of people were like, “He did his Scientology thing on his own time, and we knew he was doing it, [but] he never was pushing it on anybody.” A couple of people went out of their way to tell us that. And we got very frank stuff. We interviewed the first AD of Top Gun: Maverick—it was all Tom. Tom was there at every meeting. He was there at every rehearsal. He was the one who came up with the schedule for how many flights they could do a day. He was the guy liaising with the military. That was the other thing that came up frequently. Imagine you’re a mid-level executive at the Navy, and you answer the phone and it’s like, “Hey, this is Tom Cruise. Nice to meet you. We’re trying to shoot on the leeward side of the base six months from now, and they’re saying that because of this other thing going on that day, we can’t shoot on the leeward side. Is it possible for us to come maybe two hours early and shoot what we need to shoot? We’ll be out of there by the time the parade practice is going.” This is Tom Cruise. This is literally Tom Cruise calling about minutiae that, if I’m being honest, if I were producing a movie, I don’t know if I would be making the call about.

Volk-Weiss Shares An Unforgettable Tom Cruise Interaction

It involves volk-weiss, dane cook, and dax shepherd.

You said you met him once?

Brian Volk-Weiss: Not to brag about my resume, but I did produce the classic Jessica Simpson film Employee of the Month. The last day of filming, we're saying goodbye, [and] I'm with Dane Cook, who I used to manage. It's me and Dane, and we're driving to the airport together. We're saying goodbye to Dax Shepherd, and Dax says something like, “So what are you guys up to?” Dane was like, “We’ve got to get back today because I'm doing the Tonight Show tomorrow.” Somehow it came up who the guests were, and it was like, “Tom Cruise is the other guest.” Dax goes, “If you can get away with it, try not to shake his hand.” We're like, “What?” Dax was always deadpan—I would bet you everything I owned [that] he was joking. He was like, “Yeah. When you shake his hand, the only way I can describe it is, it’s like he's trying to tear it off of your shoulder.” We all thought he was full of s***. Another weird Dax Shepherd joke. I remember this like it was 10 minutes ago. We walked into the green room, and the way the green room works is there’s a huge room for everybody, and then the dressing rooms are connected to it. Dane walks in—and you have to remember that Dane Cook is the biggest comedian in the world at this time—and Tom Cruise is standing right there. He sees Dane and is like, “Oh my God. Dane Cook. I’m obsessed. I have so many questions.” [Tom] runs up to him and—I seriously thought about turning around and walking out—it looked like he was trying to tear his arm off of his shoulder. Then, [to me], he’s like, “Hi, I’m Tom,” and you’re literally sitting there going up and down while he is shaking your hand. It was the weirdest thing ever. If he wasn’t famous, I [still] would’ve been telling this story forever. It would have been my weird handshake guy story. And true to his part, he asked Dane a billion questions. By the end of it, I was starting to say to myself, “I think Tom Cruise is thinking of trying standup comedy.” He was asking so many questions. “How do you do this? How do you do that? How do you know when to wrap up?” He had so many logistical questions. Dane kept saying, “Oh, that’s a good question, actually. I never thought about that,” and was walking him through it. Even if he wasn’t famous, I never would’ve forgotten the interaction.

About Icons Unearthed: Tom Cruise

Tom Cruise is a lot of things - movie star, producer, stuntman, an unstoppable force who never gets tired. From his breakout role in Risky Business with his unforgettable slide and famous grin, to saving the movie business with Top Gun: Maverick, Tom has pushed himself and those around him to make the best movie possible. After rising to superstardom in the high-flying Top Gun, Tom focused on working with top directors. With his carefully chosen roles he tested himself as an actor, in search of an elusive Oscar. From there he moved on to producing his own successful franchise built on doing his own stunts. But after a few public false steps he nearly lost it all. His unshakable commitment to excellence and willingness to put his body on the line quickly lands him back on top, and a return to the skies would take him farther than ever before.

Icons Unearthed: Tom Cruise airs Wednesdays on Vice TV.

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Icons Unearthed is a documentary television series that digs up some hidden secrets behind film history's biggest blockbusters. Each episode focuses on a new film or franchise and sees prominent industry experts, film cast/crew, and more as they try to debunk rumors and lift the veil on the cinema magic that made these movies the juggernauts they became.