When Tom Cruise promotes a movie, the world sits up and takes notice. And then scratches its head before laughing hysterically. But Tom Cruise has shown that it’s not all fun and games and silent births.
Perhaps knowing that every move from his tiny megalomaniac body prompts a round of amused bewilderment, Tom Cruise has changed strategy for the promotion of Mission: Impossible III by discussing something that nobody in their right mind would mock – Tom Cruise has revealed that he had an abusive father and was bullied by his schoolmates.
Well, it worked for Teri Hatcher.
You think you know Tom Cruise, but you don’t know Tom Cruise. Although he has a public image of being a chair-jumping fool who wants Katie Holmes to keep it zipped during childbirth and gets sued by stuntmen with badly burnt genitals in between bouts of piano handstands and annoying medical professionals by buying sonogram machines, Tom Cruise has a dark secret that he doesn’t tell people too easily: as a child, Tom Cruise was beaten up by his Dad and his schoolmates. And that was way before Tom Cruise made Days Of Thunder, so they probably didn’t even have a decent excuse.
In an upcoming interview with Parade magazine, Tom Cruise spills the beans on his troubled childhood, saying of his dead estranged father:
"He was a bully and a coward. He was the kind of person where,
if something goes wrong, they kick you. It was a great lesson in my
life how he’d lull you in, make you feel safe and then, bang! For me, it was like, ‘There’s something wrong with this guy. Don’t trust him. Be careful around him.’ There’s that anxiety."
And at school, things didn’t get any better for Tom Cruise, as he tells Parade using, weirdly, present tense:
"So many times the big bully comes up, pushes me. Your heart’s
pounding, you sweat, and you feel like you’re going to vomit… I don’t
like bullies."
Now that Tom Cruise is allowing himself to show a slightly more vulnerable, human side of his personality by revealing secrets about his abusive father, though, will public opinion swing back in his favour? Will all the nominations for Razzies stop? Will someone other than Tom Cruise be voted most irritating star in history? Will people start to see Tom Cruise as the lovable sweetheart he has always been, deep down?
What’s that? Tom Cruise has bought a giant dummy to shove in Katie’s gob to make sure she shuts up during childbirth? Oh thank God. Business as usual, folks.
Read more:
Tom Cruise Says His Father Was ‘A Bully’ – ABC
[story by Stuart Heritage]