tom cruise interview about katie holmes

Katie Holmes Talks Tom Cruise Split and Moving to New York with Suri

"That time was intense. It was a lot of attention..."

• Following her divorce from Cruise, Holmes dated Jamie Foxx until 2019.
• In a new interview, Holmes has opened up about life following her split from the Mission Impossible star.

Katie Holmes is currently enjoying a prolific period of work, with the release of movies Brahms: The Boy II and The Secret: Dare to Dream , and as she prepares to direct Rare Objects .

Amid her recent success, Holmes reflected on past challenges during a new interview with InStyle . In particular, the former Dawson's Creek star spoke about what it was like moving to New York with daughter Suri in 2012, right around the time she also filed for divorce from Tom Cruise. Holmes explained, "That time was intense. It was a lot of attention, and I had a little child on top of it. We had some funny moments out and about in public."

But as she's gotten older, the actress has come to terms with life in the public eye, and sounds more at peace with herself than ever.

She told InStyle , "Obviously, as a public person, I've gotten a lot of attention at different periods in my life. And when you have a lot of attention, sometimes you don't want to leave the house because it's just too much."

She continued, "You can get consumed by what people think, but suddenly you just decide to do things on your own terms. I feel like I'm finally figuring that out. I'm getting the projects I want made and just relaxing a little. I've been around for a long time, and I'm still here! I can't believe it."

But we can believe it, and we can't wait to see what Katie does next.

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Amy Mackelden is a freelance writer, editor, and disability activist. Her bylines include Harper's BAZAAR, Nicki Swift, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire, ELLE, The Independent, Bustle, Healthline, and HelloGiggles. She co-edited The Emma Press Anthology of Illness , and previously spent all of her money on Kylie Cosmetics.

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Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise were together for almost a decade — here's a timeline of their relationship

Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise were once one of Hollywood's most iconic couples. The pair's relationship was a bit of whirlwind, from a quick engagement to a seemingly shocking divorce. 

Here's a timeline of Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise's relationship. 

2001: Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman got divorced.

After almost a decade, the couple divorced . The pair had previously adopted two children, Connor and Isabella, who later joined the church of Scientology . 

Read More: Nicole Kidman opens up about loving her adopted children with ex-husband Tom Cruise despite them not talking to her

July 2004: Katie Holmes told a Seventeen reporter about her crush on Tom Cruise.

"I used to think that I was going to marry Tom Cruise," Holmes told a reporter for Seventeen magazine, who later wrote about the interview  and its possible significance in a Huffington Post op-ed. 

During this time, Katie Holmes was engaged to actor Chris Klein. 

March 2005: Holmes and Klein split.

According to People, Holmes and her then-fiancé Chris Klein ended their five-year relationship in 2005. 

April 2005: Holmes and Cruise stepped out as a couple for the first time.

A month after Holmes and Klein split, Holmes and Cruise make their first public appearance as a couple.

The two were photographed together in Rome where Cruise was receiving a David di Donatello Award for lifetime achievement. A source told People the pair had "been dating a couple of weeks." 

May 23, 2005: Cruise declared his love for Holmes during an appearance on "The Oprah Winfrey Show."

About a month after the two started dating, Cruise filmed one of his most well-known interviews ever. While on "Oprah,"  he jumped on the set's couch  to gush about Holmes.

Cruise said, "I'm in love. I'm in love and it's one of those things where you want to be cool, like, ‘Yeah I like her' … that's not how I feel." He added, "I wanted to meet this person and I met her and she's extraordinary."

June 13, 2005: Holmes said she's converting to Scientology.

At the "Batman Begins" premiere, Holmes told reporters that she was going to convert to Scientology .

In a separate interview with "W," she spoke a bit  about the process , saying, "You know, it's really exciting. I just started auditing and I'm taking some courses and I really like it. I feel like it's really helping."

June 16, 2005: Holmes and Cruise announced their engagement.

A few months after they began dating, the two got engaged . Cruise said he proposed with a teardrop-shaped ring at the Eiffel Tower in Paris. He announced their engagement the next day at a press conference for "War of the Worlds."

At the conference, a fairly quiet Holmes said the two planned to have children. 

October 6, 2005: The couple announced they were expecting.

A spokesperson for Cruise told People that Holmes was pregnant with the couple's first child together and the couple was "very excited."

April 18, 2006: Holmes gave birth to a baby girl.

Cruise's spokesperson announced that Holmes had given birth to a baby girl named Suri who was seven pounds and 20 inches long.

October 2006: Suri made her public debut.

Cruise and Holmes showed Suri off to the world on the cover of Vanity Fair magazine. The couple also shared details about their daughter's name. 

"We had the name before we found out [the gender of the baby] because we both thought the baby would be a girl," Cruise told Vanity Fair. He  said their daughter's name meant "red rose."

November 18, 2006: The couple got married in Italy.

Holmes and Cruise sealed the deal with a very lavish wedding in the 15th-century Odescalchi Castle in Bracciano, Italy. Holmes wore a Giorgio Armani gown and the two had a "double ring" Scientology wedding , as per People's report. 

January 2008: Cruise's Scientology indoctrination video went viral.

According to Gawker, a  Scientology indoctrination video featuring Cruise had leaked and spread across media outlets. The outlet described the video as "scary." 

He said, among other things, "When you're a Scientologist, and you drive by an accident, you know you have to do something about it, because you know you're the only one who can really help … We are the way to happiness. We can bring peace and unite cultures."

May 2010: Holmes put on a show for Cruise at a Hollywood benefit.

During the benefit, Holmes performed a seductive dance to the song "Whatever Lola Wants" from the musical "Damn Yankees." She danced around her husband while he did some of his own moves.

September 2010: Holmes gushed about Cruise in an interview and talked about future children.

In an interview with Marie Claire, Holmes described being married to Cruise as "really fun," saying, "It's an amazing life, but we always remind ourselves of how incredibly lucky we are."

When asked about the possibility of having more kids, she said "maybe in a couple of years," adding that she really just wanted to focus on Suri at the moment.

May 2012: Cruise raved about Holmes in an interview with Playboy.

In a "Playboy" interview, Cruise called Holmes "an extraordinary person," saying "if you spent five minutes with her, you'd see it." He added, "I'm just happy, and I have been since the moment I met her. What we have is very special."

June 2012: Cruise promoted "Rock of Ages" without Holmes by his side.

Many noticed when Holmes didn't appear next to her husband on the red carpet while he promoted his new film.

June 29, 2012: Holmes filed for divorce from Cruise.

In June, Holmes' team made a statement to People about how she was divorcing Cruise , who said he wasn't expecting it at all.

Holmes' attorney said, "This is a personal and private matter for Katie and her family. Katie's primary concern remains, as it always has been, her daughter's best interest."

Cruise's rep said, "Kate has filed for divorce and Tom is deeply saddened and is concentrating on his three children. Please allow them their privacy."

Holmes reportedly made calls about the divorce on a disposable cellphone and hired three law firms in three states, according to the Los Angeles Times. 

July 11, 2012: Lawyers for Cruise and Holmes announced they had reached a settlement on custody of Suri.

According to People, lawyers reached a very quick settlement only 11 days after the divorce was filed.  Holmes received primary custody of 6-year-old Suri and Cruise was granted visitation rights.

April 2013: Cruise admitted he had never expected the divorce.

During an interview with German TV network ProSieben, Cruise said he didn't expect Holmes to divorce him .

He described that time of his life as a "tragicomedy," and said, "To be 50 and to have experiences and to think you have a grip on everything ... and then it hits you: This is it, what life can do to you."

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Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes's Relationship Timeline: A Look Back

Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise were married for nearly six years before they called it quits.

Krista Carter is a writer and editor with nearly a decade of experience working in beauty and fashion.

Has anyone ever been more in love than couch-jumping Tom Cruise and  Katie Holmes ? We'll wait. Beginning in 2005, the actress and  fashion icon  (not just anyone can  pull off socks over sweatpants , alright?) engaged in a whirlwind romance with PDA-filled red carpet appearances that solidified their public image as TomKat. Within a year of meeting, they were engaged and welcomed a child together. A few months later, they tied the knot (Holmes's first marriage and Cruise's third). While many believed that the union wouldn't last — and it ultimately didn't — the pair still went on to share nearly six years together as husband and wife.

Since their 2012 divorce, we're remembering the Hollywood couple that once gave every teenager a glimmer of hope that it was possible — although highly unlikely — that maybe, just maybe, the dream of marrying their celebrity crush could become a reality.

Here's a look back at Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise's relationship.

April 2005: Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes first meet and are spotted together

As the story goes, after Cruise divorced  Nicole Kidman  and subsequently  split from then-girlfriend Penelope Cruz , the  Mission: Impossible  actor's beloved Church of Scientology set out to find him a worthy (and malleable) wife. After reportedly courting (and ultimately scaring off) famous women like  Sofía Vergara  and  Scarlett Johansson , the task proved more difficult than expected.

Eventually, church officials' prayers were answered through a  Seventeen  article,  per HuffPost . In October 2004, Holmes (then  engaged to Chris Klein ) told the teen magazine, "I used to think that I was going to marry Tom Cruise." 

Six months later, Klein and Holmes announced their breakup, and on April 27, 2005, Cruise and Holmes were first spotted together in Rome. TomKat made their red carpet debut as a couple two days later on April 29 at the David di Donatello Awards. Coincidence? We may never truly know.

"When I met Tom, I was completely in love, and, yes, I admired him growing up — he's Tom Cruise!" she reportedly told  T: The New York Times Style Magazine  ( via  People ).

May 23, 2005: Tom Cruise declares his love for Katie Holmes on The Oprah Winfrey Show

Cruise jolted daytime television when he appeared on  The Oprah Winfrey Show  and ecstatically jumped on her couch while professing love for his new girlfriend (who he subsequently brought out from backstage). The appearance went viral, with many questioning Cruise's sanity, as well as the relationship's authenticity.

June 16, 2005: Tom Cruise announces engagement to Katie Holmes

Gregg DeGuire / WireImage / Getty Images

Shortly after going public with their relationship, Cruise announced at a press conference for  War of the Worlds  that he and Holmes were engaged. According to  The Hollywood Reporter , Cruise, then 43, proposed to Holmes, then 26, with a five-carat yellow diamond ring at a restaurant atop the Eiffel Tower.

"Today is a magnificent day for me; I'm engaged to a magnificent woman," he said, per  People . 

April 18, 2006: Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes welcome their first child together

Holmes gave birth to a baby girl, Suri, in Santa Monica, California, in April 2006. Their newborn daughter made her public debut on the October 2006 cover of  Vanity Fair. 

The  Dawson's Creek  alum  told the magazine , " The moment the doctor handed me Suri, I was just ready. The feeling is indescribable. All I can say is the moment I looked in her eyes, I felt like ... Mom." 

Since then, the celeb offspring and fashionista has inspired one of our favorite pop culture artifacts of all time:  Suri's Burn Book . 

November 18, 2006: Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes get married

Robert Evans / Handout via Getty Images

In November 2006, the  Batman Begins  actress's schoolgirl fantasy of marrying Cruise came true. Their wedding was marked by an extravagant ceremony and reception at an Italian castle that cost more than $3 million, according to E! Online .

The star-studded guest list included couples  Jennifer Lopez  and Marc Anthony, John Travolta and the late Kelly Preston, and  David Beckham  and  Victoria Beckham , among others. As for the bridal party, Holmes had her sister Nancy Blaylock as maid of honor, while Cruise chose Scientology leader David Miscavige as his best man.

June 2012: Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes divorce

John Shearer / WireImage / Getty Images

Interestingly, after Cruise gave a  Playboy  interview in which he praised Holmes, she filed for divorce. Although the  Top Gun  star admitted that he "didn't expect" the divorce —  per CBS News  — the legal proceedings ran smoothly, and a settlement was reached in just 11 days.

Cruise and Holmes have rarely spoken on the record in regard to their split, but it's rumored that Holmes's motivation was to free her daughter from the unique constraints of Scientology. During his deposition against Bauer Media Cruise (whose tabloids claimed he'd abandoned Suri), Cruise was asked if Holmes left him "in part to protect Suri from Scientology." 

Insulted, he said, "There is no need to protect my daughter from my religion." 

However,  according to ABC News , when prodded again, specifically as to whether Holmes had mentioned that she was leaving in an effort to protect Suri from Scientology, Cruise responded, "Did she say that? That was one of the assertions, yes."

Holmes was granted primary custody of Suri in their divorce. Though Cruise was afforded ample visitation, it was widely reported that he rarely saw his daughter. In 2016,  InTouch Weekly  asserted  that the actor hadn't seen or spoken to his youngest child in over 1,000 days (or two-and-a-half years).

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• What Is Cinema?

What Katie Didn’t Know

By Maureen Orth

Tom Cruise was in a state because he didn’t have a girl. “Can you believe my sister can’t even get me a girlfriend?” he said to David Miscavige, the chief of the Church of Scientology International, as Miscavige joined him and Cruise’s sister Lee Anne DeVette at the opening of the Madrid Scientology center, in September 2004. Mike Rinder, the founding director of Scientology International and former head of the Office of Special Affairs, claims that the star had just said the same thing to him minutes before as they waited for Miscavige, who is referred to by Scientology honchos as C.O.B., chairman of the board. Miscavige, according to Rinder and Marty Rathbun, Scientology’s former inspector general and No. 2, prided himself on being able to produce with a snap of his fingers anything Cruise desired, as well as to remove whatever he considered to be obstacles in the star’s life, such as his last wife, Nicole Kidman, and his last girlfriend, Penélope Cruz. (Rinder and Rathbun are part of a group of former high-ranking dissidents no longer connected to the organization. They and the other sources in this article, virtually all of them on the record, have been dismissed by Scientology as disgruntled apostates and worse. A lawyer for Miscavige refers to Rathbun and Rinder as “a dynamic duo of lunatic venom and untrustworthy bile” and denies that the incident above ever took place. Tom Cruise and David Miscavige declined to be interviewed by Vanity Fair. )

According to several of these on-the-record sources, Scientology more and more came to be whatever Miscavige said it was, and both Kidman and Cruz had been found wanting in their embrace of the organization and therefore unsuitable for the highly prized Cruise—Kidman especially. They say the church had determined that Kidman was its most dangerous type of enemy, a Suppressive Person (S.P.), who could threaten the spiritual well-being of Cruise and the two children the couple had adopted during their 10-year marriage. Cruise sued for divorce, and the children—Bella, then eight, and Connor, then six—were reportedly given a course in identifying Suppressive Persons. As Penélope Cruz became Cruise’s new love interest, she took her own set of courses, but, the sources say, she soon ran afoul of Miscavige, who dismissed her as a mere “dilettante” when it was learned that she was unwilling to forsake her Buddhist beliefs. Cruise post-Cruz was apparently tired of having these ecclesiastical pillow fights interfere with his sex life: he needed a devout Scientologist to sleep with.

Thus began an elaborate auditioning process, the sources say, to find him a drop-dead-beautiful true believer to share his life, someone who would not object to having the mercurial Miscavige as a powerful presence in the relationship. Miscavige’s wife, Shelly, was put in charge of the top-secret project, they tell me, and the ruse was to call in actresses from the organization’s rolls, tell them they were being given the honor of auditioning for a new training film, and then ask them some curious questions, such as: What do you think of Tom Cruise ?

“It’s not like you only have to please your husband—you have to toe the line for all Scientology,” explains Marc Headley, a Scientologist from age seven, who tells me he watched a number of the dozens of three-to-four-minute audition videotapes when he was executive producer of Golden Era Productions, Scientology’s in-house studio. “You can’t do anything to displease Scientology, because Tom Cruise will freak out.” The timing was especially delicate, for Cruise was burrowing deeper and deeper into the church, and Miscavige was actively pushing him. According to Headley’s wife, Claire, who grew up as a Scientology cadet and worked directly under the Miscaviges in the Religious Technology Center (R.T.C.), Scientology’s supreme headquarters, located outside the California desert town of Hemet, 80 miles southeast of Los Angeles, “They couldn’t find a woman to have the relationship with at a time when Cruise was talking about donating his excess millions to fund Scientology buildings.” (Scientology spokespeople deny that there was any such special project. They also deny that Kidman was considered a Suppressive Person, or that they objected to Cruz’s religious beliefs, or that Cruise’s children took a course on how to identify Suppressive Persons. They strongly deny that Miscavige has any involvement in Cruise’s personal life.)

There can be no underestimating how valuable Cruise was to Scientology. “Dave [Miscavige] told us in a meeting that if he could he’d make Tom Cruise inspector general—second-in-command,” says Marc Headley, “that if he weren’t Tom Cruise the actor he would be the number two.”

Both men had humble beginnings. Cruise, who is 50, came from a broken family and was on his own by the age of 18. He joined Scientology in 1986, when he was 24, and he credits its study methods with helping him overcome dyslexia. He has gone on to make more than 30 films and reign as one of Hollywood’s top stars for nearly three decades. His films over the years have grossed almost $7 billion worldwide, and his last one, Mission: Impossible—Ghost Protocol, brought in $700 million on its own. This year he was listed by Forbes as Hollywood’s highest-paid actor, with earnings of $75 million.

Miscavige, two years older and a couple of inches shorter than Cruise, began working with L. Ron Hubbard, the founder of Scientology, as an assistant cameraman in 1977, when he was 17. Neither Cruise nor Miscavige attended college; Miscavige was a high-school dropout. By 1982, Miscavige was Hubbard’s top aide, and in 1987, the year after Hubbard’s death, he became the leader of the whole organization. Scientology has claimed to have eight million adherents around the world. Many question that figure, some putting it as low as 40,000. In October 1993, during the first year of the Clinton administration, Scientology received its disputed status as a tax-exempt church. In the years leading up to that, thousands of Scientologists had sued the I.R.S., claiming discrimination after the government began to audit their tax returns. The organization employed the services of a former deputy assistant attorney general, Gerald Feffer, then a member of Washington’s well-connected Williams & Connolly law firm. Feffer’s wife, Monique Yingling, is still a top lawyer for Scientology.

Perhaps the most notable joint public appearance of Cruise and Miscavige occurred weeks after the opening in Madrid, when Miscavige conferred the organization’s Freedom Medal of Valor—an award created specially for Cruise—on the star at a black-tie ceremony outside London. Cruise appeared both in person and on a bizarre videotape—wearing a black turtleneck and extolling Scientology—that subsequently went up on the Internet.

Past Relationships

Marty Rathbun says Miscavige clearly wanted to make sure that Cruise was securely locked in and unable to drift away, as he had during his marriage to Kidman. All during that time, he claims, the organization got reports on the couple through members of their personal staff—devout Scientologists. The staff “was reporting every single detail going on in the house during the entire marriage with Nicole—how they were getting along, their disputes, what he was doing movie-wise, and his relations in Hollywood. One assistant was always saying, ‘Reach back. Get audited.’ ” (Scientology representatives deny that such reports were made or that Cruise ever drifted.)

Auditing is a very big deal in Scientology, its expensive version of Roman Catholic confession, administered by an auditor posing hundreds of questions to a paying subject holding on to two metal canisters wired to an Electropsychometer, or E-Meter, which measures the body’s reactions to the questions somewhat as a lie detector does. Subjects are encouraged to bring up any disturbing past memories or transgressions and get them out in order to be “cleared” to go up the Bridge to Total Freedom, through many levels leading to eternal spiritual happiness, a process that can cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.

David Miscavige, left. From top: Nicole Kidman, Nazanin Boniadi, Penélope Cruz.

According to Nicole Kidman’s last auditor, former Scientologist Bruce Hines, in the early 1990s she got all the way up to O.T. II, just one step below the coveted O.T. III, or Wall of Fire, where one is allowed to read Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard’s secret writings, which reveal the church’s most sacred beliefs—how 75 million years ago a galactic emperor named Xenu sent millions of frozen souls on spaceships from his overpopulated kingdom to the bases of volcanoes on Earth; the volcanoes were hydrogen-bombed, and today the scattered and reincarnated spiritual beings, or “thetans,” pick up human bodies as “containers” to inhabit. Their excess emotional baggage can haunt the human hosts, however, so it needs to be cleared out. “That’s when the penny drops,” Marc Headley tells me. “People either say, ‘What the hell,’ or ‘I’m out of here.’ ” Headley, who was personally audited by Cruise as a teenager, when Cruise was learning how to self-audit, claims that Cruise had reached the O.T. III level before he followed Kidman’s lead away from the organization. Numerous sources say that Kidman, a Catholic, was never considered safe by Scientology, because her father, in Australia, is a psychologist, by definition a Suppressive Person, since Scientology rejects psychiatry and all psychotropic drugs. (Scientology representatives deny that Kidman was ever considered unsafe. They say that they simply “oppose psychiatric abuses.”)

According to Amy Scobee, a former director of Scientology’s Celebrity Centres for 10 years and a member of the Sea Org—the church’s version of clergy—as a result of Cruise’s purported drifting, one hapless woman involved with Kidman’s case was punished at Hemet by being made to wear a black “boiler suit”—a signal that no one at the R.T.C. was to talk to her—and sleep on the floor. “For months and months she was assigned to hard manual labor, pushing a wheelbarrow.” (A Scientology representative disputes that such punishment took place.)

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After Cruise’s marriage with Kidman collapsed, in early 2001, and his relationship with Cruz faded, there were to be no more slipups. Rathbun asserts, “I was spending 50 percent of my time during that three-year period just securing Tom into the Scientology camp.” Rathbun says that he audited Cruise, and according to Claire Headley, who backed up Rathbun, unbeknownst to Cruise, his confessionals were secretly taped by cameras hidden in a lamp and in a piece of furniture. “There were two views—one close-up of the E-Meter dial and the other a long shot over Marty’s shoulder, showing Tom Cruise holding the cans.” Marc Headley adds, “We used hidden cameras behind mirrors, in picture frames, in alarm clocks. I know every single covert camera made. I installed hundreds and hundreds of them.” (According to a 2010 BBC documentary, the organization admits that it videotapes audits and that this is not a secret, but to Vanity Fair it denied that Cruise’s auditing sessions were ever videotaped.)

At the end of each of the auditing sessions, which covered Cruise’s entire life, Rathbun would give a written report to Miscavige, who, according to Claire Headley, also received the videotapes, which she says she observed being delivered to him. Today, Rathbun states that disagreements over Scientology were at the heart of Cruise’s two previous divorces, from the actress Mimi Rogers, who was also a Scientologist, and from Kidman. “There were allegations and counter-allegations about fidelity, but the central problem was Nicole did not want to deal with Scientology,” he says. “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.” Of Miscavige, Rathbun tells me, “I felt I used every tool I knew in the Scientology tool book to overcome Cruise’s weaknesses, and I saw Miscavige use those frailties and weaknesses in order to manipulate.”

Miscavige eagerly awaited the Cruise reports and those of other high-profile Scientology members at his Gold Base headquarters, in Hemet. According to several sources, he often read them out loud to entertain whomever he was with. “I know he did it with [the reports of] Lisa Marie Presley, back in ’95, when she was married to Michael Jackson, and I know he did it a number of times with Kirstie Alley. I saw and heard him,” Claire Headley tells me. “He loved to dish about celebrities,” says Tom De Vocht, Miscavige’s former close aide, who went on to run Scientology’s large operation in Clearwater, Florida, where Scientologists from all over the world go to study. According to De Vocht, Miscavige—often joined by his wife, Shelly—would whip out a bottle of Macallan scotch at two or three in the morning in the Officers Lounge, play backgammon, and read the Cruise reports with a running commentary. “He’s probably got a lot of embarrassing material,” De Vocht says, adding that Miscavige’s comments were usually about Cruise’s sex life. “He would roll his eyes and say, ‘Jeez, can you believe it?’ ” All the while, Miscavige claimed to be Cruise’s best friend. (Scientology representatives dispute this account and insist that Miscavige has always “rigorously upheld the sanctity and confidentiality of ministerial communications.”)

The audition process for the next Mrs. Cruise did not yield much at first, according to the Headleys. By the fall of 2004, they say, dozens of the organization’s members had been run through the video process and considered unsuitable. Cruise himself was reportedly unable to entice a number of beautiful, well-known actresses—including Sofía Vergara and Scarlett Johansson—to accept his devotion to Scientology. Finally, however, according to several sources, the screeners at Gold Base headquarters came upon a believer they thought could actually wear the glass slipper: a gorgeous, petite, Iranian-born woman in her mid-20s who had been raised in London and whose mother was also a Scientologist. The same type of glamorous brunette as Penélope Cruz—five feet three, 100 pounds—she had graduated with honors in biological sciences from the University of California at Irvine, had plans to go to medical school, and was an accomplished violinist. She seemed perfect. But she had a boyfriend.

Nazanin Boniadi, 25, who had not yet become the human-rights activist for Amnesty International and the actor she is today, was summoned in October 2004 to meet an important church official at the Celebrity Centre International, in Hollywood. She arrived to find the high-ranking Greg Wilhere, who, according to a knowledgeable source, told her she had been selected for a very hush-hush mission that would entail meeting dignitaries around the world. He added that if she succeeded she would be helping to make the world a better place. Thus began a month-long preparation process that entailed her getting audited every day and telling Wilhere her innermost secrets, including every detail of her sex life. Nobody who had been in a threesome, for example, would be considered—a rule that apparently eliminated one candidate. Since Boniadi was a gung-ho Scientologist who had already attained a level of O.T. V—beyond the Wall of Fire—she embraced the church’s motto “Think for Yourself” and threw herself into every task she was assigned. Wilhere, meanwhile, had frequent whispered phone conversations with the person he called “the project director,” says the source. Early on, he sent Boniadi to a photo shoot, which revealed that she wore braces and that her naturally black hair had red highlights. She was told that she had to lose the braces and make her hair one color to emphasize her ethnicity. It didn’t matter that she still had a good six months to wear the braces; they had to go. So did her boyfriend.

Boniadi had been dating an Iranian man and was eagerly looking forward to becoming engaged. She had brought him into Scientology. According to the knowledgeable source, a Scientology official asked what it would take to make her break off with him. According to a number of people who have heard her story from her, Boniadi was then shown confidential information from her boyfriend’s auditing files; she chose to end the relationship. “She was crushed,” one of her confidants told me. “They gave her auditing to make her feel better, and they took her to Saks and Burberry in Beverly Hills to buy her an expensive wardrobe.” (Scientology denies any misuse of confidential material.)

Next she had to sit down and prepare a 20-page, single-spaced essay on what she wanted and needed in her life in terms of a partner, family, and work to satisfy her goals and aspirations. Once the paper was sent off for approval, accompanied by new photos showing dark hair and no braces, the knowledgeable source says, Boniadi was presented with a confidentiality agreement, which she didn’t even read to the end, though she was told that if she decided to leave without Scientology’s approval or “messed up” in any way she would be declared an S.P. and shunned by every member of the organization, including her mother. “That’s how important this project is,” one official said. Boniadi never received a copy of the agreement, according to the source, though she several times asked for one.

Meanwhile, Claire Headley says, she had been assigned by Shelly Miscavige to buy $5,000 worth of new suits and shoes for Wilhere, who would temporarily trade his Sea Org nylon pants for designer clothes in order to fly first-class with Boniadi to New York the first week in November. Upon arriving there, they checked into the Parker Meridien. (Scientology denies that any such clothes were purchased or that any such trip took place “for this phantom project that never existed.”) According to the knowledgeable source, Wilhere suggested that the young woman get a good night’s sleep, for the special project for which she had been put through hoops for a month was finally about to begin. The next day, their first stop was in the theater district, at Scientology’s New York center. Wilhere took her to the deserted second floor, and while she was facing away from the entrance, she heard a voice say, “Holy shit. Greg Wilhere, what are you doing here?” It was Tom Cruise.

According to the knowledgeable source, Boniadi was incredulous that Scientology would set her up. She was shocked, and she felt manipulated, but she was also flattered that Tom Cruise would have wanted to know so much about her and then shown up to meet her. Given her Iranian background, she sensed that this was possibly going to be an arranged marriage, particularly when Wilhere allegedly told her, “This is Mr. Cruise. We can’t let him down.”

Mr. Cruise, for his part, was apparently determined to make a great first impression. Before leaving California for her first trip to the East Coast, Boniadi had been asked for her idea of the perfect first date. She had said sushi and ice-skating. Voilà! But first, according to the knowledgeable source, Cruise and Wilhere took Boniadi on a tour of the Empire State Building, along with Tommy Davis, a top aide in Scientology, his then wife, Nadine, and the woman who would become his next wife, Jessica Rodriguez, as well as Cruise’s sister Lee Anne and her daughter, Lauren. Then the party went for sushi at the stylish restaurant Nobu. The skating rink at Rockefeller Center had been closed to the public so that the group could skate without interference.

Cruise and Boniadi spent the first night together but did not have sex, according to several sources. Nevertheless, Cruise is said to have told her, “I’ve never felt this way before,” at the Trump Tower, where he and the entourage had taken an entire floor. The next day Boniadi went to the set of War of the Worlds, in upstate Athens, New York, where Cruise paraded her around and kissed her in front of 200 extras. In the limo back to the city without the star, Davis gave Boniadi another confidentiality agreement to sign, this one specifically about Cruise. When she balked, the knowledgeable source says, Davis told her that if she ever did anything to harm Cruise she would have him to deal with. She signed but was not given a copy of that agreement, either.

From that point forward, through November and December, Boniadi and Cruise were practically inseparable, and she was soon head over heels in love. Cruise overwhelmed her with the intensity of his affection, and he apparently liked it to be on public display. Once, says the knowledgeable source, he even complained that she was not sufficiently demonstrative: “I get more love from an extra than I get from you.” Virtually their only time alone, though, was in the bedroom. The rest of the time they were surrounded by the entourage. The degree of control Boniadi was subjected to by Cruise and the organization was mind-boggling, according to several sources. For the first three weeks she was isolated and not permitted to communicate with anyone. Despite the fact that her parents were deeply worried, she was allowed to tell them only that she was in New York on a special Scientology project, never that she was with Cruise. (Her father, who is not a Scientologist, lives in London.)

If Cruise found fault with anything she said or did, according to the knowledgeable source, he immediately reported it to Tommy Davis or a member of the staff, and she would then be audited about it. This process started with the first words she ever spoke to him, “Very well done,” about his receiving Scientology’s Freedom Medal of Valor. Evidently that was not sufficiently doting; according to the source, her “Very well done” implied that Cruise was her junior. She spent two to three hours of her day, every day, purging herself of “negative thoughts about Tom.” Though the first month on the project was bliss, by the second month Boniadi was more and more often found wanting. Cruise’s hairstylist, Chris McMillan, was brought in to work on her hair; in addition, says the source, Cruise wanted Boniadi’s incisor teeth filed down. Finally, she was allowed to tell her mother that she was involved with Tom Cruise. Her mother, a hairdresser, did not like the fact she was now out of the picture, not even allowed to do her daughter’s hair, and she frowned upon the age difference between her daughter and the then 42-year-old actor. She reportedly also had to sign a confidentiality agreement, but she never reached the point where she qualified to meet Cruise.

The End of the Affair

By late November, Boniadi felt even more isolated as she and Cruise flew to Telluride, along with the entourage, whose sole purpose, it seemed, was to keep Cruise happy and to let him know how much money he was bringing into the organization, how many people joined Scientology every day because of him, and how much he was doing to save the planet.

In Telluride, Boniadi was audited frequently by Jessica Rodriguez. Shortly before New Year’s, David and Shelly Miscavige arrived. One afternoon when everyone was on snowmobiles, Boniadi, who was feeling sick from her period and from the altitude, fell off her vehicle and was badly bruised. According to the source, she was in excruciating pain, but Scientologists do not believe in medicating in such circumstances. She asked to go back to the house, where she burst into tears, believing that she was completely shut off; her only source of money was a credit card issued in the name of Cruise’s production company. After lying down to rest, she was told that she had to go downstairs and help entertain the Miscaviges. David Miscavige speaks rapidly, and she had trouble following his American English. According to the knowledgeable source, she had to ask several times, “Excuse me?” That was a fatal mistake. “Miscavige took that as an insult,” says a confidant of the woman’s. (In Scientology, the ability to have your communication “land” is crucial.) The upshot was that Cruise was furious with her for offending Miscavige. After the Miscaviges left the next day, Boniadi was summoned by Davis into Cruise’s office, where the actor delivered a blistering denunciation about her disrespect of the chairman of the board. (According to his representative, “Mr. Miscavige doesn’t remember any girlfriend of anyone, in his entire life, insulting him.”)

GOOD-BYE Cruise's eye is trained on a distant Holmes.

Things were never the same after that. Boniadi flew back with the staff the next day to Los Angeles and moved into Cruise’s house, but she spent her time confessing her transgressions at the Celebrity Centre. When Cruise arrived, he was withdrawn and barely acknowledged her, though they still shared a bedroom. (She had been asked by a Scientology official to sleep alone, according to the source, but she cited the organization’s rule that in a loving relationship a couple does not go to sleep with unresolved issues.) During the third week of January, Boniadi was asked to pack a bag and move into the Celebrity Centre. When she demanded to know why, the source says, Tommy Davis admitted, “He wants someone who has her own power—like Nicole.”

The special project and their pre-arranged meeting in New York were never acknowledged to Boniadi by Cruise, according to the knowledgeable source. The closest anyone came to explaining what went wrong was when Greg Wilhere allegedly told her, “Naz, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink.” Her parting glimpse of Cruise was seeing him working out in his home gym on her way out. When she asked why Tom would not break up with her himself, she was told he was not to be disturbed.

Boniadi was then packed off to Scientology’s Mecca, the Flag building, in Clearwater, Florida, according to the source, where, thanks to the generosity of Cruise, she could get counseling and atone for her errors. Strictly forbidden to mention her relationship with Cruise to anyone, she spent much of her time crying, devastated that her entire previous life had been stripped away. Cruise’s video from the Freedom Medal of Valor ceremony played near her in a constant loop. One night, the knowledgeable source says, Boniadi ran into Cruise himself, who had come with his children to Flag for auditing. She did not see him at first in the dark, but he invited her to sit down on a bench in a public area. Tommy Davis was standing nearby. According to the source, Cruise offered her a piece of gum and said, “How are you?” Boniadi had been taught in her counseling that if someone is constantly upset after breaking up—as she was—it is because she did something wrong. She was also aware that anything she said would come out the next day in auditing. She replied only, “Well, you see. It is what it is.” At one point, says the source, Bella and Connor approached her and asked when she was coming back to the house.

Finally, Boniadi broke down and told an inquiring friend why she was weeping all the time. According to the knowledgeable source, the friend promptly wrote up a 10-page “Knowledge Report” on her, and for more than two months Boniadi’s punishment was to scrub toilets with a toothbrush on her hands and knees, clean bathroom tiles with acid, and dig ditches in the middle of the night. She was also harangued for hours and made to confess what a horrible human being she was. After that she was sent out to hawk L. Ron Hubbard’s Dianetics book on street corners, a job she continued to do when she was finally allowed to return to L.A. (A Scientology spokesperson responds: “The Church does not ‘punish’ people, especially in [that] manner.”)

“Tom never broke up with her,” Marc Headley tells me. “He never spoke to her.” The whole time Cruise and Boniadi were together, according to Headley, the film people never stopped cranking out new audition tapes. “O.K., boom, next one. O.K., boom, next one,” he says. “She gets kicked to the curb. And a few months later he’s madly in love with Katie and jumping on couches.”

John Brousseau, who is known as J.B., spent 32 of his 54 years inside Scientology—he left in 2010—and was not only David Miscavige’s brother-in-law for 16 years but also his bodyguard. As an internal-security officer, J.B. says, he put the bars on the doors and windows of the “Hole” at Hemet’s Gold Base, where Sea Org members who fell out of favor were kept virtual prisoners, sometimes for years, often for minor infractions. J.B. says, “Miscavige had to find fault or else he wasn’t the perfect one.” J.B.’s principal job, though, was to act as the artistic technical wizard and customizer behind Cruise’s ostentatious toys—his specially wired trailer, his fully fitted Ford Exposition S.U.V., his many motorcycles, his private airplane hangar. Brousseau also cleaned guns for Cruise when he was learning to skeet-shoot, and he oversaw the meticulous maintenance of Cruise’s houses in Beverly Hills and Telluride, all for $50 a week and room and board as a Sea Org member, usually working at least an 80-hour week. Along the way he became a pal to Cruise’s children Bella and Connor—“I was like Uncle J.B., this cool guy they could ask technical questions.”

When Naz Boniadi told J.B. her story, he says, he made a promise to her and to himself to reveal what he knew about Scientology. “She told me in minute detail. I know I am speaking to a woman scorned, but I saw the pain in her eyes and the tears on her cheeks… Her story wrenched me, and that is why I am speaking out,” he tells me. “I firsthand observed the type of control from David Miscavige into Tom Cruise’s household. I was used to build a limo from scratch, to customize a million-dollar trailer. I know how Miscavige insinuated himself into Tom’s life to control every single part of it. I personally was one of David Miscavige’s tools that he used in his control of Tom Cruise and his family. I can tell you from my perspective what I observed.”

One of the major projects J.B. undertook for Cruise was to impose cleanliness and order on his Beverly Hills estate, on Alpine Drive— the Alpine project of 2002–3—when “Penélope Cruz’s personal belongings were still there but she was not.” J.B., who headed a nine-person commando unit and a large workforce, reported to Shelly Miscavige. Tom Cruise’s sister Lee Anne was also living there. “How bad was it?,” I ask. Not so bad, he says. “There were two kids messing it up—Bella spilling nail polish all over the rug. There was no mom—Mom was an S.P.” As numerous sources have explained to me, Cruise would take the kids with him when he was getting audited, and they also took courses. Connor was then about Suri’s age now, and, according to Rathbun and others, he and his sister were taught how to recognize a Suppressive Person. “If you start failing or messing up, you learn it’s because you are connected to one,” J.B. explains, adding, “You keep giving them information, and the inevitable conclusion is that person is an evil person. You can never be guilty of telling them outright. Rather, you create shadows of doubt.”

The kids were home-schooled, so they spent all day surrounded by Scientologists. Marty Rathbun, who did the auditing on Cruise, says Cruise believed that Kidman was an S.P., and J.B. says he could see that attitude on display with Bella and Connor. “They rejected Nicole—they’ve been instructed,” J.B. says. “They took a course, P.T.S./S.P., Potential Trouble Source/Suppressive Person, for persons connected in their lives who are an S.P. They whispered to me, ‘J.B., Nicole is an S.P.! Our mom’s an S.P.—we hate going and seeing her.’ This was a secret thing they thought they could tell J.B. Probably that’s what Katie was terrified of, and it might have occurred to her that she could end up being one.” The ostracizing of Kidman within Scientology extended even to her movies, according to J.B. “The Scientology world hated Nicole. People in Sea Org were mandated to see every freaking Tom Cruise movie that came out. But if you ever mentioned an inkling to see a movie with Nicole, oh my God, you’d hear about it.”

J.B. says he was thrown out of the hallowed R.T.C. in 1998, along with his wife, Deidre Assam, who was put to work at Golden Era Productions. By the time of the Alpine project, he had worked his way back into the group’s good graces. Near the project’s end, J.B. took a walk down the long driveway at Alpine and perched on a stone wall near the guard gate with Shelly Miscavige, who told him they would like him back in the R.T.C., but without his wife. “She told me I was a very valuable person, one of those few still around since the 70s and privy to things. She said, ‘Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not telling you to do anything here. If you want to stay married to Deidre, fine. I’ll figure a job for you in a lower organization.’ ” Feeling that his first obligation was to the church he had joined, J.B. made a quick decision, as he says, “for the good of mankind.” Three days later he moved out of his marriage. (Shelly Miscavige herself has not been seen in public for several years.)

Much of J.B.’s work in Scientology was done for Cruise. He shows me photo upon photo to demonstrate the fine craftsmanship he brought to the actor’s private world. Indicating one of a large eucalyptus burl in the back of his pickup, he says he used the wood to customize the interior of a black Ford S.U.V. for Tom and Katie. Another photo shows Cruise’s 40-foot Blue Bird motor home, featuring cutting-edge audiovisual equipment (designed by another Scientology laborer) “to make sure T.C. had the most kick-ass TV-and-stereo system in the world.” J.B. has extensive files and documents he managed to take out with him, “because I knew they’d call me a liar.” According to J.B., Cruise had a hand-painted Honda Rune motorcycle with a design from War of the Worlds on it, a gift from Steven Spielberg, that he wanted J.B. to paint over in red so that it would resemble a motorcycle Miscavige had. J.B. refused: “There is no way you are going to have me sand down and paint over this paint job. If I were Spielberg, I’d be heartbroken.”

J.B. spent Christmas of 2007 at Telluride, overseeing the maintenance of the place, as he had done at Alpine. Every night he sat at the dinner table with Tom, Katie, and their guests. Suri was just a baby, a “bundle of joy” to all. He recalls, “They would be sitting by themselves late at night, talking and laughing and kissing—a picture-perfect couple who seemed genuinely happy.”

Strange Behavior

By May 2005, when Tom Cruise jumped backward twice onto Oprah’s couch—after having gone down on one knee Romeo-style to cry, “I’m in love!”—and then chased Katie Holmes all over the TV studio before dragging her onstage, he was beginning to attract unwanted media attention to Scientology. He was also becoming a headache for Paramount Pictures, whose executives had expected the publicity campaign for War of the Worlds to focus strictly on the movie. At that point he and Holmes had known each other only a month, and in July she got pregnant.

In March 2004, he had fired Pat Kingsley, his tough and powerful publicist of 14 years, who took a dim view of his proselytizing, and replaced her with his sister Lee Anne. Moreover, the Internet was becoming a thorn in the side of Scientology, which strictly controlled what its hierarchy at Sea Org could access. Most Sea Org members lived in a total bubble where world news was concerned. Normal education was minimized because of Scientology’s belief in reincarnation—everyone was already millions of years old. Children of Sea Org members born into Scientology before the 1987 ban on those members’ having children went to what Scientologists call “Chinese school,” where they had to memorize long passages of L. Ron Hubbard’s teachings. “Like Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book ?,” I asked Claire Headley. She did not know what I meant. When I asked Mike Rinder, who for many years coordinated all responses to the media about Scientology, whether, when Scientologists had a baby, they immediately started saving for college, he just laughed and said, “No, I don’t think so.”

On the 2004 video on which Miscavige presents Cruise with Scientology’s Freedom Medal of Valor, the two men salute first each other and then a portrait of L. Ron Hubbard. An unauthorized copy of the video went viral, and it was widely made fun of. Scientology went into overdrive to have the video removed from the Internet, which encouraged the hacker group Anonymous to single out the organization as a special target. Claire Headley, who worked on the film, says that Miscavige personally edited it. “We took six hours once on just a nod of Tom Cruise’s head,” she tells me. At one point in the film, Cruise declares, “I won’t hesitate to put ethics in on someone else, you know, because I put it ruthlessly in on myself… You’re either on board or you’re not on board.” At another moment, he roars with laughter as he recalls someone asking him, “Have you met an S.P.?”

What really got Scientology’s goat, however, was the November airing on Comedy Central of a South Park spoof of Scientology, called “Trapped in the Closet,” in which a kid named Stan pays $240 for auditing and scores off the Bridge as an O.T. IX, which makes everyone think he is the reincarnation of L. Ron Hubbard. When Tom Cruise comes to pay homage, Stan tells him he prefers the guy who played Napoleon Dynamite—the teenage hero of the 2004 comedy—which so upsets Cruise that he locks himself in the closet with John Travolta, and they refuse to come out. Mike Rinder told me he was sent by Miscavige to meet with Cruise’s agents at CAA and with Bert Fields, his lawyer, to demand that they read Brad Grey, the new head of Paramount, the riot act, since Comedy Central and Paramount are both owned by Sumner Redstone’s Viacom. There was to be no rerun of the episode, Rinder told them, or else. According to an internal Scientology document that Rinder provided me with, the threatening message was very clear: “This is a two-way street. If there was no publicity for MI3 [Cruise’s film Mission: Impossible III, which was to premiere in May 2006] Paramount and Viacom would have a seizure.”

Other documents include demands to try to kill pending Los Angeles Times and Rolling Stone stories on Scientology (both of which ran), as well as a proposed deal to kill an NBC Dateline piece planned on Scientology in exchange for an exclusive interview with Tom Cruise on another program. Rinder estimates that he met 10 times during a five-year period with Cruise’s people to demand that they get unfavorable stories about Scientology killed. “This was like the Keystone Kops,” he says, “everybody trying to do something with somebody, and the bottom line is nobody really had any control over the people putting together the problems.”

Cruise’s ostensible reason for appearing with Oprah was to publicize War of the Worlds, his new, $132 million movie. On the Universal lot, Cruise had pulled strings to have a Scientology tent erected—against the studio’s policy of not having any outside groups present during filming. A month after the Oprah show, Cruise appeared on the Today show and challenged Matt Lauer regarding the use of psychotropic drugs, in the process criticizing Brooke Shields for taking medication to relieve postpartum depression. “Does it make sense for Tom Cruise to tell Matt Lauer he’s glib and doesn’t know the history of psychiatry?,” Rinder asks me. “He’s appearing on national TV acting like a loony tune. I thought it was a disaster—what’s going on? But Miscavige is basically fist-pumping: ‘He’s not backed off! He’s not scared of his beliefs!’ ”

The world saw it differently. A cover line on the August 2005 issue of Vanity Fair read, DOMINICK DUNNE: HAS TOM CRUISE LOST HIS MARBLES? I ask Rinder if he ever dared to voice his opinions about Cruise’s strange behavior. “I could never say a word,” he replies. “That’s like saying Eva Braun is ugly.”

Many people have wondered about the dynamic between Miscavige and Cruise. Rinder calls their relationship “unnaturally close,” adding that he does not mean to imply homosexuality. Yet, he says, the relationship “is not what you would expect between someone who claims to be a leader of the church and one of its adherents. Miscavige treats Tom Cruise like his best buddy and confidant, his number two. That would be like the Pope saying Robert De Niro is like the College of Cardinals.”

Suri was born in April 2006. The gossip columnists had had a field day when it became known that Cruise had purchased his own sonogram machine to track the pregnancy. Mission: Impossible III came out in May. By August, Sumner Redstone had had enough. The South Park episode had not been rerun before Mission: Impossible III ’s release, but Cruise’s lucrative contract with Paramount was not renewed either—a nightmare for both the studio, dependant on Cruise for its Mission: Impossible franchise, and for Cruise. Much of the negative publicity was quickly wiped away, however, when the first pictures of an adorable Suri were published in Vanity Fair ’s October issue, with an accompanying story on the family’s still-unwedded bliss.

The Surprise Divorce

Like Princess Diana with Prince Charles, Katie Holmes had a mad schoolgirl crush on the older Tom Cruise, and, to many close observers, like Diana she had a third person in her marriage. At Holmes’s fairy-tale wedding, at Odescalchi Castle, in Italy, in 2006, David Miscavige did not officiate as the head of the Church of Scientology; rather, he was Cruise’s best man. Katie’s best man, it turned out, was her father, who had negotiated a prenuptial agreement for his youngest daughter that reportedly filled five bankers’ boxes. Because of it, when Katie Holmes made her bombshell announcement late last June that she was divorcing Tom Cruise, the case was able to be resolved in a mere 11 days.

As TomKat flooded the tabloids in 2005, Marc Headley, who had started working for Life & Style Weekly as a Scientology expert, heard that the editors had a source who said that Martin Holmes, a Catholic and a divorce lawyer in Toledo, Ohio, wanted to know how his daughter could escape Scientology’s clutches. Headley’s advice was to speak out publicly against Scientology and be labeled a Suppressive Person so that his daughter would have to choose between him and Cruise. “Then Katie became pregnant,” Headley says, “and I was told, ‘Forget it. He’ll write a pre-nup, and Katie will be taken care of.’ ”

According to Jared Shapiro, Life & Style Weekly ’s editorial director, who worked with Headley, “To say we were talking to a family member would be accurate,” though he would not name that member. “I don’t think the wool was ever pulled over her father’s eye in that situation.” When Headley published his book, Blown for Good: Behind the Iron Curtain of Scientology, about his split from the organization, in 2010, he sent a copy to Holmes at his law firm. Marty Rathbun, whose blog is closely followed by disaffected Scientologists, adds that he personally did not reach out to Martin Holmes but that others did. He says, “Of everything out there, blogs included, he is aware. It is my belief he knows what the score is.”

Many of the entourage that was around for Nazanin Boniadi’s brief relationship with Cruise stayed around during his marriage to Katie Holmes. The couple never lived alone. Like Boniadi, Holmes disappeared for a couple weeks after she and Cruise met, and she distanced herself from old friends. Jessica Rodriguez became her handler, too. Unlike Nicole Kidman’s acting career, however, Holmes’s never really took off during her marriage to Cruise, while his went on unabated. In their seven years together, Cruise made nine movies, which cost nearly a billion dollars and required shooting all over the world. One of these, Jack Reacher, a thriller—and another possible Paramount franchise—is coming out before Christmas, and Oblivion, a futuristic science-fiction saga produced by Universal, will premiere next spring. Production has already begun on yet another big-budget, science-fiction project, All You Need Is Kill, for Warner Bros. Hundreds of millions of dollars are riding on Cruise’s box-office appeal.

Given his long commitment to Scientology and the demands of his career, Cruise has very little wiggle room. Life at his side is similarly circumscribed. Two years ago, at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, I sat next to Holmes at a Vanity Fair table, and Cruise sat across from us. All through the meal, people streamed up, asking for pictures and autographs. “My goodness,” I said to Holmes, “if this is what you go through here, what must it be like when you go outside?” She answered, “Oh, we don’t go outside very much.”

Scientologists believe that divorce should be handled inside the church; members are not supposed to sue one another. The fact that Holmes blindsided Cruise with the divorce and was able to keep primary custody of Suri and enroll her in a private school would be automatic grounds for disconnection if she were married to any other Scientologist—many hundreds of whom have suffered deeply for years because of mandated separation from their families. By being able to stay connected to Suri and Katie, Cruise proves once again to be a privileged exception. Nevertheless, many Scientology mothers I spoke to warn that although Holmes has won a battle she has not necessarily won the war. “According to Scientology doctrine,” says Samantha Domingo, who was formerly married to Placido Domingo Jr., when they both were Scientologists, “Katie has denied Suri her spiritual eternity in the church. There’s no chance for her now. Why would Katie deny their daughter her spiritual freedom? How suppressive is that?” She warns, “If he loves his daughter, he will never give up [on Scientology]. He will try to use every means available to help his child, and he does think he’s helping his child, but he’s also helping the church to control his life.”

Just as Princess Diana won the paparazzi over to her side by learning how to feed them a steady supply of photo ops, Holmes seems to be winning the media battle through frequent outings in New York with Suri in tow. Not to be outdone, Cruise has attracted photographers as the literal Disney World Dad, showering Suri with toys and taking her by helicopter from New York to the Hamptons, and after that to the Magic Kingdom costumed as the Little Mermaid.

By being dropped publicly without warning, Cruise was made to feel the sting he had bestowed on a number of women. Furthermore, though he is his church’s putative savior, he has probably brought more invasive attention to Scientology than anyone else. David Miscavige cannot be pleased. Meanwhile, the hunt for the next Mrs. Cruise may already be on. Batter up.

Tom Cruise’s Vanity Fair Covers

Maureen Orth

Special correspondent, royal watch.

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• The Couch Jump That Rocked Hollywood

Tom Cruise’s 2005 appearance on ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show’ was an iconic episode of television—and a turning point for how we discuss and understand celebrities

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In the spring of 2005, an unknown 20-something in California uploaded a 19-second video of himself to the internet. “Me at the zoo,” the first YouTube video, featured cofounder Jawed Karim rambling about animals. “The cool thing about these guys is that they have really, really, really long trunks,” a man said, gesturing toward an elephant enclosure. It was boring, but it was the beginning of something.

That same spring, Karim’s YouTube quickly found one of its first hits. Its origins were far less obscure than a tech guy on a field trip. At the time, Tom Cruise had a more-than-reasonable claim to the title of biggest celebrity in America. He was the movie star, a leading man with mom-approved handsomeness, a nimble physicality, and a gung-ho intensity that played on the big screen as magnetic instead of disturbed. He counted Top Gun , Jerry Maguire , and two Mission: Impossible movies among the idol-making roles under his small belt. Meanwhile, Oprah Winfrey had already established herself as not only the biggest celebrity on daytime television, but the biggest celebrity in media. She’d made the careers of Drs. Phil and Oz. She’d debuted O, the Oprah Magazine . She’d hollered “You get a car!” to a euphoric crowd. Cruise’s May 2005 interview on The Oprah Winfrey Show seemed destined to be yet another fluffy meeting of monstrously famous minds. Instead, traditional media’s powerhouse duo was about to provide the new video-uploading service with a clip that would demonstrate the format’s growth potential far better than a rinky-dink recording of a random dude musing about zoos.

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Before Cruise came out on stage that day, the crowd at Chicago’s Harpo Studios had already hyped itself into an ecstatic frenzy, whooping and clapping and jumping in overwhelmed pleasure at being in the presence of Winfrey, in her space, living their best lives. By 2005, Oprah had transformed her daytime talk show from a variation on Phil Donahue’s talk theme into something new, something that took the voyeuristic thrills of seeing televised confessions and elevated them with the language of self-help seminars and the polish of Hollywood. “Oprah is sitting in the throne of American pop culture,” said WBEZ anchor Jenn White on the podcast Making Oprah , describing Oprah’s cultural cachet in the early aughts. “She commands a regular worldwide audience of tens of millions. She can turn a book into a bestseller, a product into a trend, and people into stars.” At that point, Christianity Today had identified Oprah as “one of the most influential spiritual leaders in America.” Her audiences resembled gaga congregants.

Cruise was in Chicago to talk about his upcoming movie, Steven Spielberg’s remake of War of the Worlds . Instead of sticking to the promotional script, though, the compact action star gushed about his new girlfriend, actress Katie Holmes. “You’re gone,” Oprah said, searching for words to describe Cruise’s over-the-top infatuation. Within 15 minutes, Cruise had leapt onto Oprah’s couch in a spontaneous outburst of enthusiasm for his personal life. Cruise’s offbeat showboating was memorable in part because of its unusual setting; The Oprah Winfrey Show was where celebrities traipsed to shine up their reputations and get a warm embrace from a sympathetic fellow star. Oprah would polish, not grill. But Oprah, usually so masterful at empathizing with her guests, appeared to be at a loss. “You’re gone,” she repeated. The charismatic preacher had been sidelined by an even more earnest proselytizer.

People hated it. More importantly, they loved to hate it. Most importantly, they loved to talk about hating it. Divorced from its context and remixed into YouTube clips and GIFs, Cruise’s couch outburst looked far more bizarre than it had during the episode, when at least the studio audience had been equally hyped up and Oprah had encouraged him to talk about his personal life. Within the context of the episode, Cruise’s behavior was strange but not outrageous. On the internet, isolated and amplified into a single furniture-leaping moment, it looked like an A-list meltdown . The most popular spoof was called “Tom Cruise Kills Oprah,” where Cruise appeared to kill Oprah with lightning. Family Guy parodied it. Even Sesame Street eventually parodied it. But the couch clip went beyond launching parodies and viral videos. The response to the Cruise episode signaled a changing of the guard in Hollywood media, from a pecking order where publicists and studios could strike deals with access-hungry press toward a more democratic and chaotic media landscape. Even though Cruise had been in a terrific mood during his Oprah appearance, it was appropriate that his tomfoolery was reframed to look far more aggressive than it was. The internet and the media were about to get much sharper.

“Tom’s couch-jumping coincided with the rise of gossip blogs,” Matt James, who runs the celebrity gossip site Pop Culture Died in 2009, told The Ringer . “The entire incident became a testament to the way public opinion could form online in the pre-Twitter era, and how damaging it could be in the long run.”

Longtime Hollywood gossip blog Lainey Gossip also credited Cruise’s leap onto Oprah’s couch with galvanizing the media landscape. “This rise of the gossip blog quickly accelerated,” site creator Elaine Lui wrote in 2015. “Celebrities were not being contained the way they used to be. And the PEOPLE and Entertainment Tonight coverage just wasn’t cutting it anymore. Not when these illusions were so quickly being destroyed. This incident became one of the most critical chapters in the Origin Story of Internet Gossip.” The intense online response to Cruise’s convention-breaking presaged a shift in how celebrity freakouts were covered, as it was one of the first major entertainment-world meltdowns to saturate the blogging world. “There was something so personal, so oversharey, so necessarily engaged with the audience in Cruise’s couch-jumping that it set the tone for the kind of one-person media circus we’d expect and enjoy in the years to come, to varying degrees of sadness (Britney Spears), amazement (Charlie Sheen) and despicableness (Chris Brown),” Gawker ’s Rich Juzwiak wrote in 2012. While the word “meme” hadn’t yet entered the mainstream lexicon, Cruise’s furniture leap went viral. “Culturally, it was, in my mind, one of the first celebrity memes,” Brandon Ogborn, the writer behind The TomKat Project , an excellent play examining Tom Cruise’s reputation, told The Ringer . “That clip was reenacted so many times. It was kind of a watershed moment for internet culture.”

Along with memes came a cascade of internet commentary on Cruise’s behavior, most of it overwhelmingly negative. While Oprah’s studio audience had been pleased with his effusiveness, the story line soured in the digital world. “Now, whenever something happens in the news, we can go online and quickly find the tide in which public opinion is turning. In the early days of the internet, it wasn’t that distinct,” James said. “That changed with Tom. The people who watched Tom’s appearance and felt it was maybe even the slightest bit heartwarming went online to find that the majority opinion was Tom had lost his mind.”

It was an exciting time for bloggers, and terrible timing for Cruise. He had fired his longtime publicist, Pat Kingsley, in March 2004. Kingsley was a powerhouse with a viselike grip on the dicks of traditional outlets. “She was adamant about keeping Cruise out of the tabloids. At press junkets, she demanded that journalists sign contracts swearing not to sell their quotes to the supermarket rags,” film critic Amy Nicholson wrote for LA Weekly in 2014, arguing that internet culture was to blame for Cruise’s fall from grace. “Then Kingsley expanded her reach and insisted that all TV interviewers destroy their tapes after his segment had aired.” Without Kingsley, Cruise didn’t have his usual PR fixer at hand to tell him what not to do, to tell him how to course-correct once the backlash began, or to tell the press to lay off. Instead, Cruise had replaced the flinty Kingsley with his sister, Lee Anne DeVette, a fellow Scientologist. The public reaction to his romance with Holmes was no good even before The Incident. According to a People poll, the majority of respondents saw the relationship as a publicity stunt . “We can’t get enough of the TomKat show because eventually the paint will start to chip and we will hopefully see all the ugliness as openly as we’ve been shoved the lovey-dovey bullshit,” Perez Hilton wrote. Cruise’s past habit of keeping his private life to himself and manicuring his public image had given him an idyllic but distinctly artificial sheen, one that may have counterintuitively exacerbated the response when he finally stepped out of line. “He had never done anything publicly wrong before,” Nicholson told The Ringer . “He’d always been so perfect.” Cruise’s over-the-top display of hyper-public affection, possibly made more intense by his desire to prove that his love was real, backfired. Instead of making people think he was a romantic, Cruise just made people think he was weird.

He quickly got weirder, and darker. Shortly after his couch leap, Cruise started a feud with Brooke Shields by dismissing her experience with postpartum depression. He went on Today to go even further, insisting that psychiatry and psychiatric medicine were dangerous. While Cruise was a longtime Scientologist, he had never openly advocated for the abusive group’s more controversial beliefs so publicly before. “It was a time when he really just let himself go, and let his freak flag fly. And it was also a time when he was really proselytizing for Scientology. I think it was a huge explosion of press that was bad press, because the Tom Cruise machine just stopped,” Ogborn said. “He said, This is who I am, I’m going to jump on that couch, I’m going to tell Matt Lauer he’s glib. ”

In less than a year, Cruise contorted his reputation from a hard-working, eccentric leading man into Hollywood’s premiere guileless kook. “Cruise: I will eat the placenta,” a 2006 Daily Mail headline , is a good example of the sort of news he generated. When California banned the sale of ultrasounds for personal use that year, it was known as the “Tom Cruise law” because Cruise had publicly purchased an ultrasound machine to view his daughter in the womb. South Park went for the jugular, as expected, but ridicule came from all over. Noah Baumbach wrote a New Yorker piece where the joke was that his dog was stupid and enthusiastic … just like Tom Cruise. Even Lauren Bacall dissed him to reporters. People still showed up for Cruise movies. War of the Worlds had a huge opening , but studios feared that Cruise’s bankability was tainted after Mission: Impossible III made nearly $150 million less worldwide than its predecessor. Cruise’s reputation was undeniably threatened. His Q rating, used to measure celebrity appeal, dropped 40 percent. “From that point on, we all accepted Tom Cruise was crazy,” James said. “It was a done deal.”

Cruise’s uninhibited media blunder bender cost him a lucrative, long-term production deal with Paramount. His behavior was blamed for the deal’s destruction. “His recent conduct has not been acceptable to Paramount,” Viacom chairman Sumner M. Redstone told The Wall Street Journal . The Oprah Winfrey Show , meanwhile, continued on as an unstoppable cultural force. From all accounts, as much as the couch-jumping episode yoked Oprah and Cruise together for eternity as a punch line, it also ruffled feathers at Harpo. “She was not invited to his wedding, and he was not invited for a very long time to come interview with her,” Ogborn pointed out, noting that Harpo employees would frequently come talk to him after the Chicago run of The TomKat Project to discuss that period of time. “They said she was fucking pissed when it happened.”

Regardless of Oprah’s personal opinion of Cruise’s behavior, the interview didn’t hurt her professionally. A mock set from the show is now on display in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture as part of an exhibit on Winfrey. There was no lasting damage to her legacy. (Curators declined to comment on the role of the interview in her cultural history.) If anything, the couch-jumping episode only provided a bolstering example of Oprah presiding over must-watch TV. The show’s guiding ethos focused on going big and doing the best, resulting in ever-more-elaborate gift giveaways and surprises for the audience. While Cruise’s antics might have thrown off the dynamic between guest and host that Oprah preferred, his interview ultimately fit the bill for the gripping, unexpected, and wholly memorable. “Tom’s televised freakout was just another notch in her belt,” James said. Talk-show hosts now manufacture segments specifically to do well on YouTube and other online platforms, but it was Oprah who generated the first viral talk-show clip.

The incident certainly did not kill Cruise’s career, either. In 2008, his comic turn in Tropic Thunder helped undercut his reputation for unrelenting self-seriousness. (The same year, Cruise reunited with Oprah for a much calmer interview.) Cruise maintained his career throughout his reputational turmoil by sticking with Mission: Impossible and thematically similar films. “He’s always done such great work with this franchise, but he’s almost clinging to it nervously, like he’s afraid to let go and take a real risk,” Nicholson said. “He’ll take risks inside the film with stunts, but he’s not taking risks inside his own career, like doing the dramatic work that marked a lot of what he did in the ’80s, or by chasing an Oscar, which is something he gave up on.” Although he never quite regained his status as a Hollywood golden boy, he has mellowed into an aging statesman of action flicks—and anyway, his divorce from Katie Holmes and continued association with Scientology have left a longer-lasting stink on his name than his exuberant talk-show appearance. In 2015, GQ heralded “Cool Tom Cruise.” This summer, he is starring in the sixth Mission: Impossible movie. The critical response to both the film and Cruise’s performance has been overwhelmingly positive. “What’s always been so ironic to me about the Tom Cruise quote-unquote backlash is that it seemed to me that audiences still really loved him, even if newspapers were telling them that they didn’t,” Nicholson said. “I feel like he’s proving something that never needed to be proven.”

The real legacy of the couch-jumping incident has almost nothing to do with Cruise or Oprah specifically and everything to do with how people reacted online to the moment. Tom and Oprah’s strange conversation, and the reaction it provoked, is now preserved as thousands of digital artifacts, emblematic of how information traveled in the early aughts. Rewatching the episode and the viral videos it spawned feels quaint now. The bloggy media cycle that produced Cruise memes has been replaced by a cesspool of broken newsfeeds smushing conspiracy theories and branded content against real news and irrational presidential tweets with such velocity that it seems deeply unlikely that Cruise’s hop onto a loveseat would provoke much at all in 2018. However, it’s even less likely that Cruise would’ve been able to make it so far into his career without finding his kooky personality exposed as he did in 2005.

Up-and-comers have learned to respond to a different and less controllable form of media attention. There is a whole brand of celebrity in which the famous are expected to engage with fans on social media. Celebrity PR disasters don’t often happen in such glossy settings anymore; instead, they are frequently facilitated by social media and accelerated by fans and detractors who dig up old tweets . The last time a daytime talk-show guest created a media supernova after their appearance, it was Danielle Bregoli, a.k.a. Bhad Bhabie, a.k.a. “Cash Me Ousside” Girl, who parlayed a viral moment shit-talking on Dr. Phil into a viable rap career . I doubt Bregoli knows about Tom Cruise’s Oprah appearance, but her own twist on the daytime meme underscores how much has changed since Cruise took his happy hop. Performative, contrived freakiness in front of a live studio audience can be an asset now. The big leap is figuring out how to navigate internet criticism without spinning out—a frequently impossible mission.

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Katie Holmes: How She Planned Her Split from Tom Cruise

"She was talking to Tom on the phone until last week saying, 'I love you,' " says a source

Katie Holmes ‘s decision to leave Tom Cruise may have seemed sudden , but it involved meticulous planning.

And no one was more shocked than Cruise himself.

“She was talking to Tom on the phone up until last week saying, ‘I love you,’ ” a source tells PEOPLE of the actress.

“Her inner circle has been planning this and switching out cell phones since she was in China [in mid-June],” adds the source.

“When new cell phones arrived, then nobody could reach her. Her old best friends from last week don’t have her new number, no email. She’s unreachable.”

Holmes, 33, also rented her new apartment in New York City in early June. “[Tom] knew that she moved there, but [he thought it was] for different reasons,” says the source.

“She said she moved there to drive into the underground garage. There are fewer paparazzi and it’s less intrusive for her,” says the source. “It was the first phase of getting everything out of the house, and that’s why she was able to say she’s moving without giving an indication that she was going to divorce him.”

Then, last week, her father, Martin Holmes , arrived in New York and helped his daughter clean house, firing many of the people around her shortly before Holmes filed for divorce anonymously in New York City.

Cruise, then filming in Iceland, “had no idea this was coming,” a source tells PEOPLE in the magazine’s new cover story, on newsstands now.

For much more on the split, including Holmes’s dramatic exit from the marriage and the legal battle ahead, pick up this week’s issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands now

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A Complete Timeline Of Tom Cruise And Katie Holmes's Relationship

TomKat happened quickly. In spring 2005, Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes were about to begin dating one another in a highly publicized romance, surprising fans and the media. But even more surprising was the speed at which their romance progressed. Within weeks of meeting, the two became engaged. Within less than a year, they were expecting a baby. Suri Cruise was born in 2006.

Scandals related to Cruise's erratic behavior plagued the union, and rumors swirled that Scientology was behind the pairing. Many also believed the relationship was a publicity stunt - both Cruise and Holmes had movies coming out during the beginning of their romance, the height of their very public courtship.

Although Cruise was venerated in 2005 for his successful movies , his career has since taken a downhill turn. Exposés about Scientology have discredited the church and its followers, and Cruise's odd behavior makes him an eccentric figure in the minds of many. Cruise and Holmes's whirlwind romance ended in divorce, but it's hard to forget the strange Scientology-laden saga of their relationship.

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October 2004: In An Interview, While Engaged To Chris Klein, Holmes Said She Always Wanted To Marry Tom Cruise

While Katie Holmes was still engaged to actor Chris Klein, she told Seventeen magazine, "I think every little girl dreams about her wedding. I used to think I was going to marry Tom [Cruise]."

Just two months later she broke off her engagement with Klein. The pair had begun dating as teenagers , and they said the split was as amicable as could be.

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April 2005: Cruise Asks To Meet With Holmes

After Holmes told Seventeen magazine she dreamed as a child of marrying Tom Cruise, the actor contacted Holmes's manager and asked to meet with her. The meeting happened under the pretense that the creators of Mission: Impossible  were considering Holmes for a role.

Holmes said of first seeing Cruise, "I knew in an instant that we were going to be together, that we were going to get married."

April 2005: Cruise And Holmes Go On A Series Of Dates

After a four-hour meeting with Cruise, Holmes and Cruise went on a series of dates . A simple dinner date with Cruise was no ordinary event: the pair ate in his private jet. Their next date was on the back of Cruise's motorcycle on a ride to the beach.

Holmes was enamored: "Here I was in Los Angeles [on] my first motorcycle ride to the beach. It was all so amazing and fast. I was in love from the moment I shook his hand for the first time."

April 27, 2005: The Pair Make Their First Public Appearance In Rome

Cruise and Holmes, less than a month after meeting for the first time, made their first appearance as a couple in Rome, Italy.

They attended the David di Donatello film awards together. 

May 2005: Cruise Jumps On Oprah's Couch While Declaring His Love For Holmes

In a now infamous interview, Cruise appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show , where he displayed erratic behavior . He jumped up and down on Winfrey's couch and, with conviction, fell to his knees as he expressed excitement about his relationship with Holmes.

Winfrey later told the press she was confused by Cruise's behavior, and a poll on People found his actions convinced 63% of readers the Cruise-Holmes union was a publicity stunt.

June 2005: Holmes Explores Scientology

After Holmes started dating Cruise, she began making decisions that upset those close to her. For one, she fired her manager and publicist for undisclosed reasons. She also began exploring the Church of Scientology, which Cruise belonged to. The Church of Scientology assigned Holmes a "Scientology assistant" named Jessica Rodriguez, who followed Holmes everywhere she went.

In an interview with W magazine, Rodriguez was present to coach Holmes through her answers. Holmes  said of Scientology, "You know, it's really exciting.. I just started auditing, and I'm taking some courses, and I really like it."

A source told  People  magazine that Holmes never became a "full-fledged member" of the church.

June 2005: They Were Engaged Just Eight Weeks After Meeting

The pair got engaged in June, just eight weeks after their first meeting in April. Cruise proposed at the top of the Eiffel Tower, where the two dined at Le Jules Verne. Shortly after, Cruise called a press conference to announce their engagement.

In a callback to when Cruise leaped off Oprah Winfrey's couch, he said of the wedding, "I’ll be jumping on couches for a very long time."  People reported that Holmes and Cruise didn't touch during the entire press conference.

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Mid-2005: Holmes Turns Down A Role In 'Factory Girl,' Allegedly Due To Scientology's Views On Psychiatry

Holmes was originally slated for a role in Factory Girl , which the Weinstein Company released in 2006. The movie is about actress-model Edie Sedgwick, known for starring in Andy Warhol's films. Holmes dropped out of the project at the last minute, however.

The media speculated Holmes's decision was a reflection of her newfound involvement in Scientology, which doesn't believe in psychiatry. Throughout her life, Sedgwick was in and out of mental institutions and perished from taking too many hard substances.

Cruise also said in an interview that he didn't want Holmes to play victims and preferred she stick to portraying strong women.

October 5, 2005: Holmes And Cruise Announce They're Expecting A Baby

In early October, six months after meeting, Cruise and Holmes announced they were expecting their first child together.

Cruise had already adopted his ex-wife Nicole Kidman's children, and the baby would be Holmes's first.

April 2006: Suri Cruise Is Born During What Might Have Been A 'Silent Birth'

Scientology practices silent births , where the person giving birth is supposed to be completely quiet, "as calm and no-talk as possible." The birth is also supposed to feel relaxing for the mother.

It's possible Holmes went through this process when delivering Suri.

September 2006: Holmes And Cruise Present Suri To The Public

Holmes and Cruise introduced Suri to the public in early September, four months after her birth. Because the pair waited so long to share a photo of the child, people began speculating Suri was ill, or that Cruise and Holmes had made up the pregnancy entirely to garner publicity for their films  War of the Worlds and Batman Begins , respectively.

Holmes and Cruise chose Vanity Fair as the magazine where Suri made her debut .

November 2006: Holmes And Cruise Wed In Italy

Over a year after their engagement, Holmes and Cruise tied the knot at a ceremony in Bracciano, Italy. They had their wedding at Odescalchi Castle and spent $3 million on the ceremony. Giorgio Armani, himself a wedding guest, designed the two dresses Holmes wore that night - Swarovski crystals adorned one of the dresses, which is rumored to have taken 305 hours to make.

Holmes's friends were notably absent from the wedding. Celebrities and Scientology officials were the primary guests in attendance. Stars like John Travolta, Jennifer Lopez, and Will and Jada Pinkett Smith came to the event. But Holmes's Dawson's Creek co-stars were missing.

May 2010: Holmes Performs A Seductive Dance For Cruise At A Charity Event

In May 2010, Holmes and Cruise performed together to raise money for the Motion Picture and Television Fund.

Holmes performed a sultry dance to "Whatever Lola Wants," while Cruise had his own choreography.

March 2011: Holmes Stops Talking About Cruise As Often As She Once Did

Holmes eventually stopped speaking about Cruise like she did in the beginning of their relationship. She no longer gushed over her husband, instead focusing more on talking about her acting roles.

She told  Marie Claire , "I feel ready. For the next chapter in my life. I’m excited to begin a new phase: roles I might have been afraid to play, places I want to travel with my daughter."

June 2012: Cruise Premieres His Film 'Rock of Ages' Without Holmes

In June 2012, Cruise showed up to the premiere of his film Rock of Ages . Holmes was notably absent. Cruise made brief mention of Holmes on the red carpet, calling her "an amazing woman."

He also raved about Holmes in an interview with Playboy :

She is an extraordinary person, and if you spent five minutes with her, you’d see it. Everything she does, she does with this beautiful creativity. She’s funny and charming, and when she walks into the room, I just feel better. I’m a romantic. I like doing things like creating romantic dinners, and she enjoys that.

June 2012: Holmes And Cruise File For Divorce

Holmes is rumored to have thought Cruise might send their daughter Suri to the Sea Org, a Scientologist organization where children are subjected to forced labor at sea. Holmes filed for divorce, and just 10 days later, the pair reached a settlement that gave Holmes custody of Suri .

The settlement allegedly prevents Suri from becoming involved with Scientology. Because Scientologists have to cut off family members who leave the church, Cruise has gone for long periods of time without seeing Suri.

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Katie Holmes Had This To Say About Her 'Intense' Divorce From Tom Cruise

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In June, 2012, Katie Holmes shocked the world — and Tom Cruise — by filing for divorce after seven years together and six years of marriage. Though their relationship and divorce is one of the most publicized and talked-about splits in celebrity history , the former couple have both been impressively coy about the reasons behind their breakup.

Rumors have long swirled that differences of opinions on Cruise’s devotion to Scientology drove Holmes to seek a divorce. In 2013 , while testifying in a defamation case he took against Bauer Media who claimed he abandoned his daughter, Cruise was asked if Holmes left him “in part to protect Suri from Scientology .” When pushed for an answer, Cruise responded: “Did she say that? That was one of the assertions, yes.”

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Christine Baumgartner May Have Very Specific Conditions Before Moving Out of Ex Kevin Costner's Home

In the same deposition, Cruise admitted his daughter with Holmes, Suri, was no longer a practicing member of Scientology but insisted, “there is no need to protect my daughter from my religion.” This admission only exacerbated rumors that Cruise, now 60, was entirely estranged from his daughter due to the fact that Scientology deems anyone who leaves the faith a “Suppressive Person” and encourages remaining members in the same family to cut them off.

Still, despite relocating to New York and beginning her life as a single mother, Holmes remained tight-lipped about her divorce. In 2016, Radar Online claimed that the couple’s rapid divorce, which was finalized in just 11 days, featured a clause that prevented Holmes from speaking out about her ex-husband. In exchange for $4.8 million in child support and $5 million for herself, Holmes allegedly agreed not to talk about Cruise, Scientology or even date publicly until 2017. This leads us on to one of the Dawson’s Creek alum’s rare admissions about her divorce which she shared in 2020.

Click here to read the full article.

While speaking to InStyle , Holmes reflected on her 2012 move to New York City after her divorce. She recalled: “That time was intense. It was a lot of attention, and I had a little child on top of it. We had some funny moments out and about in public. So many people I didn’t know became my friends and helped us out, and that’s what I love about the city.”

She reflected on how the kindness of strangers got her through the challenging time. “There was one incredible moment when I think I actually cried,” Holmes, now 44, said. “Suri was 6 or 7, and she was spending the night at a friend’s house while I was seeing the ballet at Lincoln Center. At 10 o’clock I got a call: ‘Mommy, can you come get me?’ I got a cab and went down to Battery Park to pick her up. She was exhausted. She fell asleep on the way home, and when we pulled up to our building, the cab driver opened the door and helped me not wake her. He helped carry her to the building. He was so kind.”

The proud mom has given us occasional glimpses into her and Suri’s life over the years and if those tidbits of information, and the rare paparazzi photo we get, are anything to go by, a now-17-year-old Suri is growing into a happy young woman. Still, the rumors continue to swirl about Cruise’s absence from his daughter’s life. The father-daughter duo have not been photographed together in over a decade and a March report stated that the actor is missing key events in Suri’s life such as her high school graduation and her college application process.

Before you go, click here to see Tom Cruise & Katie Holmes entire relationship timeline:

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A look back at tom cruise & katie holmes’ marriage & divorce in photos.

by Delilah Gray

Delilah Gray

Trending News Editor

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When people think of the 2000s, obviously, a lot comes to mind. Looking past the questionable fashion choices and our obsession with everything pink, everyone was really obsessed with the “It” couples of the decade: Jennifer Lopez and Ben Affleck , Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling, and, perhaps most of all, Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise (AKA TomKat), who married 16 years ago on November 18, 2006.

Let’s face it; whether you loved them or hated them, everyone was paying attention. Their whirlwind romance started in 2005, and within two months, they were ready to tie the knot . Then came love, marriage, and a baby carriage — just not in that order. Soon after they announced their engagement, they also announced they were expecting their daughter Suri Cruise .

They seemed like a simple, happy family, from their Italian fairytale wedding to their many smiling red-carpet appearances. But some people got a weird vibe, especially after Cruise’s Scientology activities went viral, and some worried Holmes was trapped in the marriage.

Then, after nearly six years of marriage, Holmes filed for divorce in 2012 — and everyone had so many questions. What was 2000s royalty became another celebrity divorce that broke our hearts.

Learn more about their turbulent relationship and divorce timeline, and see some photos of the pair together below.

A version of this article was originally published on Nov 2021. 

Love in Italy

Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes got together in 2005 and made their love public while they were touring Italy. 

Wedding Bells

When Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes revealed their relationship, everyone thought it was a fairytale. When Holmes first got into the Hollywood scene in the early 2000s, she told Seventeen magazine in a now-deleted interview whom she saw herself marrying. Per Vogue , “I think every little girl dreams about (her wedding). I used to think I was going to marry Tom Cruise.” 

Packing On The PDA

Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise weren’t afraid to pack on the PDA, wherever they were. 

Engagement Ring

Katie Holmes was proudly showing off the $1.5 million engagement ring Tom Cruise gave her after less than two months together. 

The War of the Worlds

Newly engaged couple Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes were all smiles at the premiere of  The War of the Worlds  in 2005. 

Baby on Board

Tom Cruise was over-the-top with his love and excitement for every milestone he had with Katie Holmes. The media lost it when they announced they were expecting a baby. 

Sports Fanatics

Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes were very in love throughout their marriage, and one of their go-to activities together was to go to sports games. 

Perfect Day

On Nov 18, 2006, Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise had a star-studded wedding in a castle in Italy. 

The Big Day

Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise wore Giorgio Armani ensembles, and everyone was obsessed with the iconic wedding. 

Suri’s Origin

The happy family frequently went to sports games, even when Suri Cruise was an infant. Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes named their baby girl “Suri” because it means both “princess” and “red rose.” 

Mother-Daughter Duo From Day One

Suri Cruise has always been a momma’s girl and you couldn’t find a photo of Katie Holmes not holding onto Suri. 

Scientology Family

Soon after getting together, Katie Holmes converted to Scientology for Tom Cruise. 

NYC Marathon

Back in 2007, Katie Holmes finished the NYC Marathon. Tom and Suri Cruise were right there to show their support. 

Red Carpet Wonders

Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes always brought their A-game with red carpet fashion. 

Baby No. 2?

Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise were open to having more children in the future, according to Marie Claire. 

Happy Family

Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes brought their daughter Suri wherever they went.

Word Travelers

Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise went everywhere around the world together, frequently going to places like Japan, Germany, and Italy. 

Helping Hand

Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes always showed up to a friend’s important day. In 2009, they showed their support for friend and former co-star Cameron Diaz, who was getting a Star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. 

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Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes, enter the Cort Theater to view the ‘Fences’ performance on Broadway out and about for CELEBRITY CANDIDS – TUESDAY, , New York, NY June 22, 2010. Photo By: Ray Tamarra/Everett Collection

Despite both being in multiple projects in 2010, Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise frequently set aside time for one another. 

Joined At The Hip

Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise were always side-by-side during film premieres. 

“Very Special” Relationship

Tom Cruise raved about Katie Holmes whenever he could, even close to the end of their marriage. In a 2012 interview with Playboy , he said, “I’m just happy, and I have been since the moment I met her. What we have is very special.”  

Happy Red Carpet Couple

Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise seemed happy as can be at the 2011 Golden Globes, even though they split only a year later.  

Smiling at the Oscars

Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes went to the 2012 Vanity Fair Oscar party, which was one of their last appearances together before Holmes filed for divorce. Holmes filed due to fear of Tom Cruise abducting their child into the Church of Scientology. 

Tom & Suri

After filing for divorce, Katie Holmes won the custody battle for Suri against Tom Cruise. 

Katie & Suri Forever

Since their divorce in 2012, Katie Holmes and Suri Cruise have been one of the cutest mother-daughter duos we’ve ever seen 

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Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes’s Relationship Timeline: The Way They Were

Out of the spotlight. Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes ‘ marriage — and subsequent split — has been a major topic of conversation over the years.

The couple first sparked dating speculation after they were seen on a trip to Europe together in 2005. Following a whirlwind romance, Cruise and Holmes got engaged later that year before welcoming their daughter in 2006.

During their courtship, the Abandon star confirmed that she was going to convert to Scientology . “You know, it’s really exciting,” Holmes told W Magazine in 2005 about the controversial religion. “I just started auditing and I’m taking some courses and I really like it. I feel like it’s really helping.”

The Dawson’s Creek alum exchanged vows with the Top Gun: Maverick star in 2006, shortly after they expanded their family. Cruise and Holmes shocked fans when they announced their separation in June 2012 after five years of marriage.

At the time, a source exclusively told Us Weekly that the Batman Begins actress was “very happy” that she could “move on and finally live her life.” Less than one year later, the Oscar nominee noted in an interview that that he “didn’t expect” his ex to file for divorce in 2012.

Holmes, for her part, opened up about making plans to return to her acting career . “Even early on, when I was a young actor and all of a sudden people knew who I was, my dad told me, ‘Don’t let that change how you live your life.’ I’ve always sort of approached it that way,” she detailed to DuJour magazine in 2014. “You have to continue to do the things you want to do and not let outside forces dictate.”

The New York native continued: “I think I’ve gotten more comfortable with acting over time. Early on, I could never get out of my head. I’d be thinking, ‘I have to get the job.’ And even when I had the job, I was afraid that I was going to get fired, or I just had the mentality of, ‘I need to be good enough.'”

Holmes said she was looked forward to getting to explore her passion again, saying, “But the more projects you do, the older you get, the more life experience you get, you start to understand storytelling better. So you’re a little bit more confident going in. You’re not afraid of getting fired: You just want to contribute.”

The Miss Meadows star clarified that she didn’t blame her marriage for her career hiatus . “It’s the life of an actor. We don’t really have a lot of choice in the matter. You have dry spells, and then you have times when there is a lot of opportunity,” she concluded.

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Nearly a decade after ending her marriage, Holmes opened up about the challenges of being a single mother. “That time was intense,” she recalled to InStyle in April 2020. “It was a lot of attention, and I had a little child on top of it. [We] had some funny moments out and about in public. … I feel like I can be more creative and have more time, have my voice.”

Holmes dated Jamie Foxx from 2013 to 2019. She was later linked to chef Emilio Vitolo and Bobby Wooten III . Cruise, for his part, previously sparked romance rumors with Hayley Atwell but has remained tight-lipped about his personal life .

Scroll down to relive Cruise and Holmes’ relationship:

Credit: E Charbonneau/Bei/Shutterstock

Out of the spotlight. Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes ' marriage — and subsequent split — has been a major topic of conversation over the years. The couple first sparked dating speculation after they were seen on a trip to Europe together in 2005. Following a whirlwind romance, Cruise and Holmes got engaged later that year before welcoming their daughter in 2006. During their courtship, the Abandon star confirmed that she was going to convert to Scientology . "You know, it's really exciting," Holmes told W Magazine in 2005 about the controversial religion. "I just started auditing and I'm taking some courses and I really like it. I feel like it's really helping." The Dawson's Creek alum exchanged vows with the Top Gun: Maverick star in 2006, shortly after they expanded their family. Cruise and Holmes shocked fans when they announced their separation in June 2012 after five years of marriage. At the time, a source exclusively told Us Weekly that the Batman Begins actress was "very happy" that she could "move on and finally live her life." Less than one year later, the Oscar nominee noted in an interview that that he "didn't expect" his ex to file for divorce in 2012. Holmes, for her part, opened up about making plans to return to her acting career . "Even early on, when I was a young actor and all of a sudden people knew who I was, my dad told me, 'Don't let that change how you live your life.' I've always sort of approached it that way," she detailed to DuJour magazine in 2014. "You have to continue to do the things you want to do and not let outside forces dictate." [sendtonews type="float" key="jnXfFeqAzp-2839666-14453"] The New York native continued: "I think I've gotten more comfortable with acting over time. Early on, I could never get out of my head. I'd be thinking, 'I have to get the job.' And even when I had the job, I was afraid that I was going to get fired, or I just had the mentality of, 'I need to be good enough.'" Holmes said she was looked forward to getting to explore her passion again, saying, "But the more projects you do, the older you get, the more life experience you get, you start to understand storytelling better. So you're a little bit more confident going in. You're not afraid of getting fired: You just want to contribute." The Miss Meadows star clarified that she didn't blame her marriage for her career hiatus . "It's the life of an actor. We don't really have a lot of choice in the matter. You have dry spells, and then you have times when there is a lot of opportunity," she concluded. Nearly a decade after ending her marriage, Holmes opened up about the challenges of being a single mother. "That time was intense," she recalled to InStyle in April 2020. "It was a lot of attention, and I had a little child on top of it. [We] had some funny moments out and about in public. ... I feel like I can be more creative and have more time, have my voice." Holmes dated Jamie Foxx from 2013 to 2019. She was later linked to chef Emilio Vitolo and Bobby Wooten III . Cruise, for his part, previously sparked romance rumors with Hayley Atwell but has remained tight-lipped about his personal life . Scroll down to relive Cruise and Holmes' relationship:

Credit: G Giglia - D Schiavella/EPA/Shutterstock

Holmes, who was engaged to Chris Klein from 2003 to 2005, told Seventeen Magazine that she thought she was "going to marry" Cruise when she was younger.

Credit: Hahn Lionel/ABACA/Shutterstock

One month after her split from Klein, Holmes was spotted on a romantic getaway with Cruise.

Credit: Jim Smeal/BEI/Shutterstock

During a live interview, the Top Gun actor jumped up and down while discussing his relationship with Holmes. "I'm in love. I'm in love and it's one of those things where you want to be cool, like, ‘Yeah I like her,'" he shared at the time. "That's not how I feel. I wanted to meet this person and I met her and she's extraordinary."

Credit: A Berliner/BEI/Shutterstock

The pair got engaged after several months of dating.

Credit: Jens Kalaene/EPA/Shutterstock

Cruise and Holmes welcomed their first child together. The Golden Globe winner also shares daughter Isabella and son Connor with ex-wife Nicole Kidman .

Credit: Shutterstock

The twosome tied the knot in a lavish wedding at the Odescalchi Castle in Italy.

Credit: Rune Hellestad/UPI/Shutterstock

During an interview, the Alone Together star said marriage was "really fun," telling Marie Claire, "It's an amazing life, but we always remind ourselves of how incredibly lucky we are."

Holmes noted that she wasn't in a rush to have more kids. "Maybe in a couple of years," she added at the time. 

The Jerry Maguire star called Holmes "an extraordinary person" during an interview with Playboy . "If you spent five minutes with her, you'd see it," he gushed. "I'm just happy, and I have been since the moment I met her. What we have is very special."

Credit: Marion Curtis/Starpix/Shutterstock

After six years of marriage, Cruise and Holmes announced their decision to part ways in separate statements . "This is a personal and private matter for Katie and her family. Katie's primary concern remains, as it always has been, her daughter's best interest," the actress' attorney said at the time.

Meanwhile, Cruise's rep also issued a statement, which read, "Kate has filed for divorce and Tom is deeply saddened and is concentrating on his three children. Please allow them their privacy."

Credit: Joanne Davidson/Shutterstock

Following their split, the Edge of Tomorrow star admitted he didn't expect Holmes to call it quits. "To be 50 and to have experiences and to think you have a grip on everything, and then it hits you — this is it, what life can do to you," he told a German TV network. "Life is a tragicomedy. You need to have a sense of humor."

Credit: Stewart Cook/Shutterstock

"I never really look back. I just approach life [taking] it one day at a time," the All We Had star said on Today about her divorce. "I'm really excited about where I am right now. I've had some really wonderful creative experiences. I'm just really grateful."

Credit: Andrew H. Walker/Shutterstock; David Fisher/BAFTA/Shutterstock; Stephen Lovekin/Shutterstock

After Thandie Newton claimed she felt "so scared" of Cruise while filming Mission: Impossible 2 , his ex-wife seemingly showed her support by following the actress on social media.

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Katie Holmes Reveals New Details About Her Divorce From Tom Cruise

One of Hollywood’s most-followed couples, Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise’s divorce was far from private. Since the famous couple split in 2012 after six years of marriage, Holmes chose to take a step out of the spotlight, moving from Los Angeles to New York to raise her daughter, Suri.

Watch below: Justin Bieber reignites fight challenge with Tom Cruise

In a shift from her usual, under-the-radar behaviour, Holmes has candidly opened up about her fame and the stress of her divorce from Cruise in a brand-new interview. In the April issue of InStyle US , the 41-year-old actress made rare comments about her divorce from her ex-husband, revealing, “That time was intense. It was a lot of attention, and I had a little child on top of it.”

“We had some funny moments out and about in public. So many people I didn’t know became my friends and helped us out, and that’s what I love about the city.”

The Dawson’s Creek veteran then continued, recalling a story about a cab driver who helped her during a particularly difficult evening soon after the couple split.

“There was one incredible moment when I think I actually cried. Suri was 6 or 7, and she was spending the night at a friend’s house while I was seeing the ballet at Lincoln Center. At 10 o’clock I got a call: ‘Mommy, can you come get me?’” began Holmes.

“I got a cab and went down to Battery Park to pick her up. She was exhausted. She fell asleep on the way home, and when we pulled up to our building, the cab driver opened the door and helped me not wake her. He helped carry her to the building. He was so kind.”

Katie’s bond with her daughter Suri, now 14-years-old, is clearly unbreakable. The actress certainly didn’t hold back when discussing her love for her daughter, sharing;

“I love her so much. My biggest goal has always been to nurture her into her individuality,” she said.

“To make sure she is 100 percent herself and strong, confident, and able. And to know it. She came out very strong — she’s always been a strong personality. She’ll pick an activity and work her butt off until she’s really good at it. Then she’s like, ‘OK, I’m going to try the next thing.’

“She’s pretty special.”

Elyssa Kostopoulos is a freelance writer.

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My Impossible Mission to Find Tom Cruise

The action star has gone to great lengths to avoid the press for more than a decade. But maybe our writer could track him down anyway?

Credit... Illustration by Kelsey Dake

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By Caity Weaver

• Published July 17, 2023 Updated July 31, 2023

In an interview with Playboy in 2012, Tom Cruise described Katie Holmes as “an extraordinary person” with a “wonderful” clothing line, and someone for whom he was fond of “doing things like creating romantic dinners” — behavior that, he confided, “she enjoys.” It would prove to be his last major interview with a reporter to date. Despite what may be recalled through the penumbra of memory, this sudden silence was not directly preceded by either of Cruise’s infamous appearances on television: not by his NBC’s “Today” show interview (in which he labeled host Matt Lauer both “glib” and “Matt — MattMattMattMatt”), nor even by his appearance on “The Oprah Winfrey Show” (in which he reverse-catapulted himself onto Winfrey’s fawn-colored couch multiple times in a demonstration of his enthusiasm for Holmes). Those incidents occurred seven years earlier, in 2005; Cruise emerged from the hex of public bewilderment unscathed. In fact, Cruise gave no indication that the interview, pegged to the musical-comedy bomb “Rock of Ages,” was intended to serve as a farewell address to journalists. At the time he sat for it, another life milestone was hurtling toward him: The month after the article was published, Holmes filed for divorce.

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In the decade since, the amount of verified information we have gleaned about Cruise’s real life could fit on a single flashcard, though it’s unclear why anyone would need to memorize it, since the details mainly consist of anecdotal trifles shared by other celebrities in interviews of their own: From James Corden, we know Cruise once asked to land a helicopter in James Corden’s yard . From Brooke Shields, we know Brooke Shields no longer receives the (by all accounts delectable) white chocolate coconut Bundt cake that Cruise famously sends to many beloved stars each holiday season. From Kyra Sedgwick, we know that there was a panic button under a fireplace mantle in one of Cruise’s homes . (She pressed it out of curiosity, summoning the police.) From Matt Damon, we know that during production of the fourth “Mission: Impossible” movie, Cruise had “a safety guy” replaced because he deemed a proposed stunt (in which Cruise scampers over the Burj Khalifa) “too dangerous.” Tom Cruise, Kate Hudson informs us, loves skydiving.

These facts sketch a portrait of a daredevil with a finite budget for cakes, but hardly a recluse. Cruise’s spurning of interviews makes him unique among his cohort — A-list, pathologically charismatic, wrest-butts-into-seats-type movie stars — whose success, it has long been assumed, derives from their ability to appear likable to mortals. They demonstrate this skill, traditionally, by exhibiting their personality in interviews. Every time Cruise turns down an interview request (through his representative, Cruise declined to be interviewed for this article), he makes a bet that just his being Tom Cruise, offering no further details about what that might entail, is enticement enough for people to watch his movies. Lately, more often than not, he has been right.

To see this clearly, perhaps it’s helpful to contrast Cruise’s career with that of Brad Pitt, his co-star in “Interview With the Vampire” (1994) and fellow member of a declining species: Hollywood leading men. Pitt has continued appearing in the kind of films (thrillers, comedies, romances, psychodramas, historical epics, etc.) that he and Cruise starred in throughout the 1990s and 2000s. In the past decade, audiences could find Pitt endeavoring to disappear into roles ranging from abolitionist to astronaut. In the same period, Cruise has starred solely in action films, which have depicted him fighting aliens, terrorists, fellow spies, a mummy and sundry other enemies of the United States. Rather than vanishing into roles, Cruise remakes them in his image. So fully has he melded his offscreen persona with that of the skydiving, cliff-jumping, motorcycle-parachuting pilots he portrays, these characters become mere receptacles of Tom Cruiseness. Cruise’s films tend to perform better than Pitt’s at the box office; his most recent endeavor, “Top Gun: Maverick,” outearned Pitt’s latest by about $1.4 billion. This summer, Tom Cruise will run, drive and jump at top speeds in “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One,” and Brad Pitt will star in nothing.

Cruise still takes part in promotional junkets and convivial late-night-talk-show chats, but his refusal to participate in the sort of in-depth journalistic interviews that (in theory, anyway) reveal some aspect of his true self has coincided, somewhat paradoxically, with an incredible surge in his commitment to infusing cinematic fantasies with reality. For unknown reasons it could be interesting to explore in an interview, reality has become very important to Cruise, who reveres it as a force more powerful than magic. It is vital to Cruise that the audience of “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One” have the opportunity to witness not a C.G.I. production of a feat, or even a seasoned stunt performer executing a dangerous act, but real footage of him, Tom Cruise, the 61-year-old father of three from Syracuse, N.Y., riding a motorcycle off a cliff.

This fetish for reality has become a keystone of Cruise’s persona, to the extent that many of his public appearances now take place in flying vehicles. Rather than accept an MTV Movie & TV Award in person in May, Cruise filmed his acceptance speech from the cockpit of a fighter aircraft as he piloted it through clouds, politely shouting, “I love entertaining you!” over the engine’s roar. Delivering “a special message from the set of @MissionImpossible” to his followers on Instagram, Cruise screamed while dangling backward off the side of an aircraft, “It truly is the honor of a lifetime!”

But reality does not exist only in movies. What is missing from Cruise’s fervid documentation of ultrarisky, inconceivably expensive, meticulously planned real-life events are any details about the parts of his real life that do not involve, for example, filming stunts for “Mission: Impossible” movies. My own mission, then, was simple: I was to travel to the ends of the Earth to see if it was possible to locate the terrestrial Cruise, out of context — to catch a glimpse, to politely shout one question at him, or at least to ascertain one new piece of intelligence about his current existence — in order to reintegrate him into our shared reality.

Having lately made an effort to scrutinize any article that cast Tom Cruise as its subject, one of the few things that I can say for certain he has done since 2021, besides film two “Mission: Impossible” movies, is order chicken tikka masala from a restaurant in Birmingham, England, and then “as soon as he had finished” (per a tweet from the restaurant ) order the exact same chicken tikka masala “all over again.”

These days, Tom Cruise is hardly ever photographed in any situation other than shooting and promoting his films. (He was filming in Birmingham.) The paucity of paparazzi photos of the apparently chicken-loving actor can be at least partly attributed to his spending much time removed from America’s twin celebrity-entertainment control rooms: New York (where his ex-wife, Holmes, lives with their daughter) and Los Angeles (where, in 2015 and 2016, he reportedly sold multiple homes for a combined total just over $50 million). Years of speculation that Cruise lives or was planning to live in a penthouse apartment a five-minute walk from the “spiritual headquarters” of the Church of Scientology, of which he is a big fan, in Clearwater, Fla., appear never to have been realized, apart from an unsourced assertion published in The Hollywood Reporter in 2018, which mentioned that the audition process for co-stars in Cruise’s “Top Gun: Maverick” “involved flying down to Cruise’s home in Clearwater. ”

To learn more about the possible activities of Tom Cruise, I turned to the person who, after Cruise himself, his family, his friends, his employees, his co-workers and anyone who has ever met — or, at least, interacted with — him, knows him best: a Brazilian woman who is quite possibly his most dedicated fan in the world. She spoke to me on two conditions: first, that I grant her anonymity; second, that I not identify by name, or characterize too specifically, the publicly available online repository of Cruise-related information she has maintained for over 20 years. Her concerns are both practical and legal: Practically, she isn’t sure if the operation, which may or may not play host to more than 132,000 images of Cruise, could withstand a large influx of traffic; legally, she did not wish to invite the scrutiny and possible copyright claims the attention might draw.

She started the operation when she was 18. Today she is in her early 40s and works as a librarian. More than two decades into the endeavor, a nostalgic melancholy permeates the fan’s reflections. Ten years ago, she said, she was often the first to widely disseminate the latest images of Cruise. Now, because of the superabundance of photo-sharing social media accounts, she must settle for merely having the most complete repository. New additions trickle in sporadically. She’s partial to the theory that paparazzi rarely capture photographs of Cruise in part because he is a real-life “master of disguise,” whom people fail to recognize on the street. Despite years of remote observation, of scrutinizing nearly every single image captured of the man, even she could not say definitively where Cruise lives. She did observe, however, that he appears to spend “most of the time” in Britain.

In fact, there is a strange rumor that Cruise bought a home in a tiny town called Biggin Hill, on the farthest fringes of London — the site of a small private airport that he has been known to use when filming in the region. The legend appears to trace back to an article published in the British tabloid The Sun in July 2021 about the actor’s 59th-birthday celebration. An anonymous source declared that Cruise had “only recently moved to” a house in Biggin Hill (average home price: £590,000), “which feels like it’s practically in the countryside.” The claim would accrue scant new details as it was repeated in British papers numerous times over the following year, apart from one: that Cruise’s residence “is set in 140 acres of stunning rural parkland,” inside a posh gated community near the airport.

Cruise, who has filmed parts of the three most recent installments of “Mission: Impossible” in Britain, has never publicly commented on the rumors. He did, however, confirm that he spends “a lot of time in Britain” in an exceedingly rare interview that appeared, inexplicably, in the September 2022 issue of Derbyshire Life magazine. “I guess I am an Anglophile,” Cruise told Derbyshire Life. “I love being in Britain because everyone is pleasant and will give you a nod or say hello without crowding you too much.” Elsewhere in the interview, Cruise expressed additional enthusiasm for auxiliary British topics, including politeness (“Being friendly doesn’t cost a bean, and I enjoy it”) and Derbyshire, which is, for the record, actually a considerable distance from Biggin Hill (“Wow! Derbyshire — what a fantastic place!”).

To determine if anyone who did not work in the British newspaper or chicken-tikka-masala industries had ever encountered Cruise on English soil, I sifted through Facebook posts, typing any permutation of “saw Tom Cruise” I could think of into the search bars of neighborhood groups for all of the Hobbit-ily named localities surrounding Biggin Hill (“Orpington”; “West Wickham”). I joined groups like “Westerham and Biggin Hill News friends Community fun views gossip” and pored over hundreds of responses to posts like “Think I just saw Tom Cruise driving down jail lane that’s impossible.” The flashes of Cruise that winked from the replies were tantalizing — “I’ve seen him blue Ferrari…jail lane…”; “Lives up Cudham drives blue Ferrari” — but there was no way to tell who was reporting accurate details about the comings and goings of Tom Cruise, who was mistaken and who was merely lying for fun. The only way to find out was to do what Cruise himself would do: grab onto the nearest plane and go, for real.

Next to the Biggin Hill Airport, there is a pocket-size hotel built to serve the crews and engineers of the private planes that fly in and out. The hotel, its website boasts, offers “great views towards London” — something just about any place on Earth could offer with the right window arrangement, assuming it was not already in London. The description of the property’s sleek teal-and-toffee-colored restaurant turned out to be even more specifically accurate: The view of the runway at Biggin Hill Airport was without parallel. At the bar, I pulled up a leather stool and ordered (not in these exact words) the worst Shirley Temple of my life, which cost $11. My fellow patrons had long since familiarized themselves with the contours of the small dinner menu; they had been stranded at Biggin Hill for some time, because the private jet of the billionaire for whom they were working had received — you hate to hear this — an estimated $10 million worth of hail damage. I asked a maintenance technician if he thought Tom Cruise really did have a house in Biggin Hill. He replied with unflinching confidence: “I know he does.”

In the same venue, a man so young he might have been a teenager, who at one time worked inside the airport, revealed to me that Cruise had a parking spot there, though it was unclear if he meant for a car or a helicopter. Most of the good people of Biggin Hill, when grilled about Cruise’s living arrangements, seemed genuinely to have no idea what I was talking about. These were the two camps into which, without fail, every respondent fell: Either they had never so much as heard the rumor that Cruise walked among them, or they were 100 percent certain that he did.

Upon reaching Keston Park, the only gated community in the area matching The Sun’s description, I discovered two things: first, that there appeared to be an illegally locked gate obstructing public access to the footpath that cuts through the neighborhood — whether the gate is impenetrable is a matter of ongoing dispute among the Bromley borough council, myself and many other aspiring path-takers who have submitted complaints about the locked gate to the borough website — and, second, that the biggest movie star in the world did not live there. That was evident through holes that carpenter bees had bored into the barbed-wire-topped fences protecting Keston Park from the wider world. The stately houses faced one another too directly. Their trees could drop acorns into another’s gardens. There was nowhere to conveniently land a helicopter.

Oh, well. These were Keston Park’s problems — not mine and probably not Tom Cruise’s. Tom Cruise, as he and I both now knew, was most likely secretly living at another estate I had turned up in my research — one that was even closer to the airport.

The distance between any two points within the general environs of Biggin Hill is insignificant by car, which is probably why I was unable to persuade any taxi driver to transport me between them. It is less insignificant by foot, and even longer, though much more scenic, if one attempts to traverse it by way of the aforementioned footpaths. These meandering trails tended to be spectacularly beautiful, bursting with a vernal lushness that was nearly pornographic. House-high frozen fountains of eensy white hawthorn blossoms shaded dusty walkways. Wild roses as pink as Country Time lemonade exploded from leafy hedges. Fragile sapphire speedwells, fat purple clover tops and buttercups strewn like gold confetti — these were merely the things it was impossible not to step on. The fluorescent green of the meadows recalled the grasses of another royal province — Super Mario’s Mushroom Kingdom. Poppies and toadflax sprang out obscenely from stone walls. Tom Cruise would be crazy not to live here , I thought as I stroked the soft, sun-warmed mane of a little white donkey. Let’s all live here .

Except, upon my arrival at the end of an idyllic woodland stroll, I discovered that Cruise did not live there either. There was, in the front yard of this residence, a garden gnome lugging buckets on a yoke, which didn’t seem like Cruise’s style, and the gnome was overturned, lying on its side — definitely not his style. I righted the gnome and ambled on, in search of another public footpath that would, I hoped, lead me to where Cruise actually lived. Instead, I accidentally wandered into what (I learned through being yelled this information) was not a public right of way but a field privately owned by a woman who berated me until I ran into traffic on a nearby road.

That night, with half my allotted exploratory mission time used up, I lay awake in the hotel built for the flight attendants of billionaires’ jets, miserable and panicked at my failure to do anything but incur thousands of dollars in expenses for airfare and one Shirley Temple. Surely this wasn’t all for naught; surely some meaning could possibly be derived from an interaction between a movie star and a magazine journalist — even a brief one, even one in which the movie star had already said (through his publicist) he did not wish to participate, even one in which the star was not present, since some understanding of some dimension of his life could doubtless be gleaned through a study of his surroundings. But what if Cruise has been so successful in removing himself from our world that I would never find any trace of him? What if Cruise had evanesced into a high-octane mist of pure entertainment? Did I have time to just go to every single house in England and check if Cruise was home? How big was this nation? Why was the sun rising now, in the middle of the night? What time was it?! Had I accidentally not gone to sleep all night?

I had one more idea.

On my first day in town, I had stopped at a pub for lunch. I was told that there was a funeral going on and that there was an hour wait for food, but that if I ordered something simple like a sandwich, the wait would be less, so I ordered a sandwich, which actually took 90 minutes to arrive and was so, no offense, disgusting-tasting that I turned around and asked a middle-aged man sitting at the picnic table behind mine if he would like half a sandwich (no) and if it always took so long to receive a sandwich at this pub (unclear) and if it was true that Tom Cruise really lived nearby. “He’s here,” the man said to me.

“Do you know?” I asked. “Or are you guessing?”

“He’s definitely around here, that’s for sure,” he said. “I know where he is.”

At first, with the cagey pride of one who knows the favored hovering spot of an actual ghost, who acts as self-appointed doorman of the thin place between worlds, the man made a show of not telling me where. But then, on his way out, he materialized at my elbow and proffered three “clues” (his word).

“It’s within two miles of the airport,” he said. “Look for the biggest house. And I mean — ” his voice dropped to a whisper, “ — the biggest .”

“It’s a very famous house,” he said. “The anti-establishment of slavery started there.”

I was aware of this property from my earlier research. It was a colossal butter-colored manor once owned by a prime minister, William Pitt the Younger. I had eliminated it from contention as a possible Cruise residence because it was sold in 2018 (£8.5 million) to a used-car magnate who, at least judging by an article from 2020 that I read in Car Dealer magazine, appeared to be quite comfortably ensconced in it. But it was only a few miles away. On foot, the journey could be completed in just over an hour.

How, exactly, I ended up on the edge of that woman’s privately owned field again, I have no idea. The expedition to that point had seemed to take me through brand-new areas. All of a sudden, I noticed that the path had dissipated into dense forest. This is just like what happened yesterday, when I trespassed in that woman’s field, I thought, then looked up and spotted her house in the distance.

I panicked. I frightened a badger — likewise, babe! — and bolted through the forest as quickly as I could in a new, randomly chosen direction. This deposited me into a vast, previously unencountered field. On all previous paths, vigorously growing cow parsley had stood on slender stems, about shin high. Here, upright hordes of it grazed my shoulders, while fallen comrades entangled my ankles. Needles of true panic pricked my nape under sweaty hair. Statistically speaking, I assured myself, it was unlikely I would be trapped in this field so long that I would die there.

Although — wouldn’t it serve that woman right if I did die in this field, so close to her own, where I was not allowed? “That would teach her a lesson,” I said into the audio recorder I had brought in case I encountered Tom Cruise. Have to “find some way to notify her,” I explained. (Of my death.) Hopefully she would see my picture in a — newspaper! That would be another good thing about dying out here, I told the recorder. It would “serve” the editor who recklessly assigned me this article — who had irresponsibly approved my travel budget — “right.” It would probably ruin his life, or at least his work life. God, would he be fired? Certainly, at the very least, he would get in trouble. You should never have sent her to a small English town . Would our boss tell him not to blame himself? Hopefully not — I am dead because of him! I didn’t want to die, of course — but if it did happen, at least I would die doing what I loved: making people feel bad and be in trouble deservedly. I had yet to clearly develop a mental image of my widowed husband’s second wife when I realized that I had stumbled, midfield, upon a dirt path leading into a neighborhood. I ran down it — in, I was shocked to discover, the exact direction of the used-car dealer’s palatial estate.

The public footpath alongside the property — which, if a man drinking outside a pub at 2 p.m. is to be believed, is inhabited by Tom Cruise — looked like the aisle down which a fairy princess would glide at her wedding. Actually, no, even nicer: It was like the flower-strewn tunnel of light she would pass through following her death (from being viciously yelled at for walking in a private field BY ACCIDENT) on her journey to eternity. It wound beneath protective arches of graceful branches trailing heaps of white and pink blossoms. A gentle, constant wind rippled the flowers just enough to allow dappled sunlight to illuminate a trail through their lovely shade. So vast were the grounds, so lush the foliage, that the home itself was not visible from any vantage point. I listened for the distant throaty cry of a blue Ferrari, but heard only bird song.

The recorded owner of the estate made no response to my later attempts to contact him, to ask if, perchance, Tom Cruise (possibly in elaborate disguise) could be living in his house. Even if Cruise has no connection to the residence, this absolute lack of response serves to further obscure his existence. Not only is it impossible to determine where he lives — it isn’t even possible to determine where he does not live. The distance between Cruise and the average human remains unshrinkable. At a time when social media renders movie stars ever-present in the public field of vision — accessible to some extent through whatever scrupulously vetted personal information they share, but also broadly trackable via webs of celebrity-watching accounts that widely disseminate photos and rumors — Cruise has distinguished himself by becoming a comet. When, between protracted absences, his inscrutable orbit brings him back into Earth’s visible realm, he briefly commands the simultaneous attention of all its peoples: “Thank you to the people of Abu Dhabi,” read a June post on his Instagram account, alongside a photo of him greeting a crowd at a “Dead Reckoning Part One” premiere. (Also appreciated and acknowledged by their servant-sovereign for their attendance at other “Dead Reckoning Part One” premieres: “the people” of Rome; “everyone” in Seoul.)

At the conclusion of this promotional cycle, after Cruise has thanked everyone for allowing him to create world-class summer cinema, he will almost certainly disappear, not to be heard from again until next year, at which point his re-emergence will proclaim the arrival of “Dead Reckoning Part Two.” This vanishing, while perhaps rooted in avoidance of a press corps that asks questions he doesn’t want to answer, is massaged into something like a sacrificial duty to audiences. In disappearing the moment his work is through — always, like Santa Claus, with the promise of return — Cruise retains the mystique that so many Hollywood stars have lost this century. He goes away so that audiences may experience the thrill of his reappearance, and delight in the promise of movie magic he heralds.

Of course, it is possible that Tom Cruise does not even know that the gargantuan house in the quiet English village exists. But if we assume, perhaps foolishly, that he does live there, I did ascertain one new detail about his reality: He was in the process of having the long private driveway that weaves through the woods and stretches to the unseen manor beyond redone. It looks awesome.

Caity Weaver is a staff writer for the magazine. She last wrote about going on a package trip for youngish people.

An earlier version of this article referred imprecisely to the plane from which Tom Cruise accepted an MTV Movie & TV Award. It was a fighter aircraft, not a fighter jet.

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This Is Why Tom Cruise And Katie Holmes Really Divorced

Back in 2012, the former Hollywood power couple  Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes announced to the world they were getting a divorce after six years of marriage. According to Ranker , news of the A-list split sent shockwaves throughout the world of show business and sparked waves of rumors and speculation as to why the pair decided to call it quits. So, why exactly did Cruise and Holmes get divorced?

As Extra reported, the former husband and wife first began dating in 2005. In June of that same year, the former "Dawson's Creek" star revealed that she and Cruise were engaged and that  she planned to convert to Cruise's religion of Scientology. Four months later, in October 2005, Holmes announced that she was pregnant with her first child. In April 2006, the pair welcomed their baby daughter, Suri Cruise — who has undergone a stunning transformation —  and seven months later the pair tied the knot in a luxurious Italian wedding ceremony. 

As per the Mirror , the star-studded Scientologist wedding was held at Odescalchi Castle in Italy on November 18, 2006. The nuptials were attended by some of the biggest names in Hollywood, including the likes of Victoria Beckham, Jennifer Lopez, John Travolta, and the former Scientologist, Leah Remini . Holmes and Cruise looked like they were well on their way to a fairytale ending.

Katie Holmes has remained quiet about her divorce from Tom Cruise

According to InStyle , both Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise have remained tight-lipped about the exact reasoning behind their divorce. However, the "Mission Impossible" actor previously revealed that he "didn't expect" his wife to file for divorce. Although neither party has confirmed why the highly publicized breakup actually took place, there are plenty of rumors surrounding Holmes' decision to get out of the marriage. One of the primary rumors was reported by HuffPost in 2013, when Cruise discussed Holmes' aversion to raising their daughter, Suri, in the Scientology religion.

While the "Top Gun" actor was being questioned during a deposition for a defamation case involving Bauer Media, a lawyer asked whether the "Dawson's Creek" alum had requested a divorce "in part to protect Suri from Scientology," (per HuffPost). The outlet went on to say that Cruise initially reacted with frustration, indicating, "there is no need to protect my daughter from my religion." However, as the attorney continued to press Cruise on the matter, the movie star admitted that Holmes' desire to keep Suri from Scientology, " ... was one of the assertions, yes."

Despite her newfound freedom as a single woman, Radar Online reported in 2016 that Holmes had made a "secret divorce deal" with Cruise that allegedly forbid her from publicly commenting on their separation or dating someone else for five years after their breakup. Though almost a decade has passed since their divorce, the "Batman Begins" actress has still remained quiet about the situation.

Tom Cruise backed up a long-standing rumor about his divorce

The most commonly accepted cause surrounding the demise of the couple's relationship is that Katie Holmes wanted to remove herself and their daughter Suri from any involvement with the Church of Scientology. Per InStyle , Tom Cruise appeared to back up this theory by admitting that one of the reasons his ex-wife filed for divorce came down to the controversial religion itself during his defamation case against Bauer media.

During the 2013 deposition, Cruise also revealed that his daughter Suri, who was just seven years old at the time, was no longer a practicing member of the Church of Scientology (via HuffPost ). This particular revelation came as a surprise to many, primarily because those who leave the Church are deemed a "Suppressive Person" and are eventually cut off from other practicing members — which includes immediate members of their own family. According to the Mirror , Cruise and Holmes' divorce settlement afforded Holmes "sole custody" of Suri, and reportedly included "'ironclad' rulings that Suri would not be exposed to anything Scientology related."

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Every Revealing Thing Tom Cruise And Katie Holmes Have Said About Suri

The inception of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes' romance was a dramatic era of popular culture. From Cruise's Oprah couch jumping moment to the engagement proposal on the Eiffel Tower, Cruise and Holmes became an overnight sensation, and then they welcomed a daughter together. Suri Cruise was born on April 18, 2006, and her famous father described the experience of her birth during an interview with " 20/20 ." "It was spiritual," he told the outlet. "It was powerful. It was indescribable. What words can you use? It's still something that I'm processing and keep reliving."

While Holmes and Tom seemed tight-knit for several years following Suri's birth, that all changed in 2012. Holmes' high-profile divorce from Tom Cruise  shocked fans all over the world, and since then, the " Dawson's Creek " alum has remained a committed parent to Suri. Join us as we explore everything Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes have said about Suri.

Tom Cruise said Suri 'has Kate's lips and eyes'

Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise welcomed their daughter, Suri Cruise, on April 18, 2006. In October 2006, the famous couple shared the first photos of Suri with the world in a Vanity Fair profile, with images taken by famed photographer Annie Leibovitz. As well as discussing their changed home life having welcomed their first baby together, Holmes and Tom also waxed lyrical about their daughter's distinctive appearance. "She has Kate's lips and eyes," Tom told the publication. "I think she looks like Kate." Holmes, meanwhile, revealed that she believed Suri resembled the "Mission: Impossible" star. "I think she has Tom's eyes," Holmes told Vanity Fair. "I think she looks like Tom."

During their Vanity Fair interview, both Holmes and Tom shared their adoration for their new baby, who had seemingly changed both of their lives immeasurably. "Having children is a new beginning ... and there's not a parent who doesn't know that moment," Tom told the publication. He also revealed that Suri held special meaning for him amidst his incredibly busy life as a film star. "...you have to celebrate the joy," he told Vanity Fair. "And that's what Suri is: the joy." Basically, the actor was over the moon to have welcomed his daughter into the world. And while fans have long discussed Suri's resemblance to Katie Holmes , it's clear that early on, she shared attributes with both her mom and her dad. 

Tom Cruise called Suri a 'happy' and 'confident' child

In June 2012, Katie Holmes filed for divorce from Tom Cruise after five years of marriage. Their daughter, Suri Cruise, was six years old at the time. Tom's spokesperson shared a statement with the BBC , saying, "Kate has filed for divorce and Tom is deeply saddened and is concentrating on his three children." As well as Suri, Tom has two adopted children — Isabella and Connor — whom he adopted with his second wife Nicole Kidman.

In November 2013, Tom was deposed while suing Bauer Publishing because of a story published by In Touch magazine, which alleged that the movie star had abandoned his daughter following his split from Holmes, via People . During the deposition, Tom admitted that there was a period of more than 100 days during which he didn't see Suri in person, which occurred between August 2012 and Thanksgiving of the same year, People reported. However, he did discuss his regular contact with Suri, revealing that having phone conversations with a young child can be challenging. "...you have to work at it," he said during the deposition, via People. "I've gotten very good at it. I tell wonderful stories." He also shared that his daughter appeared to be content in life, saying, "I also find that, you know, Suri is a very happy child, and confident, and has a good sense of herself."

The lawsuit was later settled, but articles regarding Tom's absence from Suri's life continued to surface.

Tom Cruise said 'there is no need to protect' Suri from Scientology

In November 2013, Tom Cruise attended court while suing Bauer Publishing over a story published by In Touch magazine that suggested he was absent from daughter Suri Cruise's life. As well as discussing his relationship with his child, Tom was forced to address his connection to Scientology, a religious organization founded by science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard. During his deposition, Tom explained that Suri was no longer a practicing member of Scientology (via People ). He was asked whether Katie Holmes divorced him so as to protect Suri from the religion, to which Tom replied, "I find that question offensive. There is no need to protect my daughter from my religion."

Despite begrudging intrusive questions about his faith, Tom did admit that Holmes, at least in part, filed for divorce in order to keep Suri away from Scientology. "...that was one of the assertions, yes," he said during the deposition (via People). "There are many other aspects to the divorce." The questioning didn't stop there, as Tom was also asked if Holmes and their daughter were now considered to be "suppressive persons," which is how Scientologists refer to those who have left the religion or people who openly oppose it, according to the official Scientology website . "That is a distortion and simplification of the matter," Tom replied. "I don't want to just give an oversimplification of religious doctrine." 

Katie Holmes dished on 'tickle fights and glitter art' with Suri

While Tom Cruise's connection to daughter Suri Cruise was questioned following his split from Katie Holmes, the "Dawson's Creek" star publicly became a single mom, who seemingly adored raising her child. During an interview with People in November 2014, Holmes revealed that she had a very creative home life with Suri, and explained the ways in which she was a hands-on mom. "Between tickle fights and glitter art, I try to throw in some manners along the way," Holmes told People. "I try to have good manners too, so that's what she sees. I also try to be very creative with her, because I know she's an artist, and that speaks to the girl in me."

Holmes also noted that she had some limitations as a mother, namely that she wasn't invested in playing games of tag, for instance. "But I'll paint all day, I'll do the creative stuff," she explained to People. While Tom may not have seen Suri very often when she was small, Holmes seemed to throw herself into life as a single mother, and in ensuring that her daughter was happy and had lots of opportunities to express her creative side.

Katie Holmes will change plans to just to see Suri smile

While speaking to People , Katie Holmes got personal about her journey as a mother. In particular, she noted that the most important thing to her was Suri Cruise's happiness, and if that meant being flexible each day, then she was more than willing to do that. "Motherhood has taught me to just let go of some things, to relinquish control," she told the publication. "There's a playdate you weren't expecting — I've had to learn to ask myself, 'Is this worth it? Is it going to make her smile?' And if it is, then yeah, we're probably gonna do it." 

Holmes also noted that most parents felt stress when trying to keep to tight schedules, and that it usually worked out better for her to just go with the flow. "I think we all need to ease up on the expectations," she continued. "We're all trying to do the best we can. Motherhood taught me that." During the same interview, she also sang the praises of gift cards, noting that they take the stress out of shopping for gifts for Suri's friends, revealing that she has a drawer full of them at home, ready for any gift giving situation that may arise. Above all, it's heartwarming to know that Holmes has always been willing to change her plans and drop everything for her daughter's happiness.

Katie Holmes values breakfast time with her 'little one'

While attending Quaker's Oatober event, Katie Holmes talked to People about Suri Cruise's eating habits, and why breakfast was an incredibly important time for the mother and daughter duo. "I like to make a nice breakfast and start the day calmly," she told the publication. "I like that time with my little one before school." Holmes also opened up about cooking for her daughter in general, and revealed how she navigates cooking meals that Suri will enjoy. "[Suri] has her favorites, like most kids," Holmes told People. "I don't really have any tactics to help [with picky eating]. I think like most parents you make the stuff you know that they like, and every once in a while you introduce something new."

Essentially, the "Batman Begins" star uses meal times to bond with her daughter. During another interview with People , Holmes revealed that she may not always be the best cook, but that time spent with Suri was the most important thing. "My main goal is to just let her know how much I love her," the mom-of-one explained. "...When that's the through line, who cares that my first two pancakes are always burned?" It would seem that Holmes focuses all of her attention on Cruise, especially when it comes to providing food for her young daughter. Through carefully curated breakfasts, and by making meals that please Cruise, Holmes is ensuring that her child feels cared for on a regular basis.

Katie Holmes protects Suri, who was 'so visible at a young age'

As the daughter of two very recognizable actors, Suri Cruise has been in the international spotlight since birth. Understandably, mother Katie Holmes has prioritized keeping her daughter safe, particularly as Suri, whose father is movie star Tom Cruise, has always been a target of the paparazzi. In 2023, Holmes opened up to Glamour about her approach to parenting a teenage girl, saying, "What has been really important for me with my daughter, because she was so visible at a young age, is I really like to protect her. I'm very grateful to be a parent, to be her parent. She's an incredible person." 

Holmes had previously discussed the topic of Suri's privacy during a 2020 interview with InStyle . The "First Daughter" star revealed that she'd stumbled across a website, which was entirely focused on photos of Suri taken when she was just a baby. "We were followed a lot when she was little," Holmes confided. "I just wanted her outside, so I would walk her around to find parks at, like, 6 in the morning when nobody would see us." However, it would seem that the paparazzi quickly gained knowledge of Holmes' early morning walks. "But there's one video where I'm holding her — she was 2 at the time — and she starts waving at the cameras," Holmes told InStyle. Luckily, though, Holmes has been looking out for Suri's safety and security since she was a baby.

Katie Holmes wanted to make sure Suri had 'a stable, innocent childhood'

In February 2017, Katie Holmes spoke to Town & Country while promoting limited television series "The Kennedys: After Camelot," in which she starred as First Lady Jackie Kennedy. While discussing her incredibly busy schedule, which includes directing projects as well as starring in them, Holmes said of daughter Suri Cruise, "My child is the most important person to me, and her upbringing is paramount to my work right now." She continued, "It's very important that I'm present and she has a stable, innocent childhood. I feel so blessed to do what I do, but there's nothing in the world better than watching your child succeed."

Holmes also noted she realized how crucial it was to be present during Cruise's formative years, especially as her daughter was growing up so fast. "Every day, kids get a little further away from you," she told Town & Country. "They should be becoming more independent, but it's heartbreaking." The actor further discussed knowing that Cruise would continue to gain independence, and that she would eventually strike out on her own as an adult. However, Holmes admitted that she already wasn't looking forward to the day that Cruise became a fully fledged grown-up. "And that's going to be very, very sad for me," the "Jack & Jill" star told continued.

Katie Holmes included Suri Cruise in her films 'because she's my heart'

After building a successful acting career, Katie Holmes decided to move into directing. In 2015, she directed a short film called "Eternal Princess," which she followed up with her full-length directorial debut, "All We Had," in 2016. Next up, she directed an episode of the miniseries "The Kennedys: Decline and Fall" in 2017, before moving back to directing movies with 2022's "Alone Together" and 2023's "Rare Objects." In taking on an even more creative role in the film industry, Holmes realized that she had the opportunity to showcase her daughter's talents, too.

During her 2023 interview with Glamour , Holmes opened up about her decision to include daughter Suri Cruise's music in her movies "Alone Together" and "Rare Objects." "I hope she always does something on my films," Holmes told Glamour. "I always ask her." By including Cruise's music in two of her own movies, Holmes was able to showcase her daughter's musical talent with a wide audience, which is pretty special. "So it comes out of love for me to include someone who I love dearly," Holmes explained to Glamour. "That's how I like to work. I like to have that kind of feeling. It was very meaningful to me to have her there, because she's my heart." Judging by Holmes' glowing comments, it sounds as though the mother daughter duo will likely work together again in the not-too-distant future.

Katie Holmes' bond with Suri is 'the most precious gift'

Since Katie Holmes finalized her divorce from Tom Cruise in July 2012, she has been a single mother to the couple's daughter Suri Cruise. Holmes and Suri live in New York together, and it would appear as though they have positively thrived as a twosome. In November 2020, Katie Holmes wrote an essay for Vogue Australia in which she discussed quarantining with her daughter during the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic. "Hobbies such as sewing, painting and writing became new hallmarks of satisfaction and having had time at home to just be," Holmes wrote. "To listen. To live for a moment in time without the pressure of results and instead appreciate the natural rhythms of mother and daughter was the most precious gift." Seemingly, Holmes relished the opportunity to spend time with her daughter, and despite the difficult circumstances, she managed to find some positives in the situation.

The "Logan Lucky" star gave further insight into the time she spent with Suri during the pandemic while speaking with the Australian version of The Daily Telegraph in August 2020 (via Yahoo! News ). "I like to keep her out of my interviews, but I will say that this time of quarantine has been such a lesson," Holmes explained. " Just really looking at everything you have and celebrating the simplicity of making dinner and [spending] that time together." Basically, Holmes' bond with Suri is incredibly strong.

Katie Holmes called Suri 'the sweetest daughter' and 'very talented'

Although Katie Holmes seems to keep much of her personal life private, the "Ray Donovan" actor has shared some special messages to her daughter, Suri Cruise, on social media over the years. In April 2020, Holmes shared an Instagram photo of some birthday party decorations, which she captioned, "Happy Birthday Sweetheart!!!!!!!" She continued, "I am so blessed to be your mom. May this year be incredible!" In May 2021, Holmes celebrated her daughter once again in an adorable Mother's Day post on Instagram . Sharing a photo of herself kissing a young Cruise on the cheek, Holmes wrote, "I am so grateful to be a mom to the sweetest daughter." 

While promoting her 2022 movie "Alone Together," Holmes happily discussed the inclusion of Cruise's rendition of the classic song "Blue Moon" in the film. "She's very talented," Holmes said of her daughter during an interview with Yahoo! Entertainment . "She said she would do it and she recorded it, and I let her do her thing." Holmes regularly makes her adoration of her daughter very clear, and her willingness to occasionally discuss Cruise's talents in interviews is super sweet.

Suri Cruise 'had a good laugh' watching Dawson's Creek

Katie Holmes found almost instant fame thanks to her role as Joey Potter on teen drama "Dawson's Creek," which aired for six seasons between 1998 and 2003. The series followed a group of friends living in the town of Capeside, a fictitious location meant to be in Massachusetts, but actually filmed in Wilmington, North Carolina. Much of the series revolved around Joey's love life, and her romantic relationships with both Dawson Leery (James Van Der Beek) and Pacey Witter (Joshua Jackson). Although the series finished two decades ago, it has remained a topic of conversation in the years since. As a result, it's totally unsurprising that Holmes' daughter Suri Cruise became interested in her mom's role on the iconic show. 

During a 2023 interview with Variety , Holmes got candid about Cruise's knowledge of the show that launched her mother's dextrous career. "She has seen 'Dawson's Creek,' and I think it's probably weird since she's a teenager," Holmes told the publication. "I'm not like, 'You need to watch mommy's work.' But during the pandemic, we had a good laugh about it." Holmes also reflected on the fact that her daughter had entered her teenage years. "It's wild to have a daughter who's almost the same age as I was when I began all this," Holmes, who started filming "Dawson's Creek" when she was 18, explained.

Katie Holmes says she and Suri Cruise 'grew up together'

Following her 2012 divorce from Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes moved into a new apartment in New York City with daughter Suri Cruise, of whom she was awarded sole custody, according to the Daily Mail . Since then, Holmes and Suri have remained in New York, with the youngster reportedly attending elite private schools in the city. Despite leaving her marriage, Holmes appeared to be completely content becoming a single mom, and cultivating a close relationship with Suri. "I was happy to become a mom in my twenties," Holmes told ELLE U.K. (via People ) in 2019. 

Holmes also enthused that she'd only gotten closer to daughter Suri as time had gone on. "It's been nice that our ages fit," she told ELLE U.K. "Every age that my child has been and my age at that time has been a good match." The actor also reflected on her experience raising her daughter, telling the publication, "We kind of grew up together." It would appear as though Holmes and Suri have experienced multiple milestones together, generating an even closer mother and daughter bond as a result.

Suri Cruise has 'always been a strong personality,' says Katie Holmes

With superstar parents like Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise, Suri Cruise has had a unique upbringing. During a 2022 interview with InStyle , Holmes reflected on Suri's character, saying, "My biggest goal has always been to nurture her into her individuality." She continued, "To make sure she is 100 percent herself and strong, confident, and able. And to know it." According to Holmes, Suri has been distinctive since birth, with the mother telling InStyle, "She came out very strong — she's always been a strong personality."

During the same interview, Holmes noted that her daughter was growing up, which allowed her more time to develop movie projects and move into directing. "Suri is 14, so we've gotten through the sort of girlie stage," the "Pieces of April" star told InStyle. It would seem that Suri is following in her mother's footsteps, after finding a creative outlet for her musical talents in Holmes' films. Without a doubt, fans of the mother and daughter duo will likely have their fingers crossed that many more collaborations between the pair will occur in the future.

16 Things You Didn’t Know About Katie Holmes And Tom Cruise’s Relationship

By ActiveBeat Author

The marriage between Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise has to be one of the weirdest we’ve ever seen. From a relationship that appeared to move at the speed of light, to their erratic behavior in front of the cameras, we can’t say we were surprised when TomKat’s marriage came to an end. We’ve made a list of 16 things you may not have known about their relationship.

16. Whirlwind Romance

Tom and Katie’s relationship moved incredibly fast. In 2004, Katie told Seventeen, “I think every little girl dreams about (her wedding). I used to think I was going to marry Tom Cruise.” He was also a fan of hers. According to him, he admired the work she did in Dawson’s Creek and in film. In April 2005, they finally met when he invited her to L.A. to meet about a possible role in Mission: Impossible 3. She didn’t get the role, but she got the guy!

15. Weird Signs Of Affection

Only a month after meeting, Cruise made his famous appearance on Oprah where he confessed his love for Katie. “I’m in love! I’m in love,” Cruise exclaimed while jumping on Oprah’s couch. “I can’t be cool. I can’t be laid-back. It’s something that has happened, and I feel I want to celebrate it. I want to celebrate her. She’s a very special woman.” In a poll by People, 63 percent of readers thought Cruise’s behavior was a publicity stunt. Even Oprah admitted that Cruise was acting bizarrely.

14. Love at First Sight

According to Tom and Katie, it was love at first. “I fell for him from the minute that I shook his hand for the first time,” she told Harper’s Bazaar. “Tom makes me feel like the most beautiful woman in the world.” According to Tom, he loved Katie from “the moment he met her.” “I’m a romantic. I like doing things like creating romantic dinners, and she enjoys that. I don’t know what to say – I’m just happy, and I have been since the moment I met her. What we have is very special,” he told Playboy. He knew he wanted to marry her after their first date. “As a young girl, Kate said she dreamed of marrying me. And I said I wouldn’t want to disappoint her. I knew I wanted to marry Kate when I met her. After our very first date, I was sure. So I bought the ring shortly after that first date. At one point, I thought she was going to ask me to marry her first and I put her off by changing the subject. I wanted to ask her,” he told T Magazine.

13. Quick Engagement

Cruise proposed to Holmes at the Eiffel Tower in Paris with a tear-shaped diamond back in June 2005. The couple had been dating for less than three months at the time. “Today is a magnificent day for me, I’m engaged to a magnificent woman,” he had said during a press conference at the Eiffel Tower.

12. Baby Before Marriage

Before she began dating Tom, the Dawson’s Creek actress had said that she was planning to remain a virgin until her honeymoon, but that obviously changed when she met the Oscar-nominated actor. In October 2006, less than six months after going public with their relationship, the couple announced that they were expecting. In April 2006, she gave birth to Suri.

11. Lavish Wedding

They were married on November 18, 2006, at Odescalchi Castle in Italy. The couple went to great lengths to have a lavish wedding ceremony. Katie’s dress was designed by Georgio Armani, and her veil took more than 70 hours to make. Several celebrities were in attendance including Jim Carrey, Jennifer Lopez, Marc Anthony, Kristie Alley and John Travolta. Their daughter Suri was also in attendance, having been born earlier that year on April 18, 2006. The evening ended with an extravagant fireworks display.

10. Waiting At The Altar

Despite being a luxurious wedding, not everything went as planned. Leah Remini’s tell-all memoir, Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology, talks about the awkward moments at the couple’s wedding. After Tom took his place at the altar, Remini says he was left standing there “for the next twenty minutes (but what seemed like an eternity)” and tried to maintain “that everything-is-great look plastered on his face even as the crowd grew uncomfortable.” Remini sat next to her friend, Jennifer Lopez, who asked her, “Do you think Katie is coming?

9. He Performed a Song from Top Gun at the Wedding

At their wedding, the actor performed The Righteous Brothers’ “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling” to his bride. Some found this strange seeing as the song is about a failed relationship, but Katie was completely touched by Cruise serenading her, according to Leah Remini.

8. Scientology

In 1986, Tom Cruise joined the Church of Scientology. He was 24. The actor claimed the religion’s study methods helped him to come over his dyslexia and have a successful career. Since this time, his relationships have been greatly affected and controlled by the Church. Katie was heavily influenced by Cruise, and converted from Catholicism to the Church of Scientology after less than 2 months of dating, but she left after she filed for divorce from Cruise.

7. Monitoring

According to Vanity Fair, Katie and Tom never lived alone. They were closely monitored by an entourage from the Church of Scientology. In addition, Katie distanced herself from her good friends, and fired her agent, manager, and publicist. Katie was also assigned a chaperone, Jessica Rodriguez, who was referred to as her “best friend.” In 2005, Rodriguez attended Katie’s interview with W, and took over the conversation in an attempt to deflect attention away from Cruise’s involvement with Scientology.

6. He Didn’t Call Her Katie

When the two began dating in 2005, the Top Gun actor made a point of calling her “Kate” instead of “Katie.” “Katie is a young girl’s name. Her name is Kate now – she’s a child-bearing woman,” he said during an interview with All Headline News. Katie reportedly decided to start going by the name “Kate” after she discussed it with Tom.

5. Blindsided Divorce

After 7 years together, the couple divorced in August 2012. Holmes initiated the split that reportedly left Cruise blindsided. Just a month prior to the news of the divorce, Cruise gushed about his relationship with Holmes. He told Playboy, “I’m just so happy, and I have been since the moment I met her. What we have is very special.” Several reports say that Katie went about the divorce plans secretly, like using a disposable mobile phone to contact lawyers from 3 different firms in 3 separate states. There’s also claims that she leased a secret apartment in order to keep her daughter Suri safe from Scientologists. Cruise was away in Iceland at the time and was working on the film Oblivion.

4. Solid Prenup

According to a report from Gawker, Katie had a solid prenuptial agreement that enabled her to get out of her marriage with Tom quickly. Katie’s father is a lawyer and ensured that the agreement was detailed and comprehensive. Vanity Fair claimed the agreement “filled five banker’s boxes.” As part of the agreement, Katie will receive $400,000 a year until Suri turns 18 years old, plus medical and educational expenses for their daughter. In return, Katie has stayed quiet about Scientology since their divorce.

3. Her Career Suffered

Prior to her marriage to Cruise, Holmes was on her way to becoming a successful actress. In 2005, she had roles in Batman Begins and Thank You for Smoking, both of which were box office successes. However, once she married Cruise, her career suddenly stalled. While she initially took a break from movies to raise Suri, once she came back, many of her films underperformed at the box office. There were rumors that Cruise had taken control of Holmes’ career during their marriage; however, she has since negated that.

2. Defamation Case

In 2013, Tom Cruise pursued legal action against Bauer Publishing Company, which owns Life & Style and In Touch. Cruise challenged the company’s claim that he had “abandoned” his daughter after the divorce. While the defamation case was dropped later that year, some interesting details emerged about the private proceedings of Tom and Katie’s divorce. According to the deposition obtained by RadarOnline, Cruise admitted that Holmes had left him in order to protect their daughter from Scientology. When lawyers first asked him if this was true, the actor responded that he felt the question was “offensive,” and that “there is no need to protect my daughter from my religion.” When probed further as to whether or not Holmes had said she left to protect Suri, Cruise said, “Did she say that? That was one of the assertions, yes.”

1. Moving On

While Katie has remained quiet about the specifics of her divorce from Tom, it’s clear it wasn’t one of the prouder moments of her life. In a 2014 with People the actress stated, “I don’t want that moment in my life to define me, to be who I am. I don’t want that to be what I’m known as. I was an actor before, an actor during and an actor now.” She has sole custody of Suri who, according to reports, has not seen or contacted her in more than three years.

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Katie Holmes beams with pride as daughter Suri Cruise drops her estranged father Tom's last name at graduation

Meanwhile, suri's estranged a-list father tom cruise spent the night at taylor swift's eras tour.

Suri Cruise is officially a high school graduate!

The daughter of Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise , 18, looked radiant in a summery white dress beneath her red LaGuardia High School graduation robes outside the United Palace Theatre in Manhattan on Friday. 

Katie was every inch a proud parent on the day. The Dawson's Creek actress made sure not to miss her daughter's special milestone, beaming in photographs as she celebrated by her side.

Katie looked effortlessly chic in a pastel yellow ensemble, rocking wide-leg trousers and a creamy collared sweater as she let her brunette tresses fall in natural curls.

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The lookalike mother-daughter duo were all smiles as they posed for photographs ahead of the ceremony, with doting mom Katie stopping to snap several photos of Suri with her classmates.

Photographs captured from inside the ceremony reveal that Suri appeared to have dropped her estranged father's famous last name in her graduation pamphlet, going by the name 'Suri Noelle'.

It comes as the Mission Impossible actor chose to skip his daughter's graduation in favour of attending Taylor Swift's Eras tour gig in London on Saturday night.

Budding musician Katie is believed to have secured a place at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, where she'll continue her music studies.

Kate and Suri's close relationship

Ever since Katie's highly-publicised divorce from Top Gun star Tom Cruise in July 2012, Katie and her daughter Suri have been a tight-knit unit, leading a private life together in NYC.

The actress, 45, recently opened up about sharing her clothes with daughter Suri in a new interview with The Times .

Katie revealed that her only child is beginning to develop a unique sense of style and her "own expressions" as she prepares to move to Pennsylvania for college this fall.

Quizzed whether she intends to pass down her wardrobe to Suri, Katie said: "I mean, I've saved some things here and there. But she has her own sense of style and her own expressions."

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Katie holmes' lookalike daughter suri turns 17 as she follows in her dad tom cruise and mom's footsteps, suri cruise looks exactly like mum katie holmes in new instagram snap, suri cruise, 18, takes inspiration from talented grandmother — who has been influential in her upbringing, gallery all the times katie holmes' daughter suri cruise looked like her mom's absolute double.

Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise’s Daughter Suri Drops Last Name for High School Graduation

Suri cruise, katie holmes and her ex tom cruise’s 18-year-old daughter, was listed as “suri noelle” in her high school graduation pamphlet..

Katie Holmes  and Tom Cruise 's daughter has a new moniker. 

During her high school graduation, the former couples' daughter was listed among her fellow graduates without her father's surname, instead being referred to as " Suri Noelle " in photos of the pamphlet, published by Page Six . 

For the 18-year-old's special day on June 21, she wore a bright red cap and gown—complete with a stole emblazoned with "Vocals" and "Music." Under her regalia, Suri also sported a white spaghetti strap dress and a pair of kitten heels with a flower on the toe. As for Katie, she wore an all-beige getup complete with blue satin sandal heels, brown shades, and a pearl necklace. 

The mother-daughter duo hugged and posed for family photos outside of the United Palace Theatre in New York City, while also greeting other graduates and their families. 

Though Katie—who separated from Tom in 2012—has not confirmed where her daughter will be attending college in the fall, Suri did don a Carnegie Mellon sweatshirt in a TikTok shared by her classmate earlier this month.

And while Katie, 45, has yet to speak publicly of her daughter's future, she has noted how proud she is of her daughter before. 

"I'm very grateful to be a parent, to be her parent," the Dawson's Creek  alum told Glamour in April 2023. "She's an incredible person."

Meanwhile, Tom—who also shares kids Isabella , 31, and Connor , 29, with ex Nicole Kidman —was not seen celebrating with his daughter or ex June 21, but he did make his way through the crowd at Taylor Swift 's London Eras Tour show the following day. The 61-year-old, who is currently filming Mission Impossible 8 in England, exchanged friendship bracelets with fans and spent some time with Travis Kelce , Hugh Grant , Greta Gerwig and more stars in the "Karma" singer's VIP tent. 

Keep reading to see more celeb families celebrating graduations this year.

Ryder Fieri

There's a new graduate in Flavortown! Guy Fieri 's son big farewell to high school with a whopping 3.7 GPA, according to the Food Network star.

"Wow what a great high school career!!" he wrote in a June 9 Instagram post . "Love you son!"

Sophia Meloni

Christopher Meloni and wife Sherman Williams  celebrated their daughter's college graduation in June 2024, with Mariska Hargitay —who is Sophia's godmother—making an appearance at the party.

Liv Moore Freundlich

Julianne Moore and her husband Bart Freundlich watched their daughter graduate from Northwestern University in June 2024. Along for the commecement ceremony? Their older son Caleb Moore Freundlich , who graduated from Davidson College in 2020.

Christian Nassif & Colin Nassif

Adrienne Maloof and Dr. Paul Nassif 's twins proved that they didn't botch high school, graduating in June 2024.

"Overwhelmed with pride for my boys," the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills alum wrote on Instagram , "and excited for their future adventures."

Henry Günther Ademola Dashtu Samuel

Heidi Klum and ex Seal 's eldest son graduated from a Los Angeles prep school in June 2024.

"CONGRATULATIONS HENRY," the proud mom wrote on Instagram . "We are all sooo proud of you. You did it my beautiful boy. College here we come. SHINE BRIGHT."

Finn McDermott

Tori Spelling and Dean McDermott 's son Finn graduated from elementary school in June 2024. 

"And, just like that I have a 5th grade graduate…," Tori shared on Instagram . "Finn Davey I’m so proud of you! Bye elementary school and hello middle school. I love you chat! Disclaimer to the haters : Dress code was shorts FYI bc they had student/teacher kickball aka sports day right b4."

Beau McDermott

But Finn isn't the only one in the family moving on up! Tori and Dean's youngest child Beau graduated from kindergarten that same month.

"Beau Beau is officially a 1st grader," Tori raved on Instagram . "So proud of this kid! My Baby."

Mabel Willis

Emma Heming Willis and Bruce Willis ' daugther Mabel graduated from elementary school in June 2024. 

Emma shared a photo of Tallulah Willis , Scout Willis and Demi Moore sporting Mabel masks on Instagram , writing, "Middle school! Here she comes!"

Justin Pippen

Scottie Pippen 's youngest son with ex Larsa Pippen received his high school diploma in May 2024.

"Proud dad moment!" NBA star captioned a family photo, which included his and Larsa's other kids Scotty Jr. , Preston and Sophia . "Congrats, son!"

Ella Stiller

Ben Stiller and Christine Taylor ’s daughter graduated with a BFA in acting from The Juilliard School in New York City.

“I couldn’t be happier to be done or prouder to have survived or more grateful to my family for the unwavering support that got me there and through," the college grad wrote on Instagram May 25. "I have a degree in playing pretend!!! Yay!!!”

Isaac Rivera

Teen Mom alum Kailyn Lowry and ex Jo Rivera 's teen son Isaac graduated from middle school.

"so many things to celebrate this week!" Kailyn wrote on Instagram June 7 . "& still processing Isaac going to high school later this year."

Massai Zhivago Dorsey II

Nia Long and Massai Z. Dorsey 's oldest son received his degree from New York University.

"Oh my baby," the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air actress wrote on Instagram May 20. "I’m so proud of you! Let’s get it!"

Jennifer Gates

Jennifer Gates , the eldest daughter of Bill Gates and ex-wife Melinda French Gates , graduated from Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in New York.

Following her special day, the Microsoft founder shared a touching message to celebrate her achievement. 

"From pre-K to MD," Bill wrote in a May 15 Instagram post . "I'm so proud to officially call you Dr. Gates."

Emma Chamberlain

On May 31, the YouTuber—who left high school in 2017 to focus on her mental health and career as a full-time content creator— received her diploma from Notre Dame High School in Belmont, Calif.

Ivey Watson

Jamie Lynn Spears ' youngest daughter Ivey Watson , who she shares with husband Jamie Watson , graduated from kindergarten. The little one proudly held her diploma in front of her older sister Maddie Watson , who Jamie Lynn shares with ex Casey Aldridge .

Laird Stone

Sharon Stone celebrated her second son's high school graduation in May 2024.

Riley Burruss

Kandi Burruss ' daughter graduated from New York University with a Bachelor of Music degree.

"My baby did it!" the Real Housewives of Atlanta alum wrote on Instagram May 15. "I'm a proud mama!"

Karma Bridges

Ludacris ' daughter graduated from Spelman College with a degree in Documentary Filmmaking in May 2024, according to Essence . The rapper said he was a " #prouddaddy " over her achievement. 

“I want to make movie and film content that helps shape and change the social and political landscape,” Karma said in a statement to the Ludacris Foundation. “Tell stories that are meaningful and thought provoking. I’ve always been drawn to storytelling due to its ability to heal, inspire, educate, create empathy, and ultimately catalyze positive change in the world.”

Avery Sehorn

Angie Harmon 's second daughter with ex Jason Sehorn received her high school diploma in June 2024, with the Rizzoli & Isles actress writing on Instagram, "We are all immensely proud of you Avery!"

"You have overcome & conquered & excelled to shine brightly with the stars," she caption a family photo, which included her other daughters Finley and Emery . "Remember to leave every place better than you found it & we are all so excited to see what God has planned for you!"

Jace Caussin

Jana Kramer 's son Jace—who she shares with ex Mike Caussin —said goodbye to Pre-K and celebrated the milestone at a mini prom.

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Suri cruise celebrates high school graduation with mom katie holmes, drops dad tom’s last name at ceremony.

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Suri Cruise is officially a high school graduate!

The daughter of Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise celebrated getting her diploma from LaGuardia High School on Friday with her mom by her side.

In photos and video obtained by Page Six, she could be seen ringing in the milestone moment by snapping pics with Holmes and a friend in New York City, where she resides.

The teen was also photographed animatedly hugging another recent graduate.

Suri, 18, looked thrilled as she posed with Holmes, 45, for photos outside a brick building before heading into the United Palace Theatre, located in the Washington Heights neighborhood of Manhattan.

She rocked a dainty white dress under her red graduation robe, and paired the ensemble with white sandals that had floral embellishments on them. Her brunette hair was styled down.

Holmes, meanwhile, opted for a matching set that consisted of light yellow pleated pants and a collared long-sleeve shirt.

Suri’s father, Tom, was not present at the special event, as they have been estranged for most of her life. He instead attended Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour in London .

It was even revealed in the teen’s graduation ceremony pamphlet that she goes by “Suri Noelle” and seemingly does not use her famous dad’s last name.

Suri is expected to  attend Carnegie Mellon University  in Pittsburgh in the fall.

On Tuesday night, she looked all grown up as she headed to senior prom with her friends and a brunette date, who was seen holding her by her waist.

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Suri opted to wear a ’90s-inspired floral gown, which featured a bustier top and maroon piping.

She channeled her mom with her brown hair styled in half-up, half-down.

The brunette beauty is Holmes’ only child. Since the “Dawson’s Creek” alum’s split from Tom in 2012, she has not remarried.

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Suri Picks New Name As Tribute To Mum Katie Holmes After Dropping Dad Tom Cruise’s Last Name

T he daughter of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes , formerly known as Suri Cruise , opted for a name change as part of a move to carve out her own identity.

Now going by Suri Noelle , the 18-year-old reportedly made this choice as a tribute to her mother, adopting the actress’s middle name, Noelle, as her new surname.

The change signifies the teenager’s desire to honor her mother and step out of her famous father’s shadow, a source claimed.

“She is showing praise for her mother by using her middle name,” a source told Page Six .

Now going by Suri Noelle, the teenager recently graduated high school with Katie Holmes proudly watching; Tom Cruise was meanwhile attending a Taylor Swift  concert in London

Image credits: BrosNYC / BACKGRID via Vida Press

Suri is the youngest and only biological child of the 61-year-old Top Gun actor’s three children. He adopted his first two children, Isabella and Connor, during his 11-year marriage with Nicole Kidman .

The blockbuster movie star married Katie in November 2006, just a few months after welcoming their own daughter in April 2006. The two stars decided to part ways in June 2012.

The Mission Impossible star is a father to three children, the youngest of which is Suri, whom he has had an estranged relationship with since his divorce in 2012

Image credits: Katie Holmes / Instagram

Now, the 18-year-old child of the two high-profile celebrities “wants her own identity,” the source said.

She is expected to join Carnegie Mellon University soon and wants to “start fresh at college,” hoping her new name will help her “avoid the paparazzi,” added the insider.

Earlier this month, the teenager proudly graduated as Suri Noelle from the prestigious Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, colloquially known as the “Fame School.” The Wonder Boys actress proudly watched her daughter graduate while Tom was attending a Taylor Swift concert in London.

The blockbuster movie star was attending a Taylor Swift concert while his ex-wife, Katie Holmes, proudly watched their daughter graduate high school

Her graduation wasn’t her first public use of the name; she had previously been listed as Suri Noelle in the playbill for her high school’s December performance of The Addams Family: A New Musical , in which she starred as Morticia Addams.

It’s still unclear whether Suri has legally changed her name , but the significance of the gesture is evident. Her choice underscores her connection to her mother, who has been her primary caregiver since Katie’s highly publicized divorce from the Mission Impossible star.

“Suri will not have any contact with her father, despite being 18, and even if he called, she would not answer,” a source said

The youngster turned 18 years old in April this year, officially severing all ties she had on paper with her estranged father. The actor will no longer have to part ways with money in the name of child support, which reportedly came up to $400,000 a year, according to the Daily Mail .

Insiders claim the teenager has no interest in having any kind of relationship with her father.

“Suri will not have any contact with her father, despite being 18, and even if he called, she would not answer,” a source told the outlet. “He does not exist to Katie or Suri, and his daughter does not want to rely on him for anything.”

Tom Cruise's Daughter Suri Changes Her Name, Honors Mom Katie Holmes

A source says Suri 'wants her own identity.'

By Ashley Turner - June 27, 2024 06:56 pm EDT

Suri Cruise , the daughter of Tom Cruise  and Katie Holmes , has reportedly made a significant change to her identity. The 18-year-old, who recently celebrated her high school graduation, appears to have dropped her famous father's surname  in favor of a new moniker that pays tribute to her mother.

According to multiple outlets, Suri was listed in her high school graduation program as "Suri Noelle" rather than "Suri Cruise." The name "Noelle" is believed to be a nod to Katie Holmes , whose middle name is also Noelle.

The graduation ceremony took place on June 21 at the United Palace Theater in Manhattan. Photographs obtained by Page Six   showed Katie Holmes beaming with pride as she celebrated her daughter's milestone achievement. Suri was seen wearing a white sundress beneath her bright red graduation robes, while her mother donned a stylish yellow pleated pants set with a collared long-sleeve shirt.

An insider close to the situation shared insights into Suri's name change, telling the outlet, "She is showing praise for her mother by using her middle name." The source speculated that the teenager's decision might be driven by a desire to forge her own identity and potentially avoid unwanted media attention. "She wants her own identity," the source added, suggesting that the new name could help Suri "avoid the paparazzi" and "start fresh at college."

Interestingly, this isn't the first time Suri has used her new name. Reports indicate that she was listed as "Suri Noelle" in the playbill for her high school's production of The Addams Family: A New Musical in December, where she played the lead role of Morticia Addams.

The decision to change her name comes amid long-standing reports of estrangement between Suri and her father. Page Six confirmed in March 2023 that Cruise has had "no part" in his daughter's life for quite some time. The Top Gun actor was notably absent from Suri's graduation, instead attending Taylor Swift's Eras Tour show in London a day after the ceremony.

• Tom Cruise's Surprising Relationship With 16-Year-Old Daughter Suri
• Did Tom Cruise Skip His Daughter's Graduation for Taylor Swift's Concert?
• Tom Cruise Seen With His Son Connor and Daughter Bella in Rare Photo

Holmes, on the other hand, has been a constant presence in Suri's life since her high-profile divorce from Cruise in 2012. The former Dawson's Creek actress has been raising Suri as a single parent and has often expressed her love and admiration for her daughter. In 2017, Holmes told Town & Country , "I feel very blessed to have such a special daughter. Being her mom is absolutely the greatest gift and privilege."

As Suri prepares for the next chapter of her life, reports suggest she may be headed to Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. A viral TikTok video, since deleted, showed Suri wearing a red sweatshirt bearing the university's name, hinting at her college plans.

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