Hollywood marriages come and go, but Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes managed to make their 5-year union the stuff of legend.
It was memorable right out of the gate. In 2005, Cruise appeared on Oprah to make a pronouncement. The War of the Worlds star was in love with Katie Holmes, and he wanted to show everyone that it was the real deal in the best way he could think of: by jumping on Oprah’s furniture, repeatedly fist-pumping, and whooping periodically. Later in the episode, Cruise pulled his new girlfriend on stage and kissed her awkwardly to prove, once again, just how real it all was.
Two months later, Tom proposed to Katie at the top of the Eiffel Tower followed by the traditional post-engagement press conference, and an elaborate wedding.
But it wasn’t to last. In June 2012, Holmes reportedly stunned her husband when she served him divorce papers. Details were scant, but sources said that Holmes sought full custody of their 6-year-old daughter, Suri. The most shocking public detail was how fast they wrapped it up. However, fans and press couldn’t help but speculate on what made Holmes leave so suddenly.
We explore all of this and more in 20 Crazy Things You Didn’t Know About Tom Cruise And Katie Holmes’ Marriage.
20. Stories of Tom’s "Wife Auditions"
When you’re as famous as Tom Cruise, you can't expect to find a suitable bride by swiping right on a dating app. In Going Clear, Lawrence Wright claims says that the Church of Scientology brought in several actors to audition for the role of Mrs. Cruise. Stars like Lindsay Lohan, Jessica Alba, and Scarlett Johansson all thought they were screen testing for Mission Impossible III.
Ex-Scientologist Marc Headley claims he watched many tapes interviews with Scientologist actresses who thought they were auditioning for a training film.
One such candidate, Norwegian actress Anette Iren Johansen, claims she was subjected to repeated recorded audits regarding her romantic history and tendencies. Auditors specifically asked her what she thought of Tom Cruise. Johansen left the church in 2013.
A Church of Scientology spokesperson has denied all of these allegations.
19. Tom Almost Married Someone Else
According to Maureen Orth’s 2012 Vanity Fair article, church head, David Miscavige made it his personal mission to find Tom Cruise a nice Scientologist girl with whom to settle down. They thought they’d found her in Homeland actress Nazanin Boniadi.
Prior to their “relationship”, Church members prepared Boniadi with a makeover and daily audits. Boniadi reports thats a high-ranking Scientology officer demanded she reveal intimate details about her romantic history. They also reportedly showed her files on her then-boyfriend to incite their breakup.
On their first date, Tom and Nazanin went ice skating at Rockerfeller Center before spending the night at Trump Tower. Cruise reportedly told Boniadi, “I’ve never felt this way before.” She signed a confidentiality agreement and became Cruise’s girlfriend for a little over a year. In January 2005, a Church representative dumped her on Cruise’s behalf, explaining that he wanted someone with “her own power - like Nicole."
18. Tom was Katie's childhood crush
Many little girls dream of marrying their childhood celebrity crush. But Katie Holmes actually got to do it. Just a year before TomKat became a household name, Holmes presciently told Seventeen magazine "I used to think I was going to marry Tom Cruise." The Dawson’s Creek star was engaged to actor Chris Kline at the time.
After Katie divorced Tom, one of her Catholic School chums corroborated her former infatuation with the Risky Business star, telling Celebuzz, “In religion class, when we were about 16, we would have to say prayers to keep a certain someone safe and out of harm. Katie would say it for Tom Cruise. We did that every day, so she would have said thousands of prayers for him.”
Her former classmate also revealed that Katie kept secret photos of the actor hidden inside her textbooks, and said that getting married to Tom was “her dream come true".
17. The Wedding Was In an actual castle
It stands to reason that Scientology’s biggest name would have a wedding to match the magnitude of his celebrity. In November 2006, Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes wed at Odescalchi Castle, a breathtaking 15th century structure in Bracciano, Italy.
The final bill for the affair reportedly came to around $3 million.
Extravagances included fireworks, a 5-tier wedding cake, and greeters dressed in Renaissance garb. Katie also wore two different Giorgio Armani dresses during the evening. Each gown was adorned with Swarovski crystals that took over 350 hours to place.
At the time, the world-famous designer told People Magazine, "Katie wanted a simple, elegant dress. I wanted to make it modern but at the same time complement the sweetness and energy she conveys."
16. Leah Remini only got a wedding invite if she brought JLo
You can’t have the Wedding of the Century without the company of Hollywood’s biggest names. Among the famous attendees were Will Smith and Jada Pinkett Smith, David and Victoria Beckham, Jenny McCarthy and then-partner Jim Carrey, and fellow Scientologists John Travolta and Kelly Preston. Even Brooke Shields, who famously feuded with Tom Cruise over the use of anti-depressants, buried the hatchet to join the party. On Jenny McCarthy’s SiriusXM show, Shields explained, "If you get invited to that wedding, you go."
Leah Remini, who had yet to denounce Scientology, claims Tom and Katie invited under the condition that she bring her BFF, Jennifer Lopez. She was also instructed to make sure Lopez and husband Marc Anthony didn't leave early. The glamorous guests danced the night away to Mark Ronson’s DJ set. Lopez even jumped on stage to perform one of her songs live.
15. Katie Kept Tom Waiting At The Altar
In her memoir, Troublemaker, Leah Remini dropped many juicy tidbits about the wedding of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes. Remini says she and her husband, Angelo, got in huge trouble for holding up “The Wedding of the Century” when they arrived late. But according to Remini, Katie wasn’t exactly the picture of punctuality either.
Remini wrote that after Tom took his place at the front of the chapel, he stood “for the next twenty minutes (but what seemed like an eternity)” with “that everything-is-great look plastered on his face even as the crowd grew uncomfortable."
Remini posits no theories as to what held Katie up. However, she says that at one point, Jennifer Lopez asked her in earnest, "Do you think Katie is coming?"
14. Tom performed a Top Gun song at the wedding
Top Gun features one of the most iconic moments in Tom Cruise’s career. Maverick’s seduction technique involves serenading his love interest in a crowded bar with a passionate rendition of The Righteous Brothers’ “You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling”. Cruise apparently thought it would be cute to reenact the scene at his own wedding.
Never mind the fact that it’s a song about heartbreak and, you know, losing that lovin’ feeling. Some sample lyrics from this most puzzling of song choices:
Now there's no welcome look in your eyes when I reach for you
And now you're starting to criticize little things I do
It makes me just feel like crying
'Cause baby, something beautiful's dyin'
Cruise must not believe in bad omens because not many people would dare sing a breakup song at their own wedding.
13. Tom Tried To Change Katie’s Name
When an adult suddenly decides to change the name they’ve gone by their whole lives, it’s notoriously difficult to convince people to comply. But try telling that to Tom Cruise, who reportedly decided that he was much too sophisticated to be married to a “Katie”.
One day Cruise began to refer to his wife as “Kate” and used it at every opportunity.
When asked about the change, Cruise told All Headline News, "Katie is a young girl’s name. Her name is Kate now–she’s a child-bearing woman." Allegedly, Cruise even wanted to make the change official. Holmes appeared to go along with the rebranding at the time, but since the divorce, no one except Cruise has called her “Kate”.
12. Katie's “Knowledge Report” On Leah Remini
When someone has misbehaved or acted against the church, Scientologists are encouraged to file “Knowledge Reports” on fellow members.
According to Troublemaker, Katie Holmes filed a “KR” after her wedding to call out Leah Remini on her “very upsetting” behavior at the event, including “disrupting the party”, setting a “poor example to others”, and making “the party all about her.” Remini writes that Holmes concluded the report with reference to the fact that all of this so-called bad behavior "disturbed her greatly."
Holmes’ alleged handler, (now ex-Scientologist) Jessica Rodriguez also filed a report making similar accusations. Remini claims that because of the reports, she was sentenced to 4 months of mental re-conditioning at the Scientology Flagship base at her own expense ($300,000).
11. Katie's career suffered during the marriage
Actors love to talk about how un-romantic it is to shoot staged kisses and love scenes. Nonetheless, Tom Cruise reportedly implemented rules on what Katie Holmes could and could not do with her male co-stars on screen.
Reports of this started almost immediately after they began dating in 2005. At the time, Holmes was starring opposite Aaron Eckhart in Thank You For Smoking. Though the characters played by Holmes and Eckhart are intimate in the film, TMZ reported that Cruise imposed a so-called "art kill" which prevented the release of any promotional materials for the film which featured Holmes kissing Eckhart.
Sources also claim that he put restrictions on the types of roles she could take during their marriage. He reportedly didn’t want her to take any parts that would require her kissing or showing affection for another male actor.
10. Tom's Crazy Dinner Parties
One of the more perplexing claims that Leah Remini makes in her book involves dinner parties at the TomKat residence. Though The King of Queens actress admits she never got to know the couple very well, she was nonetheless on the list for some of his “celebrity-filled dinners.”
After the meals, Cruise would want to play games - and it wasn’t always Pictionary.
Remini writes that one time, “he invited some Scientologists and a few other celebrities like Will Smith’s wife, Jada Pinkett Smith, to his house and announced he wanted to play hide-and-seek.” At the time, Remini found the requests charming, if a little odd. “I came to think of him as a big kid with his loud laugh, high energy, and goofy ideas of fun.” Leah added that she opted out of hide-and-seek because of her five-inch Jimmy Choos.
9. The treatment of Suri
One of the more disturbing allegations from Leah Remini’s book involves Suri Cruise. While at a pre-TomKat wedding dinner party, Remini writes that she heard the persistent cry of a baby. After a while, her motherly instincts kicked in and she sought out the source.
What she found was 7-month-old Suri laying on the floor of a bathroom.
Though three other women were present, including Cruise's sister and his assistant, they were doing nothing to soothe the infant. They were merely “looking at her like they thought she was L. Ron Hubbard incarnate, and addressing her more like an adult than a baby.”
Remini claims that she “grabbed the bottle from Suri’s diaper bag, went into the kitchen, asked someone to warm it up… and returned to the bathroom, where Suri was still on the floor and crying.”
8. Katie's reported "Handler"
There are numerous reports that during the Batman Begins press tour, Katie Holmes never went anywhere without her assigned “Scientologist chaperone” (an official church title), Jessica Rodriguez. Journalist Tony Ortega said that, “Jessica was answering questions for Katie in interviews, and it was really, really weird.”
W Magazine’s Robert Haskell writes that he was put off by Rodriguez’s presence during his interview with Holmes. He describes her as “the tall, cold-eyed… third wheel at all of Holmes's recent public appearances…Polite and restrained but alert to troublesome questions, Rodriguez chimes in only to offer an amen following one of Holmes's rhapsodies. ('You adore him,' Rodriguez says after the actress explains that she can't keep her hands off Cruise.) But she rises from her chair when Holmes is asked how she feels about the widespread disbelief in her new union.”
7. Prying Eyes
As if an ever-present Scientologist Chaperone weren’t enough of an invasion of privacy, several sources claim that TomKat Manor was fully staffed by members of the Church’s labor division known as Sea Org. They were reportedly hired to cater to Tom Cruise’s “every whim,” bcut, like all good Scientologists, they were also expected to report anything “out ethics” to Church officials.
One person who made such claims was Ron Miscavige, the father of Church head, David Miscavige. Ron, who worked for Sea Org for 27 years before defecting from the Church in 2012, claims that their presence, “didn’t sit so well with Katie, of course, and it hurt the marriage… She and Tom had big differences about the way life should be lived.”
6. Tom Bought A Home Sonogram Machine
In October 2005, after 5 blissful months together, Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes announced that they were expecting a child. But The Last Samurai actor raised more than a few eyebrows when he revealed that they would be monitoring Katie’s pregnancy from the comfort of their own home. Cruise planned to purchase a sonogram machine for on-demand ultrasounds.
Aside from the exorbitant cost of such equipment, some doctors warned that sonograms should only be conducted by certified technicians. Untrained users could miss potential and time-sensitive problems with the pregnancy. Furthermore, excessive and unnecessary ultrasounds can harm the fetus.
Cruise assured his detractors that he would donate the machine to a hospital after Holmes gave birth. In 2006, California passed “The Tom Cruise Law” which “prohibits the sale of diagnostic ultrasound to anyone but appropriately licensed clinicians.”
5. Silent Childbirth
Anyone who has experienced child labor knows that maintaining silence isn't always an option. However, Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard decreed that utterances in the delivery room can harm a baby during their birthing journey. Ever the dedicated followers, Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes attempted to stick as close as possible to the teachings of Dianetics.
According to Hubbard, "Everyone must learn to say nothing within the expectant mother's hearing using labor and delivery… Particularly during birth, absolute silence must be maintained and the more gentle the delivery, the better." Hubbard also states that after birth, the baby should, "be wrapped somewhat tightly in a warm blanket, very soft, and then left alone for a day or so.”
There’s no word on how closely the couple stuck to their birth plan once labor was underway.
4. Custody of Suri
To this day, Tom Cruise’s second wife, Nicole Kidman, remains estranged from the two children they adopted together. Following their divorce, the Church declared Kidman an SP (“Suppressive Person”), and her children, who remain practicing Scientologists, were instructed to “disconnect” from her.
Katie Holmes reportedly decided to end her five-year marriage to Cruise “amidst rumors that the star feared her husband was planning to ship their daughter Suri off to Sea Org—an elite training division of the Church that requires its members to sign a ‘billion-year contract.”
Their swift divorce settlement allegedly stipulated that Suri cut all ties with Scientology. Unfortunately, for Cruise, this means that Suri is now considered an SP. In 2017, InTouch reported that Cruise has spent very little time with his daughter since the divorce.
3. Their Divorce's alleged "No-Dating Stipulation"
Katie Holmes wasn’t calling all the shots during her divorce to Tom Cruise. A source told Radar Online that as part of the terms, Holmes could not go public with a new relationship for a period of five years. "She's allowed to date, but she cannot do so in a public fashion, and she's not supposed to let any boyfriend near their daughter, Suri."
In exchange, Katie received a quick, drama-free divorce and $400,000 a year in child support (or the curious sum of $33,333.33 per month) until Suri turns 18.
Holmes allegedly began dating actor Jamie Foxx on the DL a year later. Occasionally, someone would bust them holding hands or making eyes at each other. But per the terms of the divorce, both Katie and Jamie denied the relationship for four years.
2. Holmes Dated Jamie Foxx In Secret
Four years after the speculation began regarding a secret romance between Katie Holmes and Jamie Foxx, they quietly confirmed their couplehood by holding hands on a public beach.
In 2013, rumors of a relationship sprouted when they were spotted dancing at a charity event in the Hamptons.
But a source says Holmes was still bound by the terms of her divorce from Tom Cruise, to forgo “embarrassing Tom in various ways, like talking about him or Scientology, or publicly dating another man for five years after the divorce.”
From 2013 to 2017, Holmes and Foxx repeatedly and vehemently insisted that they were just friends. In 2015, Foxx cagily said, “Sometimes when you read the stuff you’re like, ‘Wow! That’s so not true!’” Holmes preferred to avoid the question altogether, telling ET, “That’s not something I want to answer.”
1. Katie's Masterful Exit Strategy
After spending half a decade accused of being a Scientology pawn in a sham marriage to Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes showed her mettle with a surprise divorce. She may even have begun preparing for it before they were even married.
Sources say Holmes worked closely with her father, a divorce attorney, to craft an “iron-clad” pre-nuptial agreement that “filled five Bankers Boxes.” Holmes also reportedly avoided disputes by calling Cruise while he was shooting a film in Iceland, and subsequently cutting off all direct contact with him.
Because of her shrewd negotiating tactics, and her simple, single-minded demands for child support and sole custody of Suri, the divorce was officially filed in an astoundingly fast 11 days.
---
Do you know any other crazy TomKat stories? Let us know in the comments!