Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography (31 page)

Tom was never content to rest on his laurels as an actor and a producer, always searching for fresh talent, scripts, and challenges. At this time he was intrigued by the work of the young Spanish director Alejandro Amenábar. After a meeting in New York, he signed his latest script, a ghost story called
The Others.

While Nicole and Tom seemed to be growing apart as a couple, professionally they were more entwined. Nicole signed up for six future projects, including a Paul Verhoeven movie where she was slated to play a suffragette, linked to the Cruise/Wagner production stable. First out of the blocks, though, was
The Others.
As executive producer, Tom cast his wife as the lead in his latest project, even though Nicole, still on crutches after
Moulin Rouge,
protested about playing a religiously neurotic mother of two children who are so sensitive to light that they have to be kept indoors with all the curtains and blinds drawn. Within that enclosed dark world, the icy, high-strung mother is joined by a group of strange servants and the ghost of her dead soldier husband.

It is a creepy, disturbing film, and Nicole, still enjoying the afterglow of
Moulin Rouge,
rebelled. Her husband insisted that she set her doubts aside. It was a shrewd decision, Nicole giving one of her best, and possibly most revealing, screen performances as an obsessive and overwrought mother. As her biographer James Dickerson perceptively noted, “How odd it was that Tom would choose this story for Nicole, for, in its own way, it seemed to mirror their marriage, down to the smallest detail.” It was a sentiment Tom agreed with.

When he watched her performance as a cold, neurotic, frigid mother who is suffocating yet unkind to her children, he remarked to his circle that she was perfect for the part. It was not said with affection.

Suddenly it was over: Out of the blue Tom was gone. She faced the new year—and the rest of her life—without the man she thought loved her beyond measure. Yet the husband who had once smothered her in red roses, love notes, and adoration did not even tell her face-to-face, man to woman, that their ten-year marriage was over. Nicole learned that she had been written out of the script of Tom’s life from a go-between, his lawyer. The parting in the first weeks of 2001 was blunt, brutal, and businesslike. No mess, no fuss. Now she knew what Mimi Rogers must have felt like. As one of his first lovers, Diane Van Zoeren, had put it, “When he was done with you, he was done with you.” Tom in love—or in love with the idea of being in love—and Tom out of love were stark opposites. While Nicole was away from their home at Pacific Palisades, a moving van took away all his personal belongings, the actor hiring five cottages at a Beverly Hills hotel for himself and his entourage.

As Nicole sat in her study, twisting a white handkerchief sodden with tears and rubbing her knee, injured during the filming of
Moulin Rouge,
the telephone on her desk was a mute, reproachful reminder of what she had lost. She might have resented her life in a cocoon of caviar and control, might have pulled away from her husband, but this sudden rupture tore at her heart and her spirit. Their personal friends,
their professional colleagues, and their business acquaintances all saw which way the wind was blowing and went with the gardeners, the housekeepers, the communicators, and the personal assistants. With Tom. It was the way of the world—certainly the way of Hollywood.

She was left with only her loyal driver, Dave Garris, outside polishing her $72,000 black GMC Denali, for company. As she pondered her future, she spent hours on the phone to Sydney, talking to her parents and sister, who were furious at Tom’s abrupt treatment of her.

Inevitably, her thoughts turned to going home to Australia. In her darkest moments, her faith—her Roman Catholic faith—sustained her. She talked through her options with her mother and father. She had heard of nunneries in Australia that would admit women who had been married, and wanted to explore the idea further. At the very least she wanted to spend time in a Catholic retreat, regrounding herself, finding out who she was and where she was headed. After that, who knows? Maybe she would enroll at the University of Sydney to take the English degree she had talked about for so long.

With the dawning of 2001, it certainly seemed that her days in Hollywood were numbered. If the exodus of staff and friends was not enough of a clue, the belligerence of Tom’s lawyers expunged any doubts. They told her she would never make another movie and recommended she buy a one-way ticket back to Sydney. She knew they were projecting the anger of their client; hell had no fury like a scorned Tom Cruise. Meanwhile, the mass media screeched with stories, presumably orchestrated by Tom’s circle, that blamed her cold, selfish temperament for the split and speculated that she had had dalliances with other men.

Things got worse when the shock jock Howard Stern announced that Tom had hired the notorious private investigator Tony Pellicano, known as the “celebrities’ thug,” to investigate Nicole’s behavior. Still, Tom’s reps insisted that this was “an amicable parting.” Nursing a broken heart, an injured knee, and a shattered career, Nicole then discovered she was expecting her husband’s baby. As she looked back
over the last few months, she thought, “How has it come to this?”

Perhaps it all began in the summer of 2000, as Tom sat through a private screening of the Spanish movie
Abre los ojos,
about the relationship between Sofia, a beautiful dancer, and a rich publishing tycoon. As with Nicole ten years before, he was enticed by the screen presence of the leading lady, twenty-seven-year-old Penélope Cruz. As he watched the title credits, he was on his cell phone trying to buy the rights to remake the film in English. Later that summer, when he met the film’s director and screenwriter Alejandro Amenábar in New York, Tom said that he wanted Cruz to reprise her role for the English version, to be called
Vanilla Sky
.

While Cruz was not well known outside Spain, many men had been similarly entranced by her darting eyes, slim figure, and vivacious, teasing personality. “As a person, and on film, she invites you in, and she’s incredibly romantic and yet real,” Tom would later observe. The daughter of a Madrid hairdresser and a businessman, Penélope had been romantically linked to several Hollywood stars, including Matt Damon. When Cruise’s chosen director, his friend Cameron Crowe, went to Greece, where she was filming
Captain Corelli’s Mandolin,
it was rumored that she was having an affair with her married leading man, Nicolas Cage.

Tom had worked with Amenábar before, on
The Others,
with Nicole as the lead. When filming for
The Others
began in Madrid in August 2000, Tom, as executive producer, was with his wife and children. Indeed, the movie was the first of a six-film deal between Nicole and Cruise/Wagner Productions—which suggested that, in spite of her distance and dissatisfaction, she and Tom planned to stay together at least professionally. Meanwhile, as Nicole was playing a wife left by her soldier husband in
The Others,
Tom departed the set in November for New York to take the lead in
Vanilla Sky
. As director Cameron Crowe later pointed out, the chemistry between Tom and Penélope was crucial if they were going to sustain the intense love story that lies at the
heart of the film. “Penélope had to appear to fall truly in love. And Tom’s character falls in love with her. You watch them going through that hideous great, awful, intoxicating moment. Without it we couldn’t have a movie. The first time we screened the movie—just in-house—it was the kind of situation where at the end you get a reaction of ‘Wow! They really were in love.’ ” It didn’t take long for fiction to become fact.

While Tom was filming in New York, Nicole completed work on
The Others
and returned to the U.S. from Spain just before Christmas. In spite of their hectic filming schedules, the couple was together to celebrate Paula Wagner’s fifty-fourth birthday in New York on December 20. Guests reported that as Tom moved from table to table, laughing with friends and signing menus, a silent and sullen Nicole sat on her own, making little effort to speak to other revelers.

From this date forth, Tom’s story and the actual events differ markedly. In his court filing, Tom claimed that the couple separated in December 2000, presumably while Nicole was in Spain finishing filming. His camp made it clear that they went their separate ways on December 21, the day after Paula Wagner’s birthday party and the day before their daughter Bella’s seventh birthday. (It was thought, wrongly, that his choice of separation dates was influenced by California law, where a marriage lasting ten years or more is classified as a “lengthy” union. While a “lengthy” marriage ruling can affect the size of alimony payments, it does not affect the division of assets. California is one of nine “community property” states where from day one of the marriage all assets are split equally. With houses around the world, private jets, and a reputed $450 million fortune to be split fifty-fifty, alimony was never going to be an issue for Tom and Nicole.)

On the day that Tom says they separated, they flew home to Hollywood. A couple of days later, on Christmas Eve, they hosted an intimate party at their Pacific Palisades home to celebrate their tenth wedding anniversary. By the accounts of those present, both Tom and Nicole, given their private heartache, put on Oscar-worthy performances, dancing to their favorite songs and gazing lovingly into each other’s
eyes. They were even said to have renewed their wedding vows during the evening.

While this may be open to question, what is incontestable is that the Cruise entourage then decamped to Las Vegas for the Christmas holidays. Tom even arranged for the Big Shot ride at the Stratosphere Hotel to stay open late so that Nicole and the others could enjoy the thrilling experience. Just to confuse matters further, at the time Tom said that they had separated, Nicole later claimed that they’d had sex and she’d conceived a child. Finally, if Tom had paid a lawyer to tell her their marriage was over in December, why was he in her company at all during Christmas? For a couple on the eve of a bitter divorce fight, this was an odd way of drawing up the battle lines.

As soon as the family returned from Las Vegas, Tom was back on the set of
Vanilla Sky,
now filming in Hollywood. It did not take long for the media to get wind of the couple’s troubles, especially as Tom had now moved into a hotel. Their behavior at the Golden Globes ceremony in Hollywood on January 21 gave the gossip further credence. Both Tom and Nicole presented awards at the ceremony, but they arrived in separate cars, Nicole escorted by her father, Antony, and sat at separate tables.

With the
National Enquirer
about to break the story, publicist Pat Kingsley issued a statement on February 5 confirming that the marriage was over. She said that the split was due to “the difficulties inherent in divergent careers which constantly keep them apart,” emphasizing that there was absolutely no third party involved and that Scientology had not influenced Tom’s decision. For once, even the credulous entertainment media was skeptical, pointing out how both Tom and Nicole had often boasted that they had never spent more than two weeks apart throughout their ten-year marriage. The split generated a frenzy of reports linking Nicole to her
Moulin Rouge
costar Ewan McGregor, actor George Clooney, her former boyfriend Marcus Graham,
Blue Room
beau Iain Glen, and others. As for Tom’s on-screen love interest, Penélope Cruz denied having an affair.

Even though there were two children involved this time, Tom refused to consider any kind of marriage guidance or counseling—not even the Scientology counseling he and Mimi Rogers had gone through at the end of their brief marriage. Two days after the media announcement, Tom filed for divorce in the L.A. Superior Court, citing “irreconcilable differences” and stating, “I do not believe professional counseling or the assistance of any mental health professional, lapse of time, or any other factor will change this breakdown.” Publicly, he remained tight-lipped about the breakdown. “Nicole knows why” was all he would say, his petulant tone more suggestive of a high-school breakup than the dignified end of a ten-year marriage.

On the set of
Vanilla Sky
he seemed relaxed and jaunty, even attending a party hosted by his friend Steven Spielberg. Behind the scenes, however, was a man who appeared to be out to control and intimidate his estranged wife and anyone else who felt tempted to step out of line. Security on the set was drastically beefed up, Tom constantly surrounded by five bodyguards. Crew members who worked in close proximity to the star had to go through a metal detector to check that they were not carrying cameras, mobile phones, or recording devices. It got to be too much for one film executive, who was angered at the sight of a female extra being made to empty her handbag. He shouted, “Tell Tom these are professional actors and are to be treated with respect. This is not the Federal Bureau of Investigation.” Tom’s publicist, Pat Kingsley, brushed aside these concerns. “Yes, he is insisting on tight security,” she said, “but only to protect the safety of himself and others.”

Meanwhile, Nicole was suffering, barely able to leave their home. She had started working on a new film,
Panic Room,
in mid-January, but dropped out within the month, ostensibly because of her knee injury. “Even though there were strains,” said Nicole’s friend, Australian director John Duigan, “the final breach was sudden and jarring.” A few days after the split was formally confirmed in early February, her mother, Janelle, and sister, Antonia, and her two children
flew to Los Angeles to comfort and support the distraught actress. She felt under siege, both by the media, who were throwing out a confetti of possible names for her lover, and by Tom’s lawyers and the news that he had hired the notorious investigator Tony Pellicano to look into her private affairs.

Not only did Tom and Nicole have an agreement not to use detectives, but she knew her husband had always despised the man and his dubious methods. It seemed that Tom’s mood was so vengeful that only the venom of Pellicano could express it. Pellicano, a friend and associate of Tom’s lawyer Bert Fields, was known as the “ultimate problem solver,” a thug who intimidated victims with an aluminum baseball bat he carried in his car trunk. “I can’t do everything by the book,” Pellicano once boasted. “I bend the law to death in gaining information.” It was not until 2002 that it became clear how far he would go to bend the law.