Cruise Bio: Anything New Here?
British author Andrew Morton has written an unauthorized biography of Tom Cruise (pictured) that the actor’s lawyer, Bert Fields, has called “a bunch of tired old lies about Tom and his religion.” Of course that is what Fields is paid by his client to say, but in reading the press reports about the book I have to confess that there certainly doesn’t seem to be anything very new in what Morton has “uncovered.” Due out in the U.S. later this month and excerpted in the U.K.’s Daily Mail over the weekend, “Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography,” contains “revelations” that wouldn’t shock a child. The book asserts that Cruise is second in command within the Church of Scientology, but Cruise’s involvement with that sect has been dissected endlessly for years. Morton says that Cruise has been given the mission of recruiting his friends David and Victoria Beckham to the faith, and that Nicole Kidman feared retribution by the Church if she spoke out against Scientology following her 2000 divorce from Cruise. Neither of these claims, if true, is the least bit surprising. Lawyer Fields says, “[The book] is just riddled with falsehoods. This man, Andrew Morton, never talked to any of the important people in Tom’s life.” The Morton claim that’s been getting the most attention is that some ardent Scientologists were convinced that Katie Holmes conceived Suri, Cruise and Holmes’s 20-month-old daughter, by using the frozen sperm of the religion’s late founder, L. Ron Hubbard. The fact that the book sounds like a big yawn may not prevent it from selling copies. The more successful it is, the more likely perhaps that Cruise will go ahead with the multimillion dollar lawsuit he is supposedly readying against the book’s publisher, St. Martin’s Press. Fields has declined to comment on pending legal action and has expressed confidence that Cruise could win the case. In a brief statement Monday, a spokesman for publisher St. Martin’s Press said: “We stand by our book and our author.”
