scientology tom cruise wife

Tom Cruise’s Ex-Wives: Everything To Know About His 3 Marriages To Katie, Nicole, & Mimi

The 'Mission: Impossible' star has been married thrice throughout his career. Find out everything you need to know about his ex-wives.

• Tom Cruise remains one of Hollywood’s biggest movie stars
• The actor has been linked with several high-profile actresses throughout his career and married three of them
• He shares three children with two of his ex-wives

Tom Cruise   has been a popular actor for decades. He’s appeared in classics like  Top Gun and  Jerry Maguire,  but he’s also been a part of the massively popular  Mission: Impossible  film franchise. While he got famous through his many movie appearances, Tom’s personal life has long been a public interest , from his relationships to his family. Throughout his life, the 59-year-old actor has been married to three different women and welcomed three children with two of them.  Find out more about who his exes are and what his relationships with them were like!

Mimi Rogers

Tom’s first marriage was to  Mimi Rogers  in 1987. The actor had experienced early success in his career with  Risky Business  and  Top Gun , before he married the actress. Mimi, 66, has starred in a number of beloved movies like Lost In Space  or the first  Austin Powers  film. While the marriage was short-lived, Mimi did have a major impact on Tom, being the one who introduced him to Scientology, according to the book The Passion of Tom Cruise , via  Radar .  Her dad had been an original member of the church, via  The Hollywood Reporter .

Tom had said that the pair met at a dinner party in a 1986 profile by  Rolling Stone . In another profile , he later gushed about Mimi. “I care about my wife more than anything in the world. She’s my best friend. I just really like being with her, you know? I love her,” he said.

Unfortunately, the couple later split and broke up in 1990. In the years since the divorce, Mimi has said that she regularly gets questioned about her marriage to the  Top Gun  star, but she doesn’t really comment much. ““Any time anything happens with him I get a call: ’What do you think of Katie? What do think about this?’ … ’Yeah, he’s having a kid. Of course I think it’s great. What do you want me to say?’ ’Do you think he’ll be a good father?’ ’How do I know any more than I would know what kind of parent you would be,” she explained to  Today  in 2006.

Meanwhile, Mimi keeps her fans up to date on her latest moves via Instagram . Her last post celebrated another season of working on the hit TV show Bosch Legacy.

Nicole Kidman

After the split from Mimi, Tom starred alongside his future wife  Nicole Kidman in  Days of Thunder,  and the pair got married in December 1990. The couple adopted two kids: a daughter Isabella,   29, and a son Connor,  27, in the 90s. During their 11-year marriage, Tom and Nicole also starred in the 1999 film  Eyes Wide Shut  together, which Nicole, 54, looked back on fondly in a 2020 New York Times   interview. “We were happily married through that. We would go go-kart racing after those scenes. We’d rent out a place and go racing at 3 in the morning,” she said.

After 11 years together, the couple broke up, and Tom filed for divorce in February 2001. In the years after the split, Nicole said the breakup was a “major shock” in a 2006 interview with  Ladies Home Journal,  per  Today .  “I knew I was going to get hit with something. But I think a divorce, and the demise of what your family is, is a little death in itself,” she said. Shortly after the split, there had been reports that Nicole had suffered a miscarriage at the end of their relationship, but she set the record straight in a 2007 interview with  Marie Claire . She said that it was “wrongly reported,” and clarified, “I had an ectopic pregnancy at the beginning of [my marriage].”

Nicole went on to marry country music singer Keith Urban in 2006. The gorgeous actress shares hilarious videos of their daily life together in Australia via her Instagram . Check out the cute couple hilariously chasing a native brush tail possum away from their deck here !

Katie Holmes

Tom’s third and most recent marriage was to actress Katie Holmes .  The pair started dating in 2005, and they were quickly nicknamed “TomKat.” The actor famously declared his love for Katie in a viral interview with  Oprah Winfrey,  where he jumped on the couch on her talk show. A year after going public with their romance, Katie, 43, had their first daughter   Suri ,  16, together in April 2006. The couple got married that November. The wedding was an extravagant affair, with tons of high profile guests like  Jada Pinkett-Smith, Jennifer Lopez, Jim Carrey,  and many more, per  USA Today.   Tom’s best man was the head of the Church of Scientology  David Miscavige,  according to the   BBC .

After six years of marriage, the couple divorced in 2012. Katie announced that she was filing for divorce, and the split was quickly resolved due to a prenup arranged by the actress’s dad, according to  Vanity Fair . After the split, Katie moved to New York with Suri. Although she doesn’t often share snaps of her mini-me daughter to her Instagram , Katie does give fans a peek at her life in the Big Apple.

She reflected on the time after the divorce in an April 2020 interview with   InStyle . “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 said.

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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.)

By Laura Regensdorf

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FLASH The press cannot get enough of the story.

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

Maureen orth is a special correspondent at *vanity fair.*, royal watch.

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By Joy Press

By Tom Kludt

Tom Cruise reportedly didn't care about his relationship with Katie Holmes: 'I never saw any level of intimacy'

• Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise were married from 2006 to 2012.
• They weren't intimate with each other, according to a former member of Cruise's security team within the Church of Scientology.
• After Nicole Kidman divorced Cruise in 2001, the Church reportedly tried to find him another wife.
• During his relationship with Holmes, Cruise spent little time with her or his three children, according to the former security official.

Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise had a famous and much talked about romance. From the unforgettable moment when Cruise jumped on Oprah's couch to profess his love to all the shocking claims that have been reported about their marriage since , the former couple continue to fascinate.

But according to Brendan Tighe, a former member of Tom Cruise's security unit within the Church of Scientology , the pair did not seem close to one another throughout their marriage from 2006 to 2012.

"I never saw any level of intimacy," Tighe told the Australian magazine New Idea . "Only when they were going to the gym and the Fourth of July fireworks display in 2007 — which was also his birthday — and she presented him with a motorbike."

During his relationship with Holmes, Tighe says Cruise hardly paid attention to her or their children — Suri, his biological child with Holmes, and Isabella and Connor, who he adopted with Kidman.

"Most of the time, Katie looked like a deer in the headlights, like she was being dragged around and having a hard time keeping up with him. Cruise is on the go all the time," Tighe told The Daily Mail. "I never saw him with his kids, apart from one time in 2007 when it was his birthday."

Tighe was a Scientologist for 30 years, but left the church in 2011 after conflicts with higher command, he told The Daily Mail.

In response to questions from INSIDER, Karin Pouw, the head of public relations at the Church of Scientology, dismissed Tighe as a disgruntled ex-Scientologist but didn't deny any of his specific claims.

Related stories

"False tabloid stories like the ones you are asking about can always be sourced to the same discredited ex-Scientologists — a small group of expelled members with sordid pasts looking to make money by spreading lies," she said. "And that of course includes Brendan Tighe."

According to Tighe, the relationship between Cruise and Holmes was strange from the start. The Church of Scientology, where Cruise is one of the most powerful figures, reportedly struggled to find a partner with the right image for him after he divorced Nicole Kidman in 2001. The search was a priority for David Miscavige , the longtime head of the church, according to Tighe.

"They were looking at Hollywood stars, Tommy was getting grilled on them: Who didn't have a porn past? Who hadn't done nude scene in movies? Who hadn't a major drug history?" Tighe told The Daily Mail. "So many prospects had done something wrong, like sex movies that had been leaked; it was impossible to find someone qualified."

Tighe said the church considered Scarlett Johansson, as the friend of Scientology member Erika Christensen. According to Tighe, the church judged her on  Scientology's "tone scale,"  which supposedly measures emotion.

"Scarlett was 1.1 on the tone scale, which meant covert hostility, it's considered the worst on the backstabbing scale," Tighe said.

The reported meetings between Johansson and Cruise were also around the time they considered working together. But Johansson's longtime publicist told INSIDER the story about her interviewing to be his partner is false.

"The story is complete BS. She never 'interviewed' to date Cruise," Johansson's representative told INSIDER. "The story was fake then and always has been."

A representative for Holmes declined to comment. A representative Cruise didn't immediately respond to INSIDER's requests for comment.

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Watch: How they filmed Tom Cruise jumping out of a plane in "Mission: Impossible—Fallout"

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All three of Tom Cruise's marriages ended when wife was 33

Soon after news broke about Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes' plans to divorce , fans noted a weird coincidence. All of Cruise's three marriages broke up when his wife at the time was 33, and ended when she was 34.

Cruise's first wife was Mimi Rogers, who was 31 when she wed 24-year-old Cruise in May 1987 and 33 when they broke up in 1990.

Cruise then married Nicole Kidman, 23, in December of 1990, and then separated in 2001, when Kidman was 33.

Holmes, 28, and Cruise wed in 2006, seven months after daughter Suri was born. And when word came Friday that Holmes had filed for divorce, those with a sense of Cruise history noted that Holmes was also 33.

Divorces, in each case, came when the woman in question had turned 34 (or so we assume with Holmes, who will turn 34 in December).

The coincidence didn't go unnoticed on social media, where no weird fact is too small to escape notice.

"How weird is it that Tom Cruise's three failed marriages have all ended while the women were 34?" tweeted Karen D'Souza. Others tried to find a connection between the number 33 and Cruise's well-publicized Scientology faith.

And others had fun with a different numerical aspect of the Cruise-Holmes marriage. Wrote Adolf McGough, "Shoutout to Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise. Your marriage lasted 28.47 Kim Kardashian and Kris Humphries marriages."

Related content:

• Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes divorcing
• Now that Cruise and Holmes are over, can the old Katie come back?
• Tom Cruise bares soul in Playboy interview
• Is it a happy birthday when you're Suri Cruise?

Slideshows:

• Katie Holmes
• The style of Suri

How Tom Cruise’s Wedding to Katie Holmes Changed Scientology Forever

The moment that turned the tide.

Marlow Stern

Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast

Even by Hollywood standards it was an opulent affair, with millions splashed on a 15th-century castle, crystal-laden Armani dresses, and a performance by crooner Andrea Bocelli ; the guest list, meanwhile, was a paparazzo’s dream, boasting the likes of Will and Jada, Posh and Becks, J. Lo, and scores more. But Tom Cruise’s 2006 Italian wedding to Katie Holmes will be remembered for another reason entirely, according to Mike Rinder.  

“It was a very significant moment in the history of Scientology, because it changed a lot of the media focus about Scientology,” offered Rinder on Scientology and the Aftermath .

Rinder would know. For 25 years, the Aussie served as a senior executive for the Church of Scientology and its fraternal religious order, Sea Organization , as well as the executive director of its Office of Special Affairs (OSA), which oversees the church’s myriad legal tussles, public relations, and internal investigations into members’ behavior . He left the controversial religion in 2007 due to, he says, the abusive practices of leader David Miscavige , and now co-hosts A&E’s Aftermath alongside another ex-Scientologist, Leah Remini.

But back to those star-studded nuptials. While Cruise had already raised plenty of eyebrows with his Matt Lauer mano a mano and couch-jumping on Oprah , the wedding was his big Scientology coming-out party—a traditional Scientology ceremony conducted by minister Norman Starkey, the executor of its late founder L. Ron Hubbard’s estate, with Miscavige serving as best man. And it was there that Remini, who was still a member of the church at the time, began questioning the church’s officials over the whereabouts of Miscavige’s wife Shelly , who was nowhere to be found. Remini is alleged to have received a tongue-lashing at the event from Tommy Davis, a Scientology executive who acted as Cruise’s personal handler.

“I mean, look at that famous quote from Tommy Davis to Leah [Remini] about Shelly at the Cruise wedding, ‘You don’t have the fucking rank to ask about this.’ They believe the world doesn’t have the fucking rank to ask about this; that nobody has the fucking rank to ask about this,” Rinder tells me. “It’s an interesting look at the mindset of Scientologists, and how out of touch with reality they are. They’ve lost touch with the world.”

Remini left Scientology in 2013, and has since become the face of Scientology whistleblowing. Things got worse for Cruise in Jan. 2008, when Gawker published a leaked version of his Scientology indoctrination video where the actor claimed, among other things, that Scientologists are the only ones who can help people who get in car accidents. Then came Going Clear , detailing the church’s alleged efforts to break up Cruise and Nicole Kidman , the Vanity Fair exposé about the church’s wife-auditioning for Cruise prior to arriving at Holmes, Remini’s allegation that Cruise personally punished fellow Scientologists , etc. And still, Cruise has somehow remained an A-list Hollywood star, with his recent blockbuster Mission: Impossible – Fallout grossing nearly $800 million worldwide, and the actor currently shooting a hotly-anticipated sequel to Top Gun . Rinder feels that the press is complicit.

“If you go on a movie press junket with Cruise you are required not to ask about Scientology, and a lot of journalists participate anyway. This is a really sad indictment of the Fourth Estate,” says Rinder.

He adds, “I still think that too many media do treat Scientology with kid gloves, and too many media are operating on the old view of the ‘power’ of Scientology to threaten and intimidate them. To a large extent, the threats and intimidation have increasingly been demonstrated to just be a bunch of hot air. It’s become a part of the routine to expect a legal letter if you do anything about Scientology, but Scientology hasn’t sued the media since TIME magazine back in 1992. And they lost that case.” (Cruise did not respond to requests for comment for this story; the Church of Scientology, through their spokesperson, called Rinder’s claims “false,” branded him a “liar,” and accused me of “religious prejudice and bias.”)

Cruise’s camp would argue that it’s unfair to delve into someone’s religious beliefs—except the actor, Rinder explains, “ used the fact that he was a movie star to promote Scientology for years.”

In addition to the indoctrination video, made in honor of Cruise receiving the Freedom Medal of Valor from Miscavige for being the world’s biggest disseminator of Scientology, there was the time he infamously erected Scientology tents on the set of Steven Spielberg’s War of the Worlds , attempting to convert cast and crew members to the controversial religion.

“He had a volunteer ministers’ tent on War of the Worlds . It’s totally crazy,” says Rinder, who was still a high-ranking Scientology exec at the time. “You know, you can’t for years be the biggest proselytizer of Scientology because you’re a movie star, and even do it on the set of movies, and whenever you’re being interviewed about a movie you have to pop in something about L. Ron Hubbard or Scientology, and when it becomes a bit more inconvenient and prickly, and the subject matter isn’t what you want it to be, to go, ‘You’re not allowed to ask anymore,’ is wildly hypocritical.”

On top of all that, Rinder echoes Remini’s claim that Cruise is aware of the alleged abuses within the Church of Scientology, including the Hole .

“He is very aware,” Rinder says. “In fact, David Miscavige used to tell people when he was displeased with people in the Hole—and I was there when he said this—‘If you motherfuckers don’t get your shit together, I’m going to bring Tom down here and I’m going to have him beat you up.’ Tom is an insider . He is privy to all the bullshit that Miscavige has been up to. And many people outside of the Sea Organization are not, but he is because they are like two peas in a pod.”

Cruise, of course, is not the only celebrity who’s a prominent member of the Church of Scientology. There’s John Travolta , Danny Masterson , Elisabeth Moss, Michael Peña, Juliette Lewis, Laura Prepon, Kirstie Alley, Beck, Giovanni Ribisi, Greta Van Susteren, and more. And this is apparently by design.

“Miscavige has always viewed—and so did Hubbard—celebrities as being the most effective way of gaining acceptability for Scientology and encouraging new people to get interested and participate. And of course the larger the celebrity, the greater the impact. For a time, Tom Cruise was the biggest movie star in the world, and the ultimate manifestation of that philosophy,” claims Rinder. “Cruise came along during the Miscavige era, he was his first major accomplishment, and Cruise has a very similar personality type to Miscavige—just over-the-top about everything, so Miscavige saw him as the perfect vehicle to be molded into the perfect representative for Scientology.”

Rinder chuckles. “So, it is very ironic that the Big Fish became the Big Stinking Fish, because that wedding—and the fallout from that wedding—changed everything.”

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The hollowness of Tom Cruise

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

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Tom Cruise has spent this year flying high, literally.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But who says the movie ever has to stop?

Tom Cruise saves chivalry

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tom Cruise saves mankind (from thetans)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Can Tom Cruise save Tom Cruise?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Katie holmes ‘biggest nightmare’ in scientology history, say experts.

Using L. Ron Hubbard's "attack, don't defend" strategy, Holmes even fired Tom Cruise's older daughter weeks before filing for divorce; opposite tack from Nicole Kidman.

By Dana Kennedy

Dana Kennedy

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Tom Cruise Katie Holmes Kennedy's Horizontal - H 2012

In filing for divorce from Tom Cruise — and apparently blindsiding him — amid indications she doesn’t want her daughter raised a Scientologist and is seeking sole custody, Katie Holmes has made it clear that she is taking a very different tack from Nicole Kidman, who split up with Cruise in 2001.

Kidman effectively lost the two children she adopted with Cruise when the kids chose to live with their father after the divorce. She has said it was the kids’ decision to stay with Cruise but has never explained why.

“With Katie, it’s like she’s taking a leaf from [Church of Scientology founder]  L. Ron Hubbard ‘s own playbook,” says Marc Headley, an ex-Scientologist who fled the church with the help of police in 2005 after years spent working closely with Cruise and his close friend, Scientology’s powerful and feared chairman, David Miscavige. “Hubbard always said, ‘Attack, don’t defend.’ ”

Holmes appears more aggressive and fearless than those who have taken steps to distance themselves from the church or have “blown” — Scientology parlance for leaving the church — according to one-time key members of the church who have left, many after years of soul searching, and endured what they claim was often harassment, intimidation and being cut off from their families.

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Tom cruise-katie holmes divorce: the fallout continues.

But some of Holmes’ apparent courage could stem from the fact that many of the high-ranking Scientologists who ran interference for Cruise during his marriage to Kidman and often discouraged or intimidated mainstream media from reporting on Scientology have left the church. A number of them are now actively working against Miscavige and Cruise by spilling church secrets to the very reporters they once threatened.

Even Jenna Miscavige Hill , David Miscavige’s niece, who left the church in 2005, issued a statement Tuesday in support of Holmes and any concern she has over her daughter’s involvement in the church.

19 of Hollywood's All-Time Shortest Marriages

“My experience in growing up in Scientology is that it is both mentally and at times physically abusive,” Jenna said. “I was allowed to see my parents only once a week at best — sometimes not for years. We got a lousy education from unqualified teachers, forced labor, long hours, forced confessions, being held in rooms, not to mention the mental anguish of trying to figure out all of the conflicting information they force upon you as a young child. … As a mother myself, I offer my support to Katie and wish for her all the strength she will need to do what is best for her and her daughter.”

Still, Holmes’ decision to file for divorce from Cruise in New York state and ask for sole legal custody and primary physical custody of their 6-year-old daughter, Suri, sent a strong message, ex-members say, that she isn’t cowed by Cruise and his reputation as a prominent member of what has long been considered a powerful and litigious organization. Holmes has hired Allan Mayefsky , a high-powered matrimonial lawyer with experience handling difficult divorces who is known to play cases out in the media, as well as New Jersey divorce lawyer Jonathan Wolfe .

Requests for comment from Holmes attorneys were not immediately returned.

“Katie ambushed Tom Cruise and in so doing outwitted some of the most controlling people on Earth,” says Karen De La Carriere , who was once one of the most powerful executives in Scientology and was married to Heber Jentzsch , Scientology’s longtime president who mysteriously hasn’t been seen in years. De La Carriere shocked the church by leaving in 2010 and telling secrets in anti-Miscavige blogs — including her claim that she was kept for six months against her will at the secretive church base camp near Hemet, Calif. “I have no doubt that she’s being tailed by them. It’s par for the course. But she had to have planned this very carefully, right down to using disposable cell phones and laptops to throw people off her trail. It had to have been a very cloak-and-dagger operation.”

A former Scientologist with close ties to members of Cruise’s family says his adopted daughter Isabella worked for Holmes at her clothing line, Holmes and Yang, and was abruptly fired about two months ago.

Rupert Murdoch Attacks Tom Cruise, Calls Scientology 'Creepy, Maybe Even Evil'

“There was never any trouble between them,” says the source. “Bella called Katie ‘Mom.’ She was fired out of the blue, and once Katie filed for divorce, it all made sense. This was a carefully planned ambush. Katie didn’t want Bella working for her anymore because she was Tom’s kid.”

Backed by her family, according to sources, especially her father, who is a divorce attorney, and perhaps emboldened by the increasing critiques and exposés of the church by former top members, Holmes is standing up to Scientology in a way that was almost unthinkable in 2001.

“This was a very bold move on Katie’s part, but at the same time she knows these are different times and she has more support,” says De La Carriere, who joined the church’s elite and secretive Sea Organization in the early 1970s at the invitation of Hubbard, who died in 1986, and is the last surviving top “auditor” to be trained by him. (Auditing is a form of counseling central to Scientology philosophy.)

“By filing for sole custody of Suri, she’s making it very clear she’s not going to let what happened with Nicole Kidman happen to her,” says De La Carriere.

Holmes has the advantage of going up against an organization that has been significantly weakened during the past decade, as an increasing number of high-level Scientologists such as Marty Rathbun and Mike Rinder have defected. Together, Rathbun and Rinder were considered the second- and third-most powerful church officials under Miscavige and took care of troublesome legal and media issues, among them Cruise’s divorce from Kidman. The pair have been described as one of the church’s most effective weapons by ex-Scientologists and in many media accounts.

Paramount Defends Star Tom Cruise as Divorce News Explodes

“They don’t have the resources or the people to help them attack the way they used to because so many key people have blown,” says Amy Scobee , whose mother signed her over to Scientology when she was 15 and who went on to run the church’s Celebrity Centres before leaving in 2005 because she did not like Miscavige. Scobee also knew Cruise well and hired his household staff (who were Scientologists) when he was married to Kidman.

“Marty and Mike are irreplaceable,” says Scobee. “They were tough. They understood Scientology, and they knew how to take care of business. Scientology can hire all the lawyers they want now, but they won’t hold a candle to Marty and Mike. The people Miscavige needs to help him with the Tom and Katie mess are now on the outside working against them.”

In response to previous reports in The Hollywood Reporter that cited Scobee’s accounts of her experiences, the church attacked her credibility, saying she was dismissed from the church for gross malfeasance.

Hundreds of people including high-level leaders have left — or tried to leave — the Church of Scientology, especially in the past six to seven years, as dissatisfaction with Miscavige has intensified. Many defectors, most of whom remain loyal to Hubbard’s legacy and teachings, have accused Miscavige — variously in the press, in books and, in the case of Headley, in a lawsuit filed in 2009 — of being violent, of abusing adult and child labor laws at the Hemet base camp and of focusing too much on fund-raising.

Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes Divorce: Inside the Couple's Careers and Assets

Even Rupert Murdoch tweeted this week that the church was “evil” and “creepy” in a move some saw as proof that the media should no longer fear reporting about the church. Fox News’ Geraldo Rivera followed the boss’ tweet with one of his own on Monday, asking, “Does Scientology have special program to provide cover for closeted gay superstars?”

Holmes has not commented yet on why she decided to file for divorce from Cruise, but the actor’s camp has indicated it was Holmes’ decision. Cruise issued a statement saying he was “deeply saddened.”

In contrast, Kidman has said that she was the one who was shocked by Cruise’s divorce petition in 2000, though she never took to Scientology during their 10-year marriage. She told Vanity Fair in 2002 that she was so upset by Cruise dumping her that she lay “crying in the fetal position on the floor” at one point.

Unlike Kidman, who kept quiet during her divorce from Cruise and has rarely commented publicly about it since, Holmes already has made a statement of sorts by filing her petition in New York and saying she wants full legal custody and primary residential custody of their Suri.

“Katie could blow Scientology wide open,” says Rathbun, who was in the church for 22 years before leaving in late 2004. Rathbun, who calls himself an “independent Scientologist” and writes a candid blog popular with former members, was Cruise’s auditor and handled Cruise’s divorce from Kidman.

Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes: A Timeline

“If Tom’s smart, he won’t fight her on anything, even custody. He should just try to settle his way out of it,” says Rathbun. “She could press this sole-custody issue and litigate it, and that would be the biggest nightmare in the Church of Scientology’s history. It would be a circus they couldn’t survive.”

When THR cited Rathbun’s experience with Scientology in a previous article, the church also attacked his credibility, focusing partly on alleged personal transgressions.

In a statement regarding the defectors who spoke on the record to THR , Gary Soter , a Calabasas, Calif.-based attorney representing the organization, said: “All of these people are ex-communicated self-promoters who are sadly exploiting a private family matter for their own personal financial gain. The Church stands by its previous statements with respect to all of them. They cannot be believed given they have acquired no firsthand knowledge of the Church for many years and have a record of making false and/or misleading statements about the Church.”

Says Headley, who was once the head of film and video production for Scientology: “The church may be underestimating Katie. She knows how to play Tom, and she’s been doing it brilliantly. She knows he’s locked down up in Iceland shooting his movie and he can’t fly back to the U.S. to handle this.”

Cruise was filming Oblivion in Iceland but flew back to the U.S. on Tuesday, his 50th birthday. His longtime lawyer Bert Fields did not respond to requests for comment, but it has been reported that Cruise has hired Dennis Wasser to represent him in the divorce — the same attorney who represented him in the split from Kidman.

When asked if the church is advising Cruise in this matter, Soter responded: “The Church doesn’t comment on any individual parishioner or his or her spiritual journey. This is a private matter, and it is inappropriate for comment. The Church has respected and will continue to respect the privacy of both parties during this difficult period.”

Two former Scientologists who say they have a connection to both a member of the Holmes family and people still inside the church claim that Holmes’ family has been wary of Scientology from the start.

One reason for their concern might have been that it is a common Scientology practice to order members to cut off or “disconnect” from family members who disapprove of the church.

“Katie was monitored as if she lived under the Stasi,” says Rathbun. “It was not quite as bad for Nicole. But that’s how it is now.”

Because of Rathbun’s former status in Scientology, he says he is the go-to guy for people leaving the church. He told THR he got information about how Holmes has been spied on and reported on by Scientologists from people who defected as recently as three months ago. His well-read, no-holds-barred blog also contains detailed comments by many of them, a number of whom state their names.

“Church members are required to report on one another, especially if they see any infractions to the way the church believes you should lead your life,” says Rathbun. “Tom’s personal staff including his sisters are much more afraid of Miscavige than they are of Tom. They’ve reported every detail of Tom’s life to Miscavige for 15 years. Katie was always being watched. So is Tom.”

But even if Scientology is in a more precarious state than it was 10 years ago, these former members do not expect the church to necessarily abandon its trademark moves when it comes to trying to crush what it sees as the opposition. Nor does the church necessarily realize how the 24-hour news cycle and breaking-news gossip sites like TMZ have made some of its practices more transparent, ex-members say.

“Scientology is going to do to Katie what they always do in these situations,” says Headley, who wrote 2009’s Blown for Good: Behind the Iron Curtain of Scientology . “They’re going to put a thousand private investigators on her tail and dig through her garbage and talk to her staff even though they don’t have any real dirt on her.”

Adds Headley: “Scientologists don’t know the world has changed. Miscavige lives in a bubble. They are still using Hubbard’s playbook for strategy that was written in the 1950s and doesn’t work too well in the age of the Internet.”

On the allegations that Holmes has been being followed by the organization, Soter wrote: “There is no truth whatsoever to the reports that the Church of Scientology has sent anyone to follow Katie Holmes. The cars and individuals widely reported in the media as looking suspicious were not sent by the Church.

“We understand that the media has now confirmed that the ‘suspicious’ men outside of Katie Holmes’ residence were actually working for Katie Holmes (see, e.g. latest Inside Editio n report),” he wrote. “Yet, one of the people that you interviewed confidently reported on his blog that the Church had hired security guards to follow Katie Holmes and that the Church and its attorneys were engaged in artful lying. I would consider any re-publication of alleged information from these sources to be made in reckless disregard of the truth.”

Rathbun, Rinder, De La Carriere, Scobee and Headley told THR they are still sometimes confronted, threatened or followed by people sent by the church years after having left Scientology. All of them, as well as other ex-Scientologists who did not want to go on the record, say they have been disconnected from family members.

Says Rinder: “What Katie is doing is going to drive a wedge in a door that Scientology was trying to keep closed. She is going to stir up a media frenzy, and a lot of people are going to find out what a lot of us have known for years.”

Scobee says that the impending divorce — Cruise’s third — will be an embarrassment to Scientology. “The church is supposed to be about people improving their lives,” she says. “It’s supposed to help people with their marriages, not get divorced three times.”

De La Carriere says Holmes may be legitimately scared for her daughter because she claims Scientology deliberately turned the two adopted children of Cruise and Kidman against Kidman during and after the divorce.  

One anti-Scientology activist who has worked with church members after they left the organization recalls that Kidman called him during her divorce from Cruise. “Nicole reached out to us because there was really no one else to go to,” the source says. “It was very different back then, and she didn’t have anyone to go to for help and answers.”

Rathbun says Cruise was a “total gentleman” during his divorce from Kidman, and they split everything 50-50, including custody of their adopted daughter Isabella and son Connor.

But Rathbun says that then the organization, including all the staff members who work in Cruise’s Los Angeles home, began to quietly turn the kids against Kidman.  

Rathbun says he witnessed Tommy Davis , head of the church’s Celebrity Centre and the son of actress Anne Archer , feeding Isabella and Connor Cruise false information about their mother so as to turn them against her.

“Tommy told them over and over again their mother was a sociopath, and after a while they believed him,” Rathbun says. “They had daily sessions with Tommy. I was there. I saw it.”

Soter sent the following statement attributed to Davis:

“Marty Rathbun never witnessed conversations between me and Isabella and Connor Cruise about their mother because no such conversations ever occurred. I have never spoken with Isabella or Connor about their mother and never would as it is none of my business.”

Aaron Moss of Greenberg Glusker, the law firm that represents the Cruise family, sent the following statement:

“These stories are completely fabricated and are nothing more than an attempt by Mr. Rathbun, an individual with a well-documented vendetta against the Church, to drive a wedge between Bella and Connor and their mother, and the religion her children practice. Connor is a minor and Bella is only 19.”

A number of former Scientology members say Holmes must know that as Suri gets older, the church might start exerting more of an influence on her.

“She’s at the age where the kids get indoctrinated,” says Headley. “It’s like, playtime over. You’re a Scientologist now. And they really de-emphasize the family. Katie becomes a lot less important as a mother. It’s all about the organization over the individual.”

Soter compared the religious training of children to the practice in Catholicism of beginning to receive Holy Communion at age 7. “Parents may choose to begin educating their children about religion at any time, much as in any other religion,” his statement said. “There is nothing unusual here.”

Headley, who began working 100-hour weeks at the Sea Org base in Hemet when he was 16, often for no pay, was shunned by his Scientologist mother when he left in 2005. 

“You’re either in or out when it comes to Scientology,” says Headley. “That’s why Katie is making custody such an issue in the divorce petition. If you’re out, the way she seems to be, they want to cut you off from everyone, including your kids.”

Rinder says his biggest regret about leaving is that his son, daughter, mother, sister, sister-in-law, brother-in-law and several nieces and nephews refuse to speak to him.

Rinder’s 34-year-old daughter works at the Sea Org base near Hemet, where Miscavige has ruled in recent years that no one can marry or have children. His son, 29, works at the Clearwater, Fla., base, from which Rinder was turned away recently and accused of trespassing when he tried to see his son, who may have cancer.

“I feel bad because I put them there — they were born in the Sea Org,” says Rinder. “They’ve been in it their whole lives. At the same time, they’re adults now, and I wish they’d come to their senses.”

Rinder’s children might not, as he says, “come to their senses” as Scientology forbids reading stories about the church on the Internet. 

But despite the enormous amount of negative reports online about Scientology — whether written by ex-members, church opponents or investigative journalists such as Lawrence Wright of The New Yorker , Tony Ortega of The Village Voice or the staff at The Tampa Bay Times — none of it has really seemed to stick to the church, Rinder says.

Ortega, for example, writes about Scientology at least once a week and broke the news last week that Miscavige’s father, Ron, and a niece of Hubbard escaped from the Sea Org base camp in Hemet sometime this spring after decades with the church.

“I think Tom and Katie, along with Rupert Murdoch’s tweet, is what is going to open the floodgates,” says Rinder. “Murdoch basically telling all his own reporters that it’s open season on Scientology. It means Rupert isn’t scared of them and their reputation for litigiousness. That’s not good news for Scientology.”

It is good news theoretically for Holmes, who might be more successful holding on to Suri after her divorce than Kidman was with her two adopted children if she wins the press over to her side and is able to force some transparency in her divorce negotiations with Cruise.

This story has been updated with statements by Tommy Davis and Aaron Moss, an attorney representing Cruise’s family.

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Tom Cruise Says Scientology Played a Role in Divorce From Katie Holmes

Katie Holmes filed for divorce "to protect Suri from Scientology," he said.

Nov. 9, 2013— -- During a deposition in his court battle against a pair of magazines, Tom Cruise admitted that ex-wife Katie Holmes filed for divorce "to protect Suri from Scientology," according to court documents.

The "Mission Impossible" actor is embroiled in a $50 million suit against Bauer Publishing Company, the publisher of In Touch and Life & Style magazines over claims that he "abandoned" his daughter Suri after his June 2012 divorce from Holmes.

Cruise is asked by one of Bauer's attorneys whether one of the reasons that Holmes left him was "to protect Suri from Scientology," according to the transcript of Cruise's Sept. 9 videotaped deposition obtained by ABC News.

"Did she say that? That was one of the assertions, yes," Cruise said.

Tom Cruise in Tabloid Lawsuit Denies He 'Abandoned' Daughter Suri

Holmes, 34, filed for divorce from Cruise in June 2012 after nearly six years of marriage. The pair "amicably settled" their divorce less than two weeks later but did not release details of the settlement.

At the time of the divorce, the former couple released a joint statement saying they were, "committed to working together as parents to accomplishing what is in our daughter Suri's best interests."

Cruise said Holmes was a practitioner of Scientology before and during their marriage, but left the church once she divorced him in June 2012, the court documents said.

While he did not pursue legal action against publications that claimed Holmes left him "in part to protect Suri from Scientology," he sued Bauer over the stories they ran concerning Cruise's supposed abandonment of his 7-year-old daughter, which he called "disturbing," according to the deposition.

"'He chose Scientology over Suri for good.' 'Has he chosen Scientology over Suri for good?' 'Abandoned by Daddy.' I mean come on, that is absolutely disgusting," Cruise said. "I tolerate a tremendous amount and I'm very privileged to be able to have the life that I have, and I believe that. But there is a line that I draw for myself and -- and that's it. And I asked for an apology. I asked for a retraction. They denied it."

While Cruise would not answer whether Suri practiced Scientology since his divorce from Holmes, he said his daughter was not currently practicing the religion, according to the court documents.

According to the suit obtained by ABCNews.com, Cruise's lawyer sent the publishers of Life & Style a letter on July 18, 2012, objecting to its July 30 cover headline "Suri in Tears, Abandoned by Her Dad" and story entitled "Suri's Emotional Struggle." In the letter, the lawyer said that the actor had spoken to Suri regularly while he was shooting a film and had been with her the day before the issue was published.

CLICK HERE to Read the Lawsuit

A story headlined "Suri's Emotional Struggle" was printed in Life & Style's July 30 issue.

In addition to the July report, the lawsuit references an Oct. 1, 2012, issue of In Touch, the cover of which showed a photograph of Suri with the headline "Abandoned By Daddy."

Cruise said that he saw his daughter a total number of 10 days between June and Thanksgiving of 2012.

Cruise writes in his court filings that he was working overseas on two films at the time, but says that he never cut Suri out of his life, "whether physically, emotionally, financially or otherwise."

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Tom Cruise's former Scientology auditor speaks about Cruise/Kidman divorce

By Anna Schecter

Rock Center

Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise's settlement is now final and neither of them has publicly addressed reports that the Church of Scientology-and the future role of Scientology in their daughter Suri’s life-was a cause of the split.

One former Church of Scientology official is speaking out about what he said he witnessed at the time of Cruise’s 2001 divorce from actress Nicole Kidman.

Marty Rathbun, who worked at the church for 27 years before leaving in 2004, said that he believes church officials used Scientology doctrine to turn Kidman’s children against her.

“It was more than implied….[Kidman] was somebody that they shouldn't open up with, they shouldn't communicate with, and they shouldn't spend much time with,” said Rathbun in an interview airing Thursday, July 17 at 10pm/9c on NBC's Rock Center with Brian Williams.

Rathbun said he spent countless hours working with Cruise at the church’s celebrity center in California starting in late 2001.  He said he was conducting counseling sessions with Cruise that the church calls "auditing.”

“[Cruise] and I were intensively at it, you know, auditing several hours a day over several months,” he said.

When Cruise’s children were with their father at the church, they were often in the hands of the Church of Scientology staff, according to Rathbun.

“And they were being indoctrinated, and they were reporting to Tom on how that was going in my presence,” Rathbun said.

Rathbun claims church officials suggested to Cruise and Kidman’s children, then six and nine years old, that their mother was a “suppressive person,” which the church’s website, Scientology.org , defines as “a person who seeks to suppress other people in their vicinity.”

“A Suppressive Person will goof up or vilify any effort to help anybody and particularly knife with violence anything calculated to make human beings more powerful or more intelligent. The "suppressive person" is also known as the " anti-social personality." Within this category one finds Napoleon, Hitler, the unrepentant killer and the drug lord,” according to the official Church of Scientology's website, Scientology.org .

Rathbun said the Church of Scientology closely monitors the communication of high profile members and orders members to sever ties with suppressive people, particularly those who are critical of the church.

“That person could be your son, it could be your daughter, it could be your father, it could be your mother.  It doesn't matter,” Rathbun said.

Rathbun said these policies came into play with regards to Kidman’s children, Conner and Isabella.  “They were being steered toward and indoctrinated toward coming to the conclusion that Nicole was a suppressive person,” he said.

The Church of Scientology has denied that any such conversations with Kidman’s children took place. It has said that it has no policy that requires members to sever ties with relatives who do not believe in the religion. On the church's website, Scientology.org , it says that, "A Scientologist can have trouble making spiritual progress in his auditing or training if he is connected to someone who is suppressive...[and] as a last resort, when all attempts to handle have failed, one 'disconnects' from or stops communicating with the person."

The church declined to comment on the divorce of Cruise and Holmes, saying it would be “inappropriate.”

Kidman’s publicist did not respond to requests for comment on this story.  A representative for Cruise told Rock Center that Rathbun is not a reliable source.

"He is a bitter ex-Scientologist who spends most of his time attacking Scientology and using Tom Cruise's name to get attention for his bigoted diatribe. If he "audited" Mr. Cruise, he is violating the privilege of that position by discussing it," said Bert Fields, Cruise's representative.

Of the Church of Scientology's role in influencing Kidman and Cruise's children, Fields said, "It is absolutely false that Mr. Cruise, or anyone else to his knowledge, did or said anything to lessen Connor and Bella's communication or relationship with their mother.  On the contrary, Mr. Cruise did all he could to encourage that relationship."

In a letter to NBC News, Gary Soter, an attorney for the Church of Scientology, wrote that Rathbun is an unreliable source and a liar.  Soter described Rathbun as “a defrocked ex-communicated apostate.”

Soter wrote that Rathbun is a self-promoter who is “shamelessly” exploiting a tragic personal matter to forward his own anti-Scientology agenda and to profit from it.

Scientology’s online publication FreedomMag.org contains numerous allegations against Rathbun, including charges of violent and psychotic behavior.

Rathbun admits to violent behavior against other members of the church while still a member himself, but says it was part of the culture within the church, which the church denies.  

One of the posts on FreedomMag.org asserts that church officials ultimately fired Rathbun from the church for bad behavior and had to “clean up his mess.”

When asked about the allegations against him, Rathbun replied, “Then why was I assigned by the Chairman of the Board to audit Tom Cruise during the last four years of my involvement at the Church of Scientology?”

Karen Russo contributed to this report.

Editor's Note: Kate Snow's full report airs Thursday, July 12 at 10pm/9c on NBC's Rock Center with Brian Williams.

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Inside Tom Cruise’s Relationship With The Woman Scientology Auditioned To Be His Wife Before Katie Holmes

She went through months of tests..

By Isaac Serna-Diez — Written on Jul 16, 2022

Before Tom Cruise married Katie Holmes, another woman was lined up to be with the Church of Scientology’s favorite member.

Holmes and Cruise's relationship — and divorce — has long been an insight into the inner workings of the controversial church. Holmes was reportedly selected by the church to marry Cruise after leaders determined he needed to be part of a Hollywood power couple.  

After his relationships with Nicole Kidman, and his last girlfriend, Penélope Cruz, had failed because of disagreements in Scientology beliefs — Cruise was in need of a partner who would help promote Scientology. Holmes, for a time, became this perfect match.

But she wasn't the first choice.

Scientology initially matched Tom Cruise with Nazanin Boniadi.

Boniadi was “a gorgeous, petite, Iranian-born woman in her mid-20s who had been raised in London and whose mother was also a Scientologist,” according to sources, via Vanity Fair .

Before she became the established activist and actress that she is today, she was summoned by an important church official to the Celebrity Centre International — a Scientology building devoted to turning “average” people into celebrities.

RELATED:  Why Tom Cruise ‘Chooses Not To See’ His Daughter 10 Years After Their Last Sighting Together

There, she met Greg Wilhere, a high-ranking Scientology official, who told her that she would be part of a discreet mission that would take her to meet dignitaries worldwide.

What she didn’t know, was that this would be the start of a months-long process to vet her into the perfect woman for Cruise.

The first month “entailed her getting audited every day and telling Wilhere her innermost secrets, including every detail of her sex life.”

They allegedly told her that the red highlights in her hair had to go, the braces that she only had to wear for six more months, and the Iranian man that she had been dating and was ready to be engaged to.

According to several people who had heard her story from her, Scientologists showed her confidential information from her boyfriend’s auditing files which led to her breaking the relationship off .

“She was crushed,” one of her confidants told Vanity Fair. “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.”

She was told to write 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 that essay was sent off and approved, she received a confidentiality agreement and was told that if she left or “messed up” then she would be declared a “Suppressive Person” in the name of Scientology and would be shunned by everyone in the organization, including her mother, who was also a believer.

Wilhere told her to get a good night’s sleep as her mission would start tomorrow.

He took her to Scientology’s New York center, where she would meet the man she would be arranged to marry.

“This is Mr. Cruise. We can’t let him down,” Wilhere told Boniadi.

For several months after, Boniadi and Cruise were inseparable, and Boniadi had entered forced isolation due to the confidentiality agreement she had signed.

She had been told what to do, how to behave, and was told to do whatever Cruise had wanted.

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She was to be the perfect girlfriend for Cruise, but everything changed when the leader of Scientology, David Miscavige, and his wife Shelly, came by their house in Telluride.

Boniadi was told to entertain the Miscaviges as she had come home early due to a snowmobile accident and was injured.

During the encounter, she had trouble keeping up with David’s rapid-fire English speaking and had reportedly asked “Excuse me?” several times.

In Scientology, the ability to have your communication land is crucial, so she had made a grave mistake.

“Miscavige took that as an insult,” says a confidant of the woman’s, which led to Cruise being furious with her and resulted in their eventual downfall.

Boniadi was forced to “atone” for her transgression and “confess” her crimes to the church, and while she still lived with Cruise, the distance between them never stopped growing.

“During the third week of January, Boniadi was asked to pack a bag and move into the Celebrity Centre,” Vanity Fair reported.

When she had asked why, the source revealed that Tommy Davis had told her “He wants someone who has her own power—like Nicole.”

The search for Cruise’s new wife began, and Boniadi was quickly and efficiently done away with without even being told she had been broken up with by Cruise.

“Tom never broke up with her,” Marc Headley, a known Scientologist whistleblower told Vanity Fair. “He never spoke to her.”

According to Headley, the auditioning tapes for Cruise’s future wife never stopped even while he and Boniadi were together.

“O.K., boom, next one. O.K., boom, next one,” he said. “She gets kicked to the curb. And a few months later he’s madly in love with Katie and jumping on couches.”

Shortly after the whole ordeal, Boniadi left the church and Cruise married Holmes in 2006.

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Isaac Serna-Diez is an Assistant Editor who focuses on entertainment and news, social justice, and politics. Since graduating from Rutgers University, he spends most of his free time gaming or playing a fictional sport. Keep up with his rants about current events  on his Twitter .

Did Tom Cruise's First Wife Mimi Rogers Convince Him To Become A Scientologist?

• Tom Cruise's ties to the Church of Scientology began after he married his first wife, Mimi Rogers.
• Mimi Rogers played a significant role in introducing Cruise to Scientology.
• Reports suggest that Scientology played a role in the dissolution of Cruise and Rogers' marriage.

With over half of the films in his repertoire grossing over $100 million at the box office, Tom Cruise 's bona fides as a box office heavyweight are unquestionable. However, despite earning him tremendous acclaim, Cruise's life in the spotlight hasn't been completely void of controversy; the most contentious being his deep ties to the enigmatic and, some might say, bizarre world of Scientology .

But before he joined the church, Cruise was a devoted follower of Roman Catholicism, all of which changed almost as soon as he married his first wife, Bosch star Mimi Rogers. So, did Rogers introduce the Mission: Impossible star to the controversial religion?

Did Mimi Rogers Convince Tom Cruise To Join The Church Of Scientology?

Tom Cruise's ties to the Church of Scientology have been a topic of widespread controversy and fascination for so long, it’s perfectly understandable to assume he’s always been a card-carrying Scientologist.

But before he got so tangled up with the controversial religion, Cruise’s religion of choice was Roman Catholicism. Everything changed when the Top Gun star met and married his first wife, Mimi Rogers, who’d been raised by devout Scientologist Philip C. Spickler.

“My father is Jewish and my mother’s Episcopalian, and in the early ‘50s--before I was even born--my father became involved with Scientology,” she disclosed to the Los Angeles Times in a 1991 interview . “So, it’s not like I ever ‘converted’ to Scientology, rather, that philosophy was simply part of my upbringing.”

According to 'Inside Scientology: The Story of America's Most Secretive Religion,' a book written by journalist Janet Reitman, Rogers had risen to the rank of 'auditor' in the Church before she met Cruise and played a significant role in introducing the Mission: Impossible star to the religion.

RELATED: Kevin James Stayed By Leah Remini's Side During The Hard Times, Including The Moment She Left Scientology

By the time their marriage unraveled in 1990, Cruise had become one of the Church's most outspoken advocates and was even crediting its practices with much of his success in Hollywood.

“[Scientology’s} helped tremendously. I would not have had the success that I've had without it,” he told The Guardian in 2004. “There are things that I can apply to my life that have helped me grow as an artist, in ways that I wanted to and in ways that were beyond my wildest dreams.”

Did The Church Of Scientology Play A Role In Mimi Rogers And Tom Cruise’s Split?

Just three years into their marriage, Tom Cruise and Mimi Rogers decided to go their separate ways. Cruise would later open up about the circumstances of the divorce in an interview with Talk magazine.

“I was dissatisfied, wanting something more,” he said. “It was just two people who weren't meant to work and it wasn't what I wanted for my life. I think you just go on different paths. But it wasn't Mimi's fault … it's just the way it is."

However, speaking to Playboy in 1993, Rogers had a different view of why their marriage unraveled so quickly.

"Tom was seriously thinking of becoming a monk. At least for that period of time, it looked as though marriage wouldn't fit into his overall spiritual need. And he thought he had to be celibate to maintain the purity of his instrument,” she said, adding, “My instrument needed tuning."

The exact circumstances of the divorce became even more difficult to decipher when reports emerged that Cruise had become infatuated with his Days of Thunder co-star, Nicole Kidman, while still married to Rogers.

“Instant lust, that’s what I felt,” he told Vanity Fair of his first encounter with Kidman in 1995 . “I thought she was amazingly sexy and stunning... I knew she was it for me. I absolutely knew—I just knew it. I thought, This is the person to be able to share all of who I am with, and her with me. There was a freshness to life, and a mutual soul I was looking for. I just knew I couldn’t live without her.”

According to 'A Billion Years: My Escape From a Life in the Highest Ranks of Scientology,' a memoir written by former Scientology executive Mike Rinder, Cruise's ties with Scientology came in handy when he allegedly started contemplating leaving Rogers for Kidman.

According to Rinder, Scientology head David Miscavige saw the situation as "an opportunity to demonstrate his ability to make Tom's wishes come true" and “assigned” his trusted lieutenant Greg Wilhere "to get Mimi to agree to a divorce so Tom could marry Nicole."

RELATED: Russell Brand Called Out Tom Cruise During This Interview After He Was Rejected From Scientology

What’s more, according to Andrew Morton's 'Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography,' a rift had developed between Scientology executives and Rogers' father, who had left the religion in the '80s, which further fueled the church's determination to fulfill Cruise's desires.

"The Scientology leadership felt such hostility toward Mimi's father that Mimi was stained by association, 'They no longer wanted her on the team,' says a former Scientologist who was involved in the charade. 'The impetus was to help Tom Cruise, and within twenty-four hours they had agreed to split up,'" the book reads.

Is Tom Cruise’s First Wife Mimi Rogers Still A Member Of Scientology?

While she's notoriously tight-lipped about her split from Scientology in interviews, Mimi Rogers doesn't seem to be an active member of the Church of Scientology.

The exact moment when the Bosch star broke ties with the church remains shrouded in mystery, but it's clear that her departure didn't occur in the immediate aftermath of her divorce from Tom Cruise.

Despite widespread reports that the church had played an integral role in her split from the Mission: Impossible star, Rogers continued to give the church glowing reviews long after their divorce had been finalized.

“I think it was an excellent system of belief to grow up with because Scientology offers an extremely pragmatic method for taking spiritual concerns and breaking them down into everyday applications,” she shared with the Los Angeles Times in 1991, more than a year after her split from Tom Cruise.

RELATED: Tom Cruise Feels David And Victoria Beckham Took Advantage Of Him After Refusing To Convert To Scientology

“Scientology is controversial because it doesn’t deal with traditional concepts of God,” she added, “and people are always threatened by anything that veers away from the accepted norm. However, I’ve never been disenchanted with Scientology because the basic philosophical tenets I grew up with have proven to be sound.”

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How Tom Cruise Got Us to Forget About His Scientology Ties

By Jon Blistein

Jon Blistein

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

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

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It’s easy to let one’s imagination run wild with known unknowns (just ask Donald Rumsfeld — or don’t, actually); but the thing is, there’s already a lot we do know about Tom Cruise and Scientology. It’s not some nasty secret stashed away. It barely qualifies as dirty laundry at this point. We’ve had years of tell-alls, exposés, memoirs, documentaries, lawsuits, even one unforgettable episode of South Park . At the most recent Oscars and Golden Globes, where Top Gun: Maverick was fêted with multiple nominations (and even won an Academy Award for Best Sound), hosts Jimmy Kimmel and Jerrod Carmichael both joked about it . They weren’t even subtle or winking, like the kind of jokes 30 Rock made about Bill Cosby and Harvey Weinstein years before the full extent of their alleged transgressions were revealed. Carmichael flat-out said the three Golden Globes Cruise returned in protest of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association should be exchanged for Shelly Miscavige — David’s wife, who hasn’t been seen in public since 2007.

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

The first half of the 2010s saw more bad press with the release of Wright’s book and Gibney’s doc, as well as the high-profile defection of Leah Remini . Cruise even endured some self-inflicted wounds after filing a defamation suit against the tabloid Life & Style , which had run a story claiming Cruise had abandoned his daughter, Suri, with ex-wife Katie Holmes. In a 2013 deposition , he was forced to admit that Scientology had played a role in his divorce from Holmes, and that Holmes told him she wanted to protect their daughter from the Church. (The lawsuit ultimately settled out of court.) 

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

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

It certainly helped, too, that whenever Cruise went out to promote one of his new movies, he was never asked about any of that. Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation came out just a few months after Gibney’s Going Clear in 2015, and there’s nothing in the press cycle to suggest the doc was ever broached with Cruise on record. (One reporter got a very generic comment from Cruise the following year at the London premiere of Jack Reacher: Never Go Back , the actor calling Scientology a “beautiful religion” and “something that has helped me incredibly in my life.”) Instead, in these heavily moderated interviews and red carpet chats, he mostly talked about The Movies — his current movie, his next movie, his old movies, other people’s movies, and, maybe his favorite topic of all, the process of making movies.

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

But without the pandemic, Cruise’s embrace of The Movies as his public-facing religion may not have reached such a full expression. What he says about The Movies hasn’t really changed that much, but now it’s shot through with the aura of the savior. With that irrepressible conviction and charisma, he has that preacher’s ability to turn repeated platitudes into mantras or prayers. (Seriously, his reliance on the bit about how, ever since he was four he wanted nothing more than to make movies and travel the world , has arguably surpassed Lady Gaga/ 100-people-in-a-room levels of ridiculousness — and yet it’s still kinda charming). And what other way is there to look at Cruise’s stunt work than the fearless devotions of a man willing to martyr himself for the thing he loves?

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

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

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What to Know About Shelly Miscavige, the Wife of Scientology Leader David Miscavige

Shelly Miscavige, the wife of Scientology leader David Miscavige, hasn’t been seen publicly since 2007

Claudio and Renata Lugli 

Editor’s note: This article has been updated and reflects a statement provided to PEOPLE by the Church of Scientology and other reporting.

Shelly Miscavige has sparked intrigue for years.

She married David Miscavige in 1982 and they rose together in the Church of Scientology as members of an elite group called the Commodore’s Messenger Organization. She was rumored to have played a large role in the church alongside David until 2006.

Six years after Shelly's last public appearance, actress Leah Remini left the church in 2013 and filed a Missing Persons Report with the Los Angeles Police Department. However, after an investigation, the LAPD announced they had found her to be "alive and safe," and were not pursuing the case.

Nonetheless, her whereabouts have continued to be the subject of controversy and Remini has continued to question what happened to the woman she has described as her former friend.

So where is Shelly Miscavige? Here’s what to know.

She was last seen publicly in 2007

The last time Shelly was seen in public was at her father’s funeral in 2007. Pictures of her attending the function surfaced online. However, she has not been photographed since.

The church denied that she had disappeared and said she was fine and was merely a private person. “ She is not a public figure and we ask that her privacy be respected,” a Scientology spokeswoman said in 2013.

Marc Headley, a former Scientologist who has since spoken critically of the church, told Vanity Fair in 2014 that Shelly was once a top aide for the religious group but was stripped of her duties and carefully watched by a handler during her father’s service. When another church member followed Shelly into the bathroom and asked her for help, Headley alleged Shelly said, “Listen to me, I f----- up, and I’m not going to be able to help you.”

The Church of Scientology, in a statement to PEOPLE, called Headley a "fully discredited source" whose past legal claims against the Church were dismissed by a federal district court judge in 2010.

Leah Remini started raising questions about Shelly in 2006

While attending Scientology member Tom Cruise ’s wedding to Katie Holmes in 2006, Remini says she noticed Shelly wasn’t present — which the actress found odd considering her husband David was the best man.

When Remini raised the question to wedding attendees, the guests didn’t respond, she told PEOPLE in 2015. “I kept asking throughout the night, ‘ Does anybody know where Shelly is ?’ ” she said.

Remini turned to top church official Tommy Davis next, who, she claims, replied: “‘I don’t think you have the f------ rank, quite honestly, to ask where Shelly is.’ It was a little bit shocking to hear that answer. That sort of sparked something in me.”

Davis denied saying that through his attorney, who told PEOPLE, “This claim is an invention,” adding that Davis and his wife, Jessica, a Scientology staffer who was also at the wedding, “recall observing Ms. Remini’s repeated rude behavior which became so blatant it was a topic of dismayed discussion among other guests, including friends of Ms. Remini.”

Remini claimed that as a consequence of her questions, she was subsequently sent to a church facility in Clearwater, Florida, where she underwent a “Sec Check, Truth Rundown and Reprogramming," which she alleges involved "intensive and exhaustive forms of interrogation” that could last up to 12 hours a day. 

Leah Remini filed a missing persons report in 2013

Just weeks after Remini left the church in 2013, she filed a missing person report with the LAPD.

The LAPD stated that they met with Shelly and concluded “there was not sufficient grounds” to go through with the investigation. Remini told PEOPLE the police told her Shelly “did not want to talk.” 

On November 11, 2022, the LAPD issued a statement repeating that conclusion, saying that Missing Persons Unit detectives in 2014 "went to Shelly Miscavige's location and personally made contact with her and her attorney. Detectives found her to be alive and safe, and subsequently closed the missing persons investigation."

Remini, however, has said police refused to give her more information when she followed up. “When I asked the officers, ‘Did you see her with your own eyes? Is she alive and safe?’ their response was, ‘We cannot give you that information, ma’am,' ” Remini said. “I still don’t have an answer.”

The Church of Scientology then released its own statement, blasting Remini as a “bitter ex-Scientologist" and writing, “Ms. Remini also continues her bizarre efforts to harass the Church of Scientology’s leader and his wife, whom Ms. Remini has been obsessed with and has stalked for years.” In a statement to PEOPLE this week, the Church accused Remini of engaging in a "publicity stunt motivated by hate and money."

The question of what happened to Shelly is still raised in Hollywood

During the 2023 Golden Globes, host Jerrod Carmichael took a shot at the Church of Scientology when introducing speakers Jay Ellis and Glen Powell, who starred alongside Cruise in Top Gun: Maverick .

Carmichael walked onto the stage with three Golden Globes in his hands and said, “Backstage I found these three Golden Globes Awards that Tom Cruise returned,” referring to when the actor gave back his statues in 2021 in protest of the lack of diversity within the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, which is the voting body for the awards.

Carmichael continued, “I'm just a host briefly or whatever, but I have a pitch. Maybe we take these three things and exchange them for the safe return of Shelly Miscavige."

The joke came a couple of months after Remini raised the question of Shelly's whereabouts in light of an investigation about Cory Palka, captain of the Hollywood division of the LAPD where she filed her report.

The LAPD responded with a statement that said, “The Missing Persons Unit handles adult missing cases throughout the City of Los Angeles and work out of LAPD’s Detective Bureau. This case was not investigated by Hollywood Division personnel and had no involvement by retired LAPD Commander Cory Palka.”

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Jerrod Carmichael Mocks Tom Cruise for Returning Golden Globe Trophies: ‘Let’s Exchange Them’ for Shelly Miscavige’s Return

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Jerrod Carmichael roasted Tom Cruise during the Golden Globes , tackling the actor’s decision in 2021 to return his three Golden Globe awards in protest of the Hollywood Foreign Press Association. Carmichael was introducing presenters Glen Powell and Jay Ellis, Cruise’s “Top Gun: Maverick” co-stars, when he appeared on stage with three trophies in his hands.

“Hey, guys backstage I found these,” Carmichael said. “[It’s the] three Golden Globe awards that Tom Cruise returned. I’m just a host briefly, or whatever, but I have a pitch I think. Maybe we take these three things and exchange them for the safe return of Shelly Miscavige.”

Cruise announced in May 2021 that he was returning his three Golden Globes. At the time, NBC had just canceled the Golden Globes broadcast amid a string of HFPA controversies, including the revelation that the organization had no Black members at the time.

Cruise’s three Golden Globe wins came for “Jerry Maguire” (actor in a comedy or musical), “Magnolia” (supporting actor), and “Born on the Fourth of July” (actor in a drama). The actor boasts four additional Golden Globe nominations for “The Last Samurai” (actor in a drama), “Tropic Thunder” (supporting actor), “A Few Good Men” (actor in a drama), and “Risky Business” (actor in a comedy or musical).

Watch Carmichael’s takedown in the video below.

#GoldenGlobes host Jerrod Carmichael makes a dig at Scientology: "Backstage, I found these three Golden Globe awards that Tom Cruise returned…I think maybe we take these three things and exchange them for the safe return of Shelly Miscavige." https://t.co/m069JEKekW pic.twitter.com/fw25ng5nU2 — Variety (@Variety) January 11, 2023

Thank you Jerrod Carmichael! Where is Shelly?? #GoldenGlobes2023 #GoldenGlobes pic.twitter.com/Ns81BG7iq0 — Leah Remini (@LeahRemini) January 11, 2023

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Unveiling the Fate of Shelly Miscavige: Inner Circle Insights and the Enigmatic Disappearance Within Scientology - Where is Shelly Miscavige? #20 Blown for Good: Scientology Exposed

Could you imagine vanishing from the public eye, your life dictated by a regime so rigid that even your closest relationships are at stake? Our latest episode takes you behind the veil of Scientology with a former insider, revealing the haunting fate of Shelly Miscavige, wife of Scientology leader David Miscavige. From the depths of her influence to her sudden and perplexing disappearance, we unravel the threads of power, fear, and control that may have ensnared her. This week, we're joined by a guest whose firsthand experiences at Scientology's international headquarters lay bare the extreme practices within the organization. Delving into a world where cathode-ray tube monitors are feared as hypnotic devices and purification rundowns are the norm, we expose the lengths to which Shelly Miscavige went to enforce L. Ron Hubbard's teachings. Our conversation sheds light on the bizarre intersections of technology, influence, and the extraordinary measures taken to maintain the church's iron grip. Your heart will race as we recount tales of near escapes from Scientology's seemingly impenetrable compound and the relentless witch hunts for dissenters. The episode crescendos with the startling role Shelly Miscavige allegedly played in orchestrating the personal life of none other than Tom Cruise, further entwining the church with the allure of celebrity. Prepare for a sobering look into the dynamics that likely played a role in one woman's mysterious withdrawal from public life, as we connect the dots of this chilling narrative. Support the showBFG Store - http://blownforgood-shop.fourthwall.com/ Blown For Good on Audible - https://www.amazon.com/Blown-for-Good-Marc-Headley-audiobook/dp/B07GC6ZKGQ/ref=tmm_aud_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr= Blown For Good Website: http://blownforgood.com/ PODCAST INFO: Podcast website: https://www.buzzsprout.com/2131160/share Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/blown-for-good-behind-the-iron-curtain-of-scientology/id1671284503 Spotify: ...

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Tom Cruise broke up with Elsina Khayrova over his team’s concerns about her chatty ex-hubby: sources

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Tom Cruise split from his Russian socialite girlfriend in order to avoid issues with her outspoken oligarch ex, a source tells Page Six.

Following news that Cruise and Elsina Khayrova were dating , her ex-husband — the colorful international diamond trader, Dmitry Tsvetkov — gave a long interview to the Daily Mail detailing their marriage and warning Cruise to “keep his eyes and wallet wide open.” 

A source tells us that the article worried the very private star’s team.

“He’s filming and can’t be shooting and have her husband saying stuff every time he is mentioned in the press,” a source told us. “They just didn’t want to deal with the ex husband coming up with something nasty to say every few weeks.” 

Tsetkov — who reportedly prefers the term “tycoon” over oligarch — also somewhat unusually continuously fanned over Cruise during the interview, calling him his “favorite actor,” stating he has seen “Eyes Wide Shut” a whopping 30 times (and also loves “Rain Man” and “The Firm”), and added that he talked with a Hollywood producer pal about having Cruise play him in a movie about his life.

“I told the producer that the only actor who could play me is Tom Cruise,” quipped Tsetkov to the UK outlet. “We’re about the same height and weight and I would be honored if that could happen. I couldn’t think of anyone better to play me than Tom. I’m hoping that I’ll be able to meet him one day to discuss this project.”

Cruise has been making headlines as he currently films his eighth “Mission: Impossible” movie. The actor, 61, who known for doing his own stunts, was most recently seen sprinting through London for a scene.

The Sun reported that Cruise and Khayrova had split in late February with a source telling the outlet, “There are no hard feelings between them and, for Tom, their relationship simply ran its course.”

The wealthy Russian socialite is the daughter of a Vladamir Putin ally, Russian politician Rinat Khayrova. 

Tsetkov, who has British citizenship and was reportedly on the Kremlin’s most wanted list in 2020, claims to have survived assassination attempts .

In the Daily Mail article, he also said he spent over $12 million on clothes and approximately $2.5 million on handbags for his ex during their 11 year marriage. He also claimed he lost nearly $200 million in the divorce. 

Their  split made international headlines  as millions were in dispute, including a mansion in Surrey, England, five London apartments, a Bentley and a Ferrari, plus Cartier jewelry and artwork by Renoir and Chagall.

“Irrespective of whoever she’s with, Tom Cruise or anybody else, they should be aware that she likes the finer things in life and has expensive and luxurious tastes,” he told the publication.

But we hear that Khayrova, 36, is still hopeful she and Cruise could rekindle their romance. “She didn’t do anything wrong,” says our source. 

However, she doesn’t seem to be taking the breakup too badly. She has been Instagramming from the luxe Amara hotel in Cyprus this week.

On Thursday, she posted an image on Instagram Stories of herself saying: “A woman’s energy is reflected in her daily practice of loving, appreciating, and accepting herself, as well as recognizing her own worth,” with a heart emoji.

In another, a caption read, “Always in love,” with a heart emoji.

Khayrova and Cruise were first spotted together publicly at a party in December in London’s Grosvenor Square, and Page Six exclusively reported that they had met when a friend of Khayrova’s brought her to one of his exclusive Sunday tea parties at his Hyde Park penthouse.

“He has butlers and homemade cakes, and it’s all very British,” said our source at the time.

In June 2022, Page Six  exclusively reported  that Cruise was shopping for apartments in the UK after falling in love with London.

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