Now he’s been pegged as Hollywood’s leading creepily insincere sci-fi nutjob, Tom Cruise needs all the fans he can get.

Unless, you know, those fans keep turning up at his house without permission because they’re fanatical veterans’ rights activists with a history of psychiatric issues who keep shutting down freeways by allegedly waving flags and guns around.

That’s bad news for Edward Van Tassel – he’s exactly that, and he’s been given a restraining order forcing him to stay away from Tom Cruise. Phew, that was close – it’s a good job these mentally ill gun-toting rogue soldiers respect court orders so diligently, eh?

Tom Cruise’s powers are perfectly self-evident to everyone. He can help car crash victims better than people who know how to help car crash victims, he can impregnate virgins young enough to be his daughter and he can also take any number of sure-fire hit movies and make people not want to watch them just because of who he is. It’s incredible.

But Tom Cruise is only human – or part-human and part-Jesus alien or whatever – and so sometimes his powers fail him and he needs outside help. Like when mentally-troubled Iraq veterans come to his house and try to hand him slightly unsettling letters, which is the case with Edward Van Tassel.

Van Tassel is a former soldier who gained notoriety recently for walking into a radio studio in fatigues and a mask with a gun as a massively ill-advised Halloween stunt, and for shutting down a freeway by standing on an overpass waving a flag and a gun around. Oh, and for spooking Tom Cruise out by visiting him with letters and books and friendship requests and whatnot now, too.

But it’s OK because, as E! Online reports, Tom Cruise has managed to get a restraining order taken out on Van Tassel:

Darryl Perlin, senior deputy district attorney for Santa Barbara County, tells E! News the order issued Wednesday bars 28-year-old Edward Van Tassel from having any contact or communications with the 46-year-old Cruise. It also forbids Van Tassel from coming anywhere near the actor’s Beverly Hills estate. “He’s definitely a threat. He’s a celebrity stalker,” said Perlin.

We know what you’re thinking – why would anyone want to stalk a film star as creepy and unapproachable as Tom Cruise when it’d be easier just to draw macabre pictures of Uma Thurman or send Britney Spears a big box of dildos?

Well, given that Edward Van Tassel is a veterans’ rights activist, and in Born On The Fourth Of July Tom Cruise played a veteran struggling to come to terms with civilian life, there’s a good chance that that’s the link.

Or maybe Edward Van Tassel just really, really liked Lions For Lambs. We suppose statistically someone had to. No wonder the poor chap seems so disturbed.

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