Cruise has an MI5 planned for the future but he has a slew of other action films already in the pipeline including Oblivion due next year. While it is his signature franchise, MI5 still needs an able hand like Brad Bird's to guide it since it was Bird who deserves most of the credit for making MI4 a success. The MI films are spectacle-driven, consisting of a series of elaborate action set pieces loosely tied together by a very thin plot. The audience doesn't get deeply invested in Ethan Hunt from film to film since there is little depth or continuity to his story. Unlike other movies of its type which have a principal goal that propels the story forward -- Bourne was seeking to recover his memory, Craig's Bond is searching for Vesper's killers, and Salt is hunting KA agents -- MI is merely episodic. That makes each installment heavily dependent on ever more daring stunts and spectacular explosions to draw the crowds.
Cruise's current position may not be as dire as Mel Gibson's following his misogynist and anti-Semitic outbursts, but it's getting close. Even trade publications are joining in the fun and conducting polls on who he should date next with a lot of innuendo thrown in that previously never made it to mainstream sites.
It took Cruise a few years to climb back from couch-gate but this drop is more personal and precipitous which may make the climb back that much more difficult. Holmes' divorce filing has dredged up all the past criticisms against him but this time given added credence because of the implications of her actions. As his wife for 5 years, she must know very well what she was going up against and the stealth and speed that she evidently felt she needed to employ suggested fear of something sinister from his camp. She is now widely seen as a heroine who escaped captivity and out-smarted a powerful foe. Even though Cruise avoided a drawn-out court battle the damage has been done and it would be interesting to see how this impacts his career. It is notable that the studios felt compelled to issue a statement supporting him right after news of the divorce broke when they didn't feel the same need to support Johnny Depp.
In addition to his PR problems, Cruise must also contend with fan fatigue as he churns out action film after action film.
A Calculated Breakup
By JACOB BERNSTEIN
Published: July 13, 2012
THERE she was in her little blue dresses and her nifty sunglasses, the newly single mom holding her adorable 6-year-old daughter as she raced around New York City. One minute, she was carrying an ice cream cone for the child. The next, they were feeding animals at the Central Park Zoo.
Stars, we are told, are just like us. But few have done quite as well as Katie Holmes
at winning over the sympathies of a tabloid-buying public, of
convincing people that she really is their type. People magazine
practically described her as a feminist icon, far from the “passive,
demure” plaything she had once supposedly been.
About two weeks ago, Ms. Holmes, 33, announced her split from Tom Cruise,
50, a breakup that reportedly threw the famed action star for a loop.
And she quickly followed that news by taking the unusual path of being
photographed all over the city, showing up for a scheduled shoot for
“Project Runway” and appearing on the cover of the August issue of Elle
in what now seems to have been a cannily timed interview.
It’s far from the “please respect my privacy” stance that most
celebrities take when they announce a divorce. (Even the ubiquitous Kim Kardashian laid low after splitting from Kris Humphries.)
It all seemed a bit too calculated. Having made millions of dollars as
an actress, first as the star of the WB drama “Dawson’s Creek” and then
as Christian Bale’s
love interest in the Batman franchise, did Ms. Holmes really need to
run out for milk on a recent day when dozens of paparazzi were outside
her door?
Perhaps not, but few are holding it against her, if conversations with
magazine editors, fashionistas and Hollywood publicists are to be
believed.
As Janice Min, the editorial director of The Hollywood Reporter, put it:
“The whole narrative on Katie Holmes was ‘She’s been brainwashed and
lobotomized. She’s a zombie for Scientology.’ That’s what made this whole saga breathtaking. Forget the princess in ‘Brave.’ This is the heroine of the moment.”
Liz Rosenberg, the publicist for many celebrities who have been through
nasty breakups and divorces, among them Madonna and Cher, concurred.
“People see her as a battered wife who got out,” she said. “I don’t know
why. I don’t have the hatred for Tom Cruise other people have, but
whatever went on between them, she came out smelling like a rose.”
Indeed. Whatever Ms. Holmes’s strategy was, it seems to have worked. The
couple reached a settlement (the terms have not been disclosed, but
have reportedly left the former Mrs. Cruise well off, as well as with
primary custody of Suri) in near-record time, suggesting that the
sweet-looking actress is very savvy.
Even the fashion crowd, which previously grumbled that Ms. Holmes’s
clothing choices were a bit of a bore, is now applauding her style
sense.
“I’m fascinated by what she’s been wearing,” said Charlotte Cowles, an
editor at New York Magazine’s fashion blog, the Cut. “It’s simple
relatable clothing. She’s playing the mom role she wants to portray
herself as: a loving parent and as a normal person, America’s
sweetheart. It’s a clichéd term, but Tom Cruise is a wild card, and she
knows she needs to play the opposite. She’s been very smart.”
Nor does it hurt that many of the clothes Ms. Holmes has been wearing
are ones she designed for her fashion label, Holmes & Yang (which
she started with the stylist Jeanne Yang). Hence the paparazzi shots of
her have become something akin to a stealth ad campaign, Ms. Holmes’s
very own product-placement extravaganza.
“The way she’s getting photographed today, she’s in a position to get
more exposure than ever before,” said Robert Burke, a former Bergdorf
Goodman executive and prominent consultant to numerous fashion brands.
“She’s not waiting for fashion editors and stylists to come and pull her
clothes.”
Still, Mr. Burke was mostly amazed at the larger story, and how deftly Ms. Holmes had executed an image overhaul.
“More than anything, she looks like a strong individual, which is probably the most appealing factor,” he said.
So again: how exactly did this happen?
Some Hollywood intimates thought they were witnessing the handiwork of
the actress’s father, Martin Holmes, a lawyer in Ohio who helped guide
his daughter’s career before she met Mr. Cruise. He is said to have been
suspicious of her famous husband for some time.
Others viewed the split as part of the natural evolution of a woman who
had been on a long journey toward finding herself.
In that interview with Elle (wearing Holmes & Yang, naturally),
which was conducted well before the public split, Ms. Holmes spoke in a
way that suggested a growing schism with Mr. Cruise.
“I’m starting to come into my own,” she said. “It’s like a new phase.”
But wherever her newfound sense of independence comes from, it’s clear
that Ms. Holmes is in a very different mental place from the one she was
in when she first met Mr. Cruise in 2005, when she was an up-and-coming
young actress and he was a global star with two marriages behind him,
including a 10-year union with Nicole Kidman.
Shortly after the couple announced their engagement, Ms. Holmes was the
subject of a withering profile in W Magazine, where the writer Rob
Haskell suggested that the marriage was arranged, described Ms. Holmes’s
eyes as being focused on “nothing in particular” and used every
effusive comment she made about Mr. Cruise against her.
“The lady doth protest not nearly enough,” Mr. Haskell wrote.
In almost no time, the influence of Mr. Cruise on his future bride’s
life became the subject of endless tabloid speculation, which only grew
more intense after she announced her involvement with the Church of
Scientology, fired her agent, switched publicity teams and became
pregnant with the couple’s daughter.
In public, Ms. Holmes pretended not to let the scrutiny get her down. But she was clearly aware of it.
On the set of the 2008 film “Mad Money,” a caper about three women who commit a robbery, the director, Callie Khouri,
recalled a day when a costume staff member was with Ms. Holmes in her
trailer. The wardrobe person wanted Ms. Holmes to change into her
on-camera outfit and suggested taking her jewelry off there and leaving
it behind.
Ms. Holmes flinched.
“She said, ‘If someone gets a picture of me without my ring, I will not
stop hearing about it for weeks,’ ” Ms. Khouri said. “And I thought ‘Oh,
my God.’ Imagine having to be that conscious of all that stuff.”
Still, Ms. Khouri said that she never quite bought the idea that Ms.
Holmes was a damsel in distress, captive in a marriage she did not want
to be in.
“She was not stupid, in my experience,” Ms. Khouri said. “Quite the
opposite. When I was working with her, she seemed very happy. If things
changed, the fact that she was able to do this without making it a big
ugly public thing is not unlike what I would expect. She’s a dignified
girl and she’s been in show business since she was a little kid. She’s
not a neophyte.”
Why leaving Tom Cruise makes Katie Holmes a feminist hero
Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes at the 'Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol' premiere in NYC. (Getty Images)
For
all the disdain aimed at them, the popsicle-colored celebrity
tabloids—online and on newsstands—periodically throw up timely parables
that readers ignore at their peril.
I met my best-loved pop parable in 2007, a few years after Us went Weekly. Out of nowhere, it seemed, Britney Spears appeared in story after shocking story, channeling a British alter ego, rolling with two-bit grifters and shaving her head like a shrieking 19th-century madwoman. How had the high-fructose Louisiana mouseketeer tapped this particular vein of punk-gonzo performance art—so much more muscular than the entropic, wasted tantrums of Courtney Love or Charlie Sheen? The lessons lay too deep for words.
[Slideshow: TomKat in happier days]
But even then an even more powerful celebrity parable was underway; it too had Victorian coloring. It concerned Katie Holmes, that self-serious tomboy from “Dawson’s Creek,” and her peculiar liaison with Tom Cruise. From the start, the queer TomKat romance had a gross fame- and age-asymmetry that augured badly for its longevity. The squeamish-making differences between Tom and Katie augured well, however, for sinister marital intrigue.
Howling about his newfound potency on Oprah Winfey’s couch in 2005, Cruise meticulously impregnated Holmes, who was soon portrayed in the tabloids (and even in fashion magazines) as Rosemary in “Rosemary’s Baby”—a zombified vessel for Cruise’s cultish designs. Cruise, of course, is an avowed Scientologist, a soldier in that madcap confederacy for showfolk, and their dupes. Scientology has a goofy cosmology and an extremely ungoofy policy of hair-trigger litigiousness and extortion. The combination is frightful. (See Tom Cruise’s own promo.)
At the same time, Scientology’s austerity about drugs, and its emphasis on personal responsibility and religious ritual might have appealed to Holmes, a small-town Ohio girl from a Catholic family, who had just broken off her engagement to Chris Klein, a bad-boy actor with a history of addiction and DUIs. Maybe Tom Cruise, soberly preaching marriage and family, struck her the way he struck Rob Lowe in the 1980s: someone who was “open, friendly, funny and has an almost robotic, bloodless focus.” After a string of hotblooded American suitors, bloodlessness could have come to Holmes as a relief. And he was Tom Cruise.
[Slideshow: Celebrity Scientologists]
Reader, she married him. Had his baby. And instantly the light left her eyes, or so it seemed in photo after tabloid photo. Holmes was peaked, malnourished and overly chaperoned—again recalling Mia Farrow in “Rosemary’s Baby.” Conspiracy theories proliferated about Suri, and Katie, and how Scientology controlled them both. And yet Holmes also made movies, sort of, and fashion; maybe she was getting her part of the bargain. Though it was hard to imagine this normal-seeming sweetheart enjoying a Faustian bargain. I came to think she’d defied her parents, married for starstruck love and found herself just stuck.
But then Tom Cruise started getting featured on he-sucks lists, and suing about them; he looked especially warped on an ultra-mean site called Men Who Look Like Old Lesbians. Cruise’s learning disability, which he has said Scientology cured, resurfaced on various TV appearances in which he used the broad cadences of an action hero with tongue-tied palaver.
[Related: Katie Holmes' life before Tom Cruise]
Tom Cruise wasn’t Tom Cruise anymore. Like many superstar spouses—like everyone—he was getting old, addled, even jowly. That might have made Cruise more lovable if he allowed age to introduce some humanness to his pose. But instead he doubled down on wacky Scientological jargon and—recent reports of duct-tape-over-security-cams suggest—he locked down Katie Holmes even more drastically. In the gothic novel, he might have soon shot her and himself, or otherwise kept her eternally hostage. But that’s when the twist came.
Katie Holmes is not just a Catholic daughter of Ohio, a straight-A Catholic-school student who attended Columbia, and an ambitious actress and designer. She is also shrewd. And her father, Martin Holmes, is shrewder still—and a divorce lawyer.
“Marty believes there are only two sets of rules: the rules of the court and his rules, and he carries himself that way,” says a Toledo lawyer who has worked with him, according to People magazine. Martin Holmes had been skeptical of the match from the beginning, the tabloids reported; now he’s said to have “helped orchestrate his daughter's sudden split” from Tom Cruise using thriller-like tactics, including disposable phones.
Perhaps it’s Martin Holmes who foresaw that the divorce—Holmes and Cruise had a prenup, so money questions were forgone—would turn on a so-called spiritual custody dispute. “Spiritual custody” is a fascinating phrase; it refers to a child’s education and environment—the set of facts, beliefs and practices they’re modeled and taught. Holmes’s lawyers were especially strict about Katie keeping control over family’s choice of nanny and what Cruise could say to Suri about her mother’s status as a non-Scientologist. Jeffrey Shulman, a professor of law at Georgetown, told the Los Angeles Times that a judge could intervene if the religion was used to turn Suri away from Holmes because she was not an adherent. (Shulman believes the law should protect children better against religious coercion.)
[Slideshow: Biggest Hollywood breakups]
She got out! She’s free! The tabloids, which have been rooting for Katie from the start, now post—nearly every hour—photos of Holmes looking radiantly happy. Like actually sanguine and not actress-sanguine, with her rose-red daughter and her proud Catholic mom. In a flash, Holmes is divorced and has full custody (Cruise gets a “meaningful relationship” with Suri)—along with a contractual say in what Cruise can do with his daughter.
As celebrity disputes go, Holmes has pulled off the biggest rout in memory. What Tina Turner did for battered women by breaking away from Ike, Katie Holmes has done for spouses and children suffering from religious abuse and coercion. She fought bullying with bullying. She beat Tom Cruise. She beat Scientology. It’s not too much to call her a feminist hero.
Cutaway shots of Cruise in Iceland show him looking grim but handsome again, especially for 50. He’s filming a movie called “Oblivion,” and he appears more robotic and focused than ever.
I met my best-loved pop parable in 2007, a few years after Us went Weekly. Out of nowhere, it seemed, Britney Spears appeared in story after shocking story, channeling a British alter ego, rolling with two-bit grifters and shaving her head like a shrieking 19th-century madwoman. How had the high-fructose Louisiana mouseketeer tapped this particular vein of punk-gonzo performance art—so much more muscular than the entropic, wasted tantrums of Courtney Love or Charlie Sheen? The lessons lay too deep for words.
[Slideshow: TomKat in happier days]
But even then an even more powerful celebrity parable was underway; it too had Victorian coloring. It concerned Katie Holmes, that self-serious tomboy from “Dawson’s Creek,” and her peculiar liaison with Tom Cruise. From the start, the queer TomKat romance had a gross fame- and age-asymmetry that augured badly for its longevity. The squeamish-making differences between Tom and Katie augured well, however, for sinister marital intrigue.
Howling about his newfound potency on Oprah Winfey’s couch in 2005, Cruise meticulously impregnated Holmes, who was soon portrayed in the tabloids (and even in fashion magazines) as Rosemary in “Rosemary’s Baby”—a zombified vessel for Cruise’s cultish designs. Cruise, of course, is an avowed Scientologist, a soldier in that madcap confederacy for showfolk, and their dupes. Scientology has a goofy cosmology and an extremely ungoofy policy of hair-trigger litigiousness and extortion. The combination is frightful. (See Tom Cruise’s own promo.)
At the same time, Scientology’s austerity about drugs, and its emphasis on personal responsibility and religious ritual might have appealed to Holmes, a small-town Ohio girl from a Catholic family, who had just broken off her engagement to Chris Klein, a bad-boy actor with a history of addiction and DUIs. Maybe Tom Cruise, soberly preaching marriage and family, struck her the way he struck Rob Lowe in the 1980s: someone who was “open, friendly, funny and has an almost robotic, bloodless focus.” After a string of hotblooded American suitors, bloodlessness could have come to Holmes as a relief. And he was Tom Cruise.
[Slideshow: Celebrity Scientologists]
Reader, she married him. Had his baby. And instantly the light left her eyes, or so it seemed in photo after tabloid photo. Holmes was peaked, malnourished and overly chaperoned—again recalling Mia Farrow in “Rosemary’s Baby.” Conspiracy theories proliferated about Suri, and Katie, and how Scientology controlled them both. And yet Holmes also made movies, sort of, and fashion; maybe she was getting her part of the bargain. Though it was hard to imagine this normal-seeming sweetheart enjoying a Faustian bargain. I came to think she’d defied her parents, married for starstruck love and found herself just stuck.
But then Tom Cruise started getting featured on he-sucks lists, and suing about them; he looked especially warped on an ultra-mean site called Men Who Look Like Old Lesbians. Cruise’s learning disability, which he has said Scientology cured, resurfaced on various TV appearances in which he used the broad cadences of an action hero with tongue-tied palaver.
[Related: Katie Holmes' life before Tom Cruise]
Tom Cruise wasn’t Tom Cruise anymore. Like many superstar spouses—like everyone—he was getting old, addled, even jowly. That might have made Cruise more lovable if he allowed age to introduce some humanness to his pose. But instead he doubled down on wacky Scientological jargon and—recent reports of duct-tape-over-security-cams suggest—he locked down Katie Holmes even more drastically. In the gothic novel, he might have soon shot her and himself, or otherwise kept her eternally hostage. But that’s when the twist came.
Katie Holmes is not just a Catholic daughter of Ohio, a straight-A Catholic-school student who attended Columbia, and an ambitious actress and designer. She is also shrewd. And her father, Martin Holmes, is shrewder still—and a divorce lawyer.
“Marty believes there are only two sets of rules: the rules of the court and his rules, and he carries himself that way,” says a Toledo lawyer who has worked with him, according to People magazine. Martin Holmes had been skeptical of the match from the beginning, the tabloids reported; now he’s said to have “helped orchestrate his daughter's sudden split” from Tom Cruise using thriller-like tactics, including disposable phones.
Perhaps it’s Martin Holmes who foresaw that the divorce—Holmes and Cruise had a prenup, so money questions were forgone—would turn on a so-called spiritual custody dispute. “Spiritual custody” is a fascinating phrase; it refers to a child’s education and environment—the set of facts, beliefs and practices they’re modeled and taught. Holmes’s lawyers were especially strict about Katie keeping control over family’s choice of nanny and what Cruise could say to Suri about her mother’s status as a non-Scientologist. Jeffrey Shulman, a professor of law at Georgetown, told the Los Angeles Times that a judge could intervene if the religion was used to turn Suri away from Holmes because she was not an adherent. (Shulman believes the law should protect children better against religious coercion.)
[Slideshow: Biggest Hollywood breakups]
She got out! She’s free! The tabloids, which have been rooting for Katie from the start, now post—nearly every hour—photos of Holmes looking radiantly happy. Like actually sanguine and not actress-sanguine, with her rose-red daughter and her proud Catholic mom. In a flash, Holmes is divorced and has full custody (Cruise gets a “meaningful relationship” with Suri)—along with a contractual say in what Cruise can do with his daughter.
As celebrity disputes go, Holmes has pulled off the biggest rout in memory. What Tina Turner did for battered women by breaking away from Ike, Katie Holmes has done for spouses and children suffering from religious abuse and coercion. She fought bullying with bullying. She beat Tom Cruise. She beat Scientology. It’s not too much to call her a feminist hero.
Cutaway shots of Cruise in Iceland show him looking grim but handsome again, especially for 50. He’s filming a movie called “Oblivion,” and he appears more robotic and focused than ever.
Virginia Heffernan
is the national correspondent for Yahoo! News, covering culture and
politics from a digital perspective. She wrote extensively on Internet
culture during her eight years as a staff writer for The New York Times,
and she has also worked at Harper’s, the New Yorker and Slate. Her new
book, Magic and Loss: The Pleasures of the Internet, will be published
in early 2013.
Tom Cruise's lawyer is threatening to sue the National Enquirer over a cover story that claims the actor is a "monster" who "abused" wife Katie Holmes and subjected daughter Suri to a five-month stay in a "tiny, windowless room."
In a blistering letter sent July 11 by longtime Cruise attorney Bert Fields to Enquirer publisher American Media, a copy of which was obtained by The Hollywood Reporter, Fields claims the tabloid's most recent cover story is "disgraceful and lurid" and will cause the actor "hundreds of millions of dollars of professional and personal damages, for which we intend to
hold American Media, and everyone who participated in the perpetuation of this scurrilous attack, jointly and severally liable."
POLL: Tom Cruise-Katie Holmes Divorce: One-Third Believe She Has Info He Wanted Kept Quiet
Read the full letter here.
Fields writes: "Your cover announces, as a fact, that 'THE REAL TOM CRUISE IS A MONSTER.' Mr. Cruise is certainly not a 'monster.' He is a caring father, a hardworking actor and, above all, an honest, decent man." The cover also includes the headline "Inside Tom's House of Horrors" alongside a picture of Cruise's Beverly Hills residence as well as allegations that Holmes led a "tortured life" with the actor before filing for divorce on June 28.
THR reached out to American Media for comment on the letter and will update with a response.
Cruise and his Scientology religion have been the subject of intense media coverage in the wake of the Holmes divorce, which has been settled. Fields and his law firm, L.A.'s Greenberg Glusker, first threatened American Media on July 10 when an image of the forthcoming Enquirer cover story leaked. "This is the most defamatory cover the Enquirer has ever done," wrote Greenberg Glusker attorney Aaron Moss to American Media senior media counsel Cameron Stracher in an e-mail obtained by THR. "You need to stop this from coming out tomorrow."
STORY: Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes Reach Divorce Settlement
Lawyers for Hollywood stars often send warning letters to media outlets before negative articles are published because the letters help strengthen a potential defamation case, where a court would evaluate whether the outlet knew the story was false and published it with "actual malice." When the full Enquirer story hit newsstands July 11 -- claiming, among other things, that the Cruise-Holmes marriage was "a living nightmare" and Suri was forced to stay for five months in a tiny, windowless room -- Fields followed up with the formal cease-and-desist letter.
"Mr. Cruise's home in Telluride, like his home in Beverly Hills, is a pleasant and loving home," the letter reads. "Suri was not forced to stay for five months in a tiny windowless room. She spent most of her time with Tom and Katie. She slept in a nursery adjoining their bedroom. It has a window."
STORY: Why Katie Holmes -- and Not Tom Cruise -- Could See a Post-Divorce Career Boost
The letter ends with a threat of litigation if the Enquirer does not "retract each and every one of your false allegations about Mr. Cruise with the same prominence and emphasis as you gave your original false and defamatory assertions." Fields also threatens to "call the Court's attention to your long record of printing and publishing malicious lies about celebrities in order to enrich yourselves at their expense."
Fields writes that "these disgusting lies about Mr. Cruise will be there for all time, to be read by his children and, someday, his grandchildren."
Email: Matthew.Belloni@thr.com
Twitter: @THRMattBelloni
In a scientific, open-ended survey of 400 pop culture consuming 13-49 year-olds conducted for THR by polling giant Penn Schoen Berland, one thing became apparent: Americans either want Cruise to stick to acting, or just go off-the-rails, tabloid-sensational with his next relationship.
Those that want to see Cruise back on the horse cannot come to any sort of agreement as to who he should court. The name most frequently mentioned was Kim Kardashian (sorry, Kanye), followed by a generic Scientologist (Hollywood has plenty from which he can choose). In close succession were Angelina Jolie (taken), Megan Fox (taken) and John Travolta (taken, though he does fit the Scientologist requirement, as well as another oft-chosen generic description: a man).
Others wanted Cruise to get back together with ex-wife Nicole Kidman, which may not be the easiest patch-up job, while Britney Spears, Katy Perry (also recently divorced!), Jennifer Aniston and just-out CNN host Anderson Cooper also received votes. Basically, Americans want to see Cruise be a homewrecker.
But the biggest response to THR's poll was that Cruise should abstain from dating; it's unclear whether they think no one is good enough for him, or maybe it's a case of three strikes, you're out.
It's hard to say what, exactly, went wrong in Cruise and Holmes' marriage, but that hasn't stopped Americans from drawing definitive opinions on the matter.
The THR poll asked a long series of questions about Americans' opinions on the split. Overall, 79 percent of those surveyed thought that Cruise was responsible for the split, while 85 percent thought Holmes scored an intangible "win" in the proceedings. Still, most surveyed think that Scientology was the major cause of the split.
Tom Cruise Lawyer Threatens National Enquirer Over 'House of Horrors' Cover (Exclusive)
A letter from Cruise attorney Bert Fields obtained by THR claims the actor could lose hundreds of millions of dollars over a 'disgraceful and lurid' story
Tom Cruise's lawyer is threatening to sue the National Enquirer over a cover story that claims the actor is a "monster" who "abused" wife Katie Holmes and subjected daughter Suri to a five-month stay in a "tiny, windowless room."
In a blistering letter sent July 11 by longtime Cruise attorney Bert Fields to Enquirer publisher American Media, a copy of which was obtained by The Hollywood Reporter, Fields claims the tabloid's most recent cover story is "disgraceful and lurid" and will cause the actor "hundreds of millions of dollars of professional and personal damages, for which we intend to
hold American Media, and everyone who participated in the perpetuation of this scurrilous attack, jointly and severally liable."
POLL: Tom Cruise-Katie Holmes Divorce: One-Third Believe She Has Info He Wanted Kept Quiet
Read the full letter here.
Fields writes: "Your cover announces, as a fact, that 'THE REAL TOM CRUISE IS A MONSTER.' Mr. Cruise is certainly not a 'monster.' He is a caring father, a hardworking actor and, above all, an honest, decent man." The cover also includes the headline "Inside Tom's House of Horrors" alongside a picture of Cruise's Beverly Hills residence as well as allegations that Holmes led a "tortured life" with the actor before filing for divorce on June 28.
THR reached out to American Media for comment on the letter and will update with a response.
Cruise and his Scientology religion have been the subject of intense media coverage in the wake of the Holmes divorce, which has been settled. Fields and his law firm, L.A.'s Greenberg Glusker, first threatened American Media on July 10 when an image of the forthcoming Enquirer cover story leaked. "This is the most defamatory cover the Enquirer has ever done," wrote Greenberg Glusker attorney Aaron Moss to American Media senior media counsel Cameron Stracher in an e-mail obtained by THR. "You need to stop this from coming out tomorrow."
STORY: Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes Reach Divorce Settlement
Lawyers for Hollywood stars often send warning letters to media outlets before negative articles are published because the letters help strengthen a potential defamation case, where a court would evaluate whether the outlet knew the story was false and published it with "actual malice." When the full Enquirer story hit newsstands July 11 -- claiming, among other things, that the Cruise-Holmes marriage was "a living nightmare" and Suri was forced to stay for five months in a tiny, windowless room -- Fields followed up with the formal cease-and-desist letter.
"Mr. Cruise's home in Telluride, like his home in Beverly Hills, is a pleasant and loving home," the letter reads. "Suri was not forced to stay for five months in a tiny windowless room. She spent most of her time with Tom and Katie. She slept in a nursery adjoining their bedroom. It has a window."
STORY: Why Katie Holmes -- and Not Tom Cruise -- Could See a Post-Divorce Career Boost
The letter ends with a threat of litigation if the Enquirer does not "retract each and every one of your false allegations about Mr. Cruise with the same prominence and emphasis as you gave your original false and defamatory assertions." Fields also threatens to "call the Court's attention to your long record of printing and publishing malicious lies about celebrities in order to enrich yourselves at their expense."
Fields writes that "these disgusting lies about Mr. Cruise will be there for all time, to be read by his children and, someday, his grandchildren."
Email: Matthew.Belloni@thr.com
Twitter: @THRMattBelloni
Who Should Tom Cruise Date Next? Americans Choose... (Poll)
Now that he's divorced from Katie Holmes, Cruise is an eligible bachelor. Americans are split on who he should date next: Kim Kardashian, Megan Fox or John Travolta?
In a scientific, open-ended survey of 400 pop culture consuming 13-49 year-olds conducted for THR by polling giant Penn Schoen Berland, one thing became apparent: Americans either want Cruise to stick to acting, or just go off-the-rails, tabloid-sensational with his next relationship.
Those that want to see Cruise back on the horse cannot come to any sort of agreement as to who he should court. The name most frequently mentioned was Kim Kardashian (sorry, Kanye), followed by a generic Scientologist (Hollywood has plenty from which he can choose). In close succession were Angelina Jolie (taken), Megan Fox (taken) and John Travolta (taken, though he does fit the Scientologist requirement, as well as another oft-chosen generic description: a man).
Others wanted Cruise to get back together with ex-wife Nicole Kidman, which may not be the easiest patch-up job, while Britney Spears, Katy Perry (also recently divorced!), Jennifer Aniston and just-out CNN host Anderson Cooper also received votes. Basically, Americans want to see Cruise be a homewrecker.
But the biggest response to THR's poll was that Cruise should abstain from dating; it's unclear whether they think no one is good enough for him, or maybe it's a case of three strikes, you're out.
It's hard to say what, exactly, went wrong in Cruise and Holmes' marriage, but that hasn't stopped Americans from drawing definitive opinions on the matter.
The THR poll asked a long series of questions about Americans' opinions on the split. Overall, 79 percent of those surveyed thought that Cruise was responsible for the split, while 85 percent thought Holmes scored an intangible "win" in the proceedings. Still, most surveyed think that Scientology was the major cause of the split.
,
Mrs. Pitt has not only been the victim of vulgar and hate-filled
attacks, but she has also received death threats which have left her
very frightened.