Anticipation was high for Katie Holmes’ Broadway debut last night – it means that Maggie Gyllenhaal will soon take her role and everyone’ll like the play better.

However, Katie Holmes must have also been fairly excited ahead of her debut in All My Sons – not only would it teach her critics once and for all that she was an actress to contend with, but it’d also give her plenty of chances to blink out ‘HELP ME HELP ME HE KEEPS ME LOCKED IN A CAGE HELP ME’ in Morse code to a room of understanding strangers every night.

But, of course, Katie Holmes’ Broadway debut was also exciting for the members of anti-Scientology group Anonymous, who decided to bring down Scientology once and for all by getting about 20 people to stand outside the theatre holding some signs in a sort of semi-apologetic way. Yeah, take that, Scientology.

It’s hard to think of Katie Holmes as an actress these days, much less the actress who was once in Dawson’s Creek. Maybe that’s because she’s single-handedly been the worst thing in the – already mostly pretty terrible – films that she’s starred in lately, or maybe it’s because she seems to have given up acting for a life of glumly trudging three paces behind Tom Cruise with a weird boy’s haircut and her boobs taped down.

But either way, Katie Holmes recently realised that she needed to reassert her acting credentials and – having formally submitted the appropriate forms in triplicate to Tom Cruise’s Fresh Air Allowance clerk beforehand – was granted the temporary right to leave her hermetic dungeon on a regular basis to go and act in an Arthur Miller play.

It seemed so perfect at the time – nothing shows the public that an actor is serious about their craft like starring in an Arthur Miller play, the superb cast could take the strain if Katie Holmes ended up blowing, and Katie would get a few hours away from Tom Cruise marching up and down in his little Nazi eyepatch every night.

However, Katie Holmes hadn’t accounted for one thing – the thousands and thousands of anti-Scientologist protesters who’d blight her every move. Anonymous had long threatened to protest outside the opening night of All My Sons last night and, boy oh boy, did they ever come out in force to pour scorn on the Scientologists.

No, really, did they? Hardly any protesters turned up, you see, and we’re not sure if that was enough to pour scorn on anything, really. Especially if they keep excusing themselves as feebly as E! Online reports that they did:

More than two dozen protesters from the anti-Scientology group Anonymous joined the throng Thursday outside New York’s Gerald Schoenfeld Theatre. “We are not boycotting Katie, we are not boycotting the play, we are protesting Scientology,” a member of the group shouted. “It is evil. Scientology kills people. It follows you home at night. It is perverted.”

That’s it? A couple of people dressed up like Agent Smith in V For Vendetta comparing Scientology to Buffalo Bill from The Silence Of The Lambs? Why not go the whole hog and say that Scientology dances around to Goodbye Horses with its pecker tucked between its legs to make it look more like a lady? Huh? Huh, Anonymous? Why don’t you do that next time, yeah?

We’re just a little bitter because it seems like such a wasted opportunity for a protest. Diversify or die, that’s the way to go. Stand around with a couple of placards forever and you’ll end up like the bloke who stands outside the Houses Of Parliament with the display about the Iraq war that everyone pretends they can’t see. And what’s the point of that?

We just thought that the protest against Katie Holmes and Scientology was a bit artless. Why stand around outside shouting when you could gather everyone together, make them buy tickets for a performance of All My Sons and then silently sit in the theatre so that Katie Holmes has to perform to nothing but an unresponsive wall of V For Vendetta masks?

We’re just saying…

Whether it's Will Smith's freaky near-conversion or Tom Cruise's weird garbled video, it's not a great time to be a Scientologist.

Especially if you happen to be John Travolta. As a minor Scientologist, John Travolta has escaped a lot of the recent backlash against the church, but now his luck appears to have run out. Michael Pattinson, an ex-Scientologist who signed up at the same time as John Travolta, has claimed on video that Travolta joined the church to be 'cured of homosexuality' while adding that he knows one of John's ex-boyfriends.

The video of the interview is after the jump.

There are many reasons to want to join Scientology, be it because you want to be just like your hero Tom Cruise from The Last Samurai, because you know that if you progress far enough your wife will be artificially inseminated with dead man's spoo, because you hate psychiatrists so much that you want to kick all of them in the shins, or because you're gay and Scientology is the only thing that can cure you.

But be warned – if you do become a Scientologist, you'll be beaten and bashed at every turn. Look at Tom Cruise – being a Scientologist got him sacked from Paramount, it got books written about him, it's meant that embarrassing nine-minute videos of Tom Cruise's creepy cackling have been leaked onto the internet and it means that nobody is sure what sort of radiator Tom keep Katie Holmes chained to.

And now there's another book on Scientology about to be released – Hollywood Undercover by Ian Halperin, which chronicles his Scientology-joining adventures posing as a gay actor. While Halperin claims that during these adventures a Scientologist recruiter told him that Barack Obama and Condoleeza Rice "should not be allowed to run for office, they should be sweeping the office,” the real trouble is reserved for John Travolta.

For the book, Halperin interviewed Michael Pattinson, a gay ex-Scientologist who joined the church at the same time as John Travolta. Pattinson claims that they both only joined to try and cure themselves of homosexuality, and adds that he knows John's ex-lover Paul Baressi. Here's the video…

Now, how much of this is true and how much of this is embittered former Scientologist mouthing off is something we don't know. We just wish that Scientology was able to cure John Travolta of wanting to star in Be Cool. That would have been a win-win for everyone. 

Will Smith has been spending lots of time around Tom Cruise lately, and the only people who tend to do that willingly are Scientologists and fans of Days Of Thunder.

Since none of the latter actually exist, can we take this to mean that Will Smith is now in with the Scientology crowd? It would certainly seem that way, thanks to reports that Will Smith's wrap gifts to the crew of his new movie Hancock consisted of free passes for Scientology personality tests. 

If it's true, great – that makes Will Smith the new John Travolta, and we await his Look Who's Talking Now with baited breath. 

Who wouldn't want to be a Scientologist? It's brilliant – you get to hang around with Tom Cruise all the time, you can force your girlfriend to be silent when she gives birth, you're constantly reminded that mental illness can be cured by jogging – or something – and if you get really lucky you can knock your wife up with L Ron Hubbard's sperm.

Compare that to what you get with, say Catholicism – a dribble of wine, a scrap of bread and a billion loudmouth dirty accidental children – and you can see why Scientology is such a draw. But don't take our word for it, since Will Smith seems fairly hell-bent on converting everyone to Scientology himself anyway.

You don't have to be a celebrity expert to see that Will Smith and Tom Cruise have been hanging out a lot lately. But why? What caused this sudden closeness? Was it friendly competition between Will Smith and Tom Cruise to see who's best at doing unnervingly loud laughs? Are they both members of the same Los Angeles pro-am high-fiving club? Or is it because they're both Scientologists determined to enslave the world in whatever it is exactly they believe in?

It's a possibility. Remember that Will Smith's wife Jada Pinkett Smith was one of the first people to see Suri Cruise? Remember that she's a Scientologist? Remember that Will and Jada homeschool their kids using Scientology textbooks? Remember that Will Smith was bigging up Scientology on TV not so long ago? 

All the signs seem to point to Will Smith becoming a Scientologist – especially since it's been reported that his wrap gift to the crew of his new movie Hancock were tokens for a free personality test at a Scientology centre. According to the New York Daily News:

Big stars traditionally distribute "wrap presents" to crew members after completing a film. His recent gift after wrapping next summer's comedy "Hancock" was a card good for a personality test at your local Scientology center. Fun! Never mind that such tests are given free by the church anyway. The quiz is designed to convert people to the religion by identifying personality flaws that - surprise! - Scientology can fix right up for you.

Aside from the creepy religious undertones of the personality test, what kind of a crap gift is that? Apparently it came in a goodie bag, so lord knows what else was in there. A DVD copy of Battlefield Earth? A hologram of Xenu looking ticked off? Kirstie Alley? Bleurgh.

Anyway, you shouldn't worry about this Scientology-recruiting gift converting hoards of hairy sound engineers to the religion, because we hear you only pass the personality test if your personality is found to be 'really really ridiculously gullible almost to the point where it's a medical syndrome.'

What you should worry about, though, is Scientology running wild on Will Smith the same way as it did with Tom Cruise. No, we're not talking about the avalanche of rumours about his personal life, the constant public ridicule or the lightning-fast erosion of his movie career – we're just slightly nervous that Scientology will convince Will Smith to get one of those creepy Hitler haircuts that Tom's been walking about with lately.

Read more:

Will Smith Boosting Scientology – NY Daily News