Sunday, October 28, 2007

Tom Cruise and Robert Redford put the thrill into premiere of Lions for Lambs

Two of the biggest screen idols walked the red carpet together for the first time in Leicester Square last night at the world premiere of their controversial political thriller.

Between them Tom Cruise and Robert Redford have created some of Hollywood’s most memorable heroes, from The Sundance Kid and The Great Gatsby to Maverick, the gung-ho fighter pilot in Top Gun, and Ethan Hunt in the Mission Impossible series. Now they are playing opposite each other in Lions for Lambs, directed by Redford, which was chosen as The Times Gala at The Times BFI 51st London Film Festival.

With Meryl Streep also in the cast, the film is one of the biggest
Hollywood movie to have had its world premiere in London and an indicator of the festival’s clout. It intertwines the stories of a hawkish senator (Cruise), a journalist (Streep), an idealistic professor (Redford) and two soldiers fighting in Afghanistan to explore the United States’ approach to the War on Terror. The film has been under attack by conservatives in America.

Matthew Michael Carnahan, who wrote the screenplay, said yesterday: “People who haven’t even seen the movie have been making pronouncements about why nobody should see it. But my ambition was just to contribute another level to this debate that needs to be had about this war and whether another British or American life is worth it.”

Politics was far from the minds of most of the thousands of fans who pressed up to the barriers around the Odeon cinema last night. Cruise had insisted on building two hours into the schedule to meet his public. He spent 1½ hours talking to people in the crowd, chatting to their friends and relatives on proffered mobile phones and being photographed with fans.

The post-September 11 conflicts have inspired many
Hollywood projects, although the box-office reception for films such as Michael Winterbottom’s critically acclaimed A Mighty Heart and Peter Berg’s Saudi action film The Kingdom has been lukewarm so far.

The film is a launchpad for Cruise’s new career as a movie mogul. Lions for Lambs is the first film to come out of United Artists since he helped to revive the studio.

Friday, September 14, 2007

Paramount cuts ties with Tom Cruise

The latest high-profile Hollywood breakup is between Tom Cruise and his studio.Sumner Redstone, entertainment giant Viacom chairman, said the reason behind the break-up with superstar Tom Cruise was because they were annoyed with his starry attitude.

Speaking about it at Berlin International Film Festival, Redstone said the main reason for the split between Paramount, his flagship venture, and the most powerful and bankable star in the world happened because he wanted to send a signal to the industry that a star is not important, it's the script which is the king.

He said: 'Tom Cruise is a great actor. It was just his behaviour... We are paying the talent too much. Because it is not the talent that makes the movie, it is the script. And if you have a great script, the talent rushes to appear in it and not at too heavy a price.

Profile


An actor whose name has become synonymous with All-American testosterone-driven entertainment, Tom Cruise spent the 1980s as one of Hollywood's brightest shining Golden Boys. With black hair, blue eyes, and unabashed cockiness, Cruise rode high on such hits as Top Gun and Rain Man. Although his popularity dimmed slightly in the early '90s, he was able to bounce back with a string of hits that re-established him as both an action hero and, in the case of Jerry Maguire and Magnolia, a talented actor.

Name : Tom Cruise

Birth Name: Thomas Cruise Mapother IV

Height: 5' 7''Sex: M

Nationality: American

Birth Date: July 3, 1962

BirthPlace:Syracuse, New York, USA

Profession: Actor, Producer, Director, Writer

Education: Franciscan seminary (dropped out in a year) ,Glen Ridge High School, Glen Ridge, NJ (dropped out)

Husband/Wife:
  • Nicole Kidman (actress; married on December 24, 1990; separated since December 2000; filed for divorce on February 7, 2001; divorced on August 8, 2001),

  • Mimi Rogers (actress; married on May 9, 1987; divorced in January 1990)
Relationship:
  • Katie Holmes (actress; born on December 18, 1978),

  • Sofia Vergara (Columbian; model; born on July 10, 1972),

  • Penelope Cruz (Spanish; actress; reportedly began dating summer 2001; split up at the end of January 2004),

  • Rebecca De Mornay (actress; 1983-1985)
Father: Thomas Cruise Mapother III (electrical engineer; died in 1984 of cancer)

Mother:Mary Lee Mapother

Sister :
  • Cass Mapother (born in 1963),

  • Marian Mapother (born in 1961),

  • Lee Anne Mapother (born in 1959)
Step Father: Joe South

Son: Connor Anthony Kidman Cruise (born on February 1995; adopted)

Daughter:Suri (born on Tuesday April 18, 2006 in Los Angeles; weighed 7 pounds, 7 ounces; 20 inches long; mother: Katie Holmes)

Claim to fame: As Joel Goodson in Risky Business (1983)

Dating With Girl's Friend

Sofia Vergara Biography

Name :Sofia Vergara
Birth Name : Sofia Margarita Vergara
Nationality : Colombian
Date Of Birth : July 10, 1972
Occupation : actress,model
Son : Manolo (born in 1992)

What's up with Tom Cruise and all these Latin women? First he had a long relationship with Penelope Cruz (from Spain) and now he has been dating Sofia Vergara for about a month. What can we say, he does have a great taste! All these women are very different from former wife, Nicole Kidman (at least they are all much shorter, which is a plus for Cruise).

Even though Sofia is not a Scientologist, the two met at the Church of Scientology's Celebrity Centre International in Hollywood. Tom is introducing Sofia to the religion, but apparently he is not pushing it (Penelope could tell you all about this). So, we'll see if Cruise can convert Sofia to Scientology or not. The megastar has been involved with the religion for many years and is more than devoted to it.
He is also very committed to his children, Connor and Isabella. Kidman and Cruise adopted both during their marriage and now enjoy joint custody. Both Tom and Nicole are very devoted patents.

Cruise (42) and Vergara (32) are taking the relationship to a higher level by meeting each others children.

Rebecca De Mornay


Born: Aug 29, 1961 in Santa Rosa, California
Occupation: Hollywood Actress , Director
Active: '80s-2000s
Major Genres: Drama, ThrillerCareer
Highlights: The Trip to Bountiful, Risky Business, The Hand That Rocks the Cradle
Tom Cruise hooked up with "Risky Business" co-star Rebecca De Mornay for a brief period.

Rebecca was raised in France and went to college in Suffolk, England. She studied acting at the Lee Strasberg Institute in New York. After gaining fame in the highly successful movie "Risky Business," Rebecca went on to star in other films such as "BackDraft" and appeared on the TV show "E.R."

Tom Cruise Dated Cher in 1985
Every drag queen's dream. A Tom Cruise reality.


Name :Cher
Birth Name : Cherilyn Sarkisian LaPierre
Date of Birth :20 May 1946
Place of Birth : El Centro, California, USA
Height : 5' 8½''
Nationality : American
Profession : Hollywood Actress, Pop Singer
Sometimes Called : Sonny & Cher,Sonny and Cher,Cherilyn,Chér.

Tom Cruise lived with Cher according to her son Elijah Allman who saidabout Cruise "people aren't buying into his whole act".Allman is Cher's son with musician Gregg Allman. He tells Us Weekly that Cruise has changed a lot. "He was totally different. We lived with him for a couple of years."Allman had already made headlines when he confessed on the Howard Stern radio show that he had sex with Paris Hilton & that he was afraid he'd contracted a STD from her!

Life Partners

Mimi Rogers

Cruise was married to Mimi Rogers (married on May 9, 1987, divorced February 4, 1990). Rogers is generally believed to be the one who introduced Cruise to Scientology.

Father: Philip J. Spickler (Scientology minister, civil engineer)
Husband: Jim Rogers (Scientology counselor, m. 1977, div. 1980)
Husband: Tom Cruise (b. 3-Jul-1962, m. 9-May-1987, div. 1990)
Boyfriend: Chris Chiaffa (b. 1963, cohabiting since 1990)
Son: Charlie Rogers-Chiaffa (b. 30-Jul-2001, 8 lbs 10 oz, with Chris Chiaffa)
Daughter: Lucy Julia Rogers-Ciaffa (b. 20-Nov-1995, with Chris Chiaffa)
Boyfriend: Ed Marinaro
Boyfriend: Tom Selleck
Boyfriend: Bobby Shriver Nicole KidmanCruise met Nicole Kidman on the set of their film Days of Thunder.

Nicole Kidman

The couple married on December 24, 1990 and divorced on August 8, 2001. He and Kidman adopted two children, Isabella (born 1993) and Connor (born 1995). They separated when Kidman was three months pregnant, just shy of their 10 year wedding anniversary; she later miscarried.


Father: Anthony Kidman (biochemist)
Mother: Janelle MacNeille (nursing instructor)
Sister: Antonia Kidman-Hawley (younger)
Husband: Tom Cruise (actor, m. 24-Dec-1990, div. 8-Aug-2001, two children adopted)Daughter: Isabella Jane Kidman Cruise (adopted, b. 22-Dec-1992)
Son: Connor Anthony Cruise (adopted, b. 17-Jan-1995)
Boyfriend: Lenny Kravitz (dated, 2003-04)
Boyfriend: Robbie WilliamsHusband: Keith Urban (dating since 2005, m. 25-Jun-2006)

Penélope Cruz
Cruise was next romantically linked with Penélope Cruz, the lead actress in his film Vanilla Sky. In March 2004, he announced that his relationship with Penélope Cruz had ended in January.Tom Cruise, Penelope Cruz end relationship

Name At Birth : Penélope Cruz Sánchez
Date of Birth : 28 April 1974
Place of Birth :Madrid, Spain
Nickname : Pe
Father : Eduardo Cruz (auto mechanic)
Mother :Encarna Cruz (hairdresser manager)
Sister : Monica (professional flamenco dancer)
Brother : Eduardo Jr

Katie Holmes

Full Name : Kate Noelle Holmes
Date Of Birth : December 18, 1978
Place Of Birth : Toledo, Ohio
Education : High School (Notre Dame)
College: Columbia University, New York, New York (deferred admission)
Occupation : Actress
Father : Martin Holmes (Lawyer)
Mother :Kathy Holmes (Homemaker)
Siblings :four sisters, one brother (Youngest is Katie)

Popularity

In 1990, 1991 and 1997, People magazine rated him among the 50 most beautiful people in the world. In 1995, Empire magazine ranked him among the 100 sexiest stars in film history.Two years later, it ranked him among the top 5 movie stars of all time. In 2002 and 2003, he was rated by Premiere among the top 20 in its annual Power 100 list.
In 2006, Premiere magazine established Cruise as Hollywood's most powerful actor, as Cruise came in at number 13 on the magazines 2006 Power List, being the highest ranked actor.
On 16 June 2006, Forbes magazine published 'The Celebrity 100', a list of the most powerful celebrities, in which Cruise came top. The list was generated using a combination of income (between June 2005 and June 2006), web references by Google, press clips compiled by LexisNexis, television and radio mentions (by Factiva), and the number of times a celebrity appeared on the cover of 26 major consumer magazines.
As of August 2006, "a USA Today/Gallup poll in which half of those surveyed registered an "unfavorable" opinion of the actor" was cited as a reason in addition to "unacceptable behavior" for Paramount's non-renewal of their production contract with Tom.

Controversy
Scientology
Cruise is arguably Hollywood's most outspoken member of the Church of Scientology. He became involved with Scientology in 1990 through his first wife, Mimi Rogers. Cruise has publicly said that Scientology, specifically the L. Ron Hubbard Scientology Study Tech, helped him overcome his dyslexia. It has been claimed that Cruise belongs to one of the highest echelons of the "Church of Scientology", known as "Operating Thetan Seven" or OT-VII,and it has been suggested that Cruise's increasing willingness to talk openly about Scientology may be a reflection of this.
A controversy erupted in 2005 after he openly criticized actress Brooke Shields for using the drug Paxil, an anti-depressant, to which Shields attributes her recovery from postpartum depression after the birth of her daughter in 2003. Cruise asserted that there is no such thing as a chemical imbalance, and that psychiatry is a form of pseudoscience. This led to a heated argument with Matt Lauer on The Today Show on June 24, 2005. Brooke Shields responded to Cruise's comments by calling them "irresponsible and dangerous". In late August of 2006, Cruise apologized in person to Shields for his comments; Shields said that she was "impressed with how heartfelt [the apology] was [...] I didn't feel at any time that I had to defend myself, nor did I feel that he was trying to convince me of anything other than the fact that he was deeply sorry. And I accepted it." Cruise's spokesman confirmed that Cruise and Shields had made up but said that Cruise's position on anti-depressants had not changed.
Tom Cruise with Dr. Thomas Szasz during the annual dinner of the Citizens Commission on Human Rights.


Cruise also claimed in an Entertainment Weekly interview that psychiatry "is a Nazi science" and that methadone was actually originally called Adolophine after Adolf Hitler, a myth well-known as an urban legend. In an interview with Der Spiegel magazine, Cruise claimed that "In Scientology, we have the only successful drug rehabilitation program in the world. It's called Narconon... It's a statistically proven fact that there is only one successful drug rehabilitation program in the world. Period". While Narconon claims to have a success rate over 70%, the accuracy of this figure has been widely disputed.It has been reported that Cruise adopted his anti-psychiatry philosophies from Dr. Thomas Szasz, a leading critic of the moral and scientific foundations of psychiatry. Scientology is also well-known for its anti-psychiatry stance, which may also have affected his viewpoint on the subject.

As of 2005, Tom Cruise has begun campaigning on behalf of the Church of Scientology before politicians and government officials around the world. Such advocacy did not go well in several European countries where this organization is considered to be a cult. As an example, on July 13, 2005, after it was learned that he lobbied Nicolas Sarkozy and Jean-Claude Gaudin (the mayor of Marseille), the city council of Paris vowed "never to receive [before the council or the mayor] the actor Tom Cruise, spokesman for Scientology and self-declared militant for this organisation"

He has also campaigned and raised donations for Downtown Medical, which he co-founded, to offer New York 9/11 rescue workers detoxification therapy based on the works of L. Ron Hubbard. This has drawn criticism from the medical profession, as well as firefighters.

Concern has also been voiced about Holmes and her relationship to Scientology. Roger Friedman of the Fox News Channel claimed that Katie Holmes disappeared for sixteen days in April 2005 when even her own family did not know her whereabouts. Allegedly, the last time she had been seen, Holmes had flown to meet with Tom Cruise for a possible role in Mission: Impossible III. When she re-appeared, Holmes stated she was in love with Tom Cruise and studying Scientology. The actress then fired her long-time manager and agent and acquired Jessica Rodriguez, a prominent member of the Church of Scientology.

Jumping the couch

Tom Cruise jumps on a couch during the filming of an interview on The Oprah Winfrey Show.



Cruise has made several bold expressions of his feelings for Holmes to the media, most notably the "couch incident" which took place on the popular talk show, The Oprah Winfrey Show of May 23, 2005. In that instance, Cruise "jumped around the set, hopped onto a couch, fell rapturously to one knee and repeatedly professed his love for his new girlfriend."This scene has been parodied in numerous venues in film (Scary Movie 4), on TV (Family Guy). The "couch incident" was voted #1 of 2005's "Most Surprising Television Moments" on a countdown onThe term "Jumping the Couch," fashioned after "jumping the shark," is used to describe someone "going off the deep end" in public. The term is usually synonymous with a nervous breakdown accompanied by often bizarre or unintentionally humorous behavior in public. It enjoyed a short-lived popularity, being chosen by the editors of the Historical Dictionary of American Slang as the "slang term of the year" in 2005 and by the nonprofit group Global Language Monitor as one of its top phrases for the year.


Parodies

As noted, the scene has been parodied numerous times, including:

  • A YTMND reworking of the scene to make it look like Cruise kills Oprah with Sith lightning emanating from his hands.

  • A mashup of James Frey's infamous 2006 appearance on Oprah and Cruise's appearance was released by Best Week Ever, in which Oprah appears to call Cruise a liar.

  • The 2006 film Scary Movie 4 parodies the Oprah scene.
Litigation related to gay rumors


  • The Daily Express newspaper — During his marriage to actress Nicole Kidman, the couple endured public speculation about their sex life and rumors that Cruise was gay. In 1998, he sued a British tabloid that alleged that the marriage was a sham designed to cover up his homosexuality.

  • David Ehrenstein - Tom Cruise's lawyers threaten to sue Ehrenstein for his book titled "Open Secret: Gay Hollywood 1928-1998", that discussed Cruise's appeal to both men and women

  • Chad Slater — In May 2001 he filed a lawsuit against gay porn actor Chad Slater (aka Kyle Bradford). Slater had allegedly told the celebrity magazine Actustar that he had engaged in an affair with Cruise. Both Slater and Cruise denied this, and in August 2001 Slater was ordered to pay $10 million to Cruise in damages.

  • Michael Davis — He also sued Michael Davis, a magazine publisher, who alleged that he had photographs that would prove Tom Cruise was homosexual; this suit was dropped in exchange for a public statement by Davis that Tom Cruise was heterosexual.

Publicist

Cruise's more open attitude to Scientology has been attributed to the departure of his publicist of 14 years, Pat Kingsley, in March 2004. He replaced her with his sister, fellow Scientologist Lee Anne DeVette, who served in that role until November 2005 . He then demoted his sister and replaced her with veteran publicist Paul Bloch, from the publicity firm Rogers and Cowan. Such restructuring is seen as a move to curtail publicity about his Scientology views, as well as the hard-sell of his relationship with Katie Holmes backfiring with the public . DeVette explained that it was her decision to work on philanthropic projects rather than publicity.

Bollywood Actor - Tom Cruise



    Tom Cruise - The Last Samurai

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