did mimi rogers introduce tom cruise to scientology

How Scientology broke up Tom Cruise and Mimi Rogers: The story you haven’t heard

Tom_Cruise_Mimi_Rogers2

If the Church of Scientology was so active helping to break up Tom Cruise’s second marriage, how involved were they in ending his first, to actress Mimi Rogers?

In 2012, Rathbun told Vanity Fair writer Maureen Orth that Scientology had a hand in ending both relationships: “I participated in the Mimi divorce and in the Nic divorce. Both women got cold on Miscavige. He was integral to the breakup of the marriages,” Rathbun said. But Orth offered no more details on what had happened with Rogers. In Lawrence Wright’s 2013 book, Going Clear , which Gibney’s film is based on, there are a few more details about the split, including a quote from Rathbun about how he took divorce papers to Mimi and told her it was the best thing for Scientology.

But Rathbun tells us that there’s a much more involved story than has ever been published about how Scientology was involved in the breakup of Cruise and Rogers. With the help of Rathbun and several other sources, some of whom have never spoken for publication before, we’ve put together a story that should fill in some important gaps in the record.

Mimi Spickler was the daughter of a Scientology mission holder, Phil Spickler, who had taken up Dianetics in 1952 and had worked with L. Ron Hubbard at the Founding Church of Scientology in Washington DC. He was part of the old guard who helped Hubbard build Scientology, in part through the mission network, which funneled new members into the organization and could be lucrative for the mission holders themselves.

But after Hubbard went into total seclusion in 1980, the missions were targeted by a new cohort of leadership in the church, which included a very young David Miscavige. Miscavige and other members of the Sea Org held an infamous meeting in San Francisco in 1982 which decimated the missions. Phil Spickler left the church in disgust, but he didn’t abandon his interest in Hubbard or the subject of Scientology itself. (By church standards, that made him a “squirrel,” someone who practices Scientology outside of official channels.)

Mimi had grown up training in her father’s Palo Alto mission, becoming a Class VIII auditor. In 1977, she married Scientologist Jim Rogers, and they opened a field auditing office in Sherman Oaks they called the Scientology Enhancement Centre. She divorced Rogers in 1980 and sold the Enhancement Centre, but she still used it with one of her best friends, Kirstie Alley.

In 1985, Mimi Rogers met Tom Cruise, who was already becoming a major Hollywood star. They started dating in 1986, and she introduced him to Scientology, taking him to the Enhancement Centre.

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  A close family friend to Mimi tells us that part of the reason Mimi wanted to get Cruise Scientology training was that she thought it would help him handle what she perceived to be his major flaw — his philandering. “Tom was fucking everything that moved,” the friend tells us. “But they were all women. I know why the gay rumors started later, but it had nothing to do with who he was having sex with. He slept with women, and he slept with a lot of them.”

Mimi was six years Tom’s senior, and two inches taller, but she accepted when he asked her to marry him. They had a small, secret ceremony in upstate New York with just a few people present, including Emilio Estevez, who was Tom’s best man.

The date: May 9, 1987, a date that is very important to Scientologists. On May 9, 1950, L. Ron Hubbard first published the book that changed his life and led to the Scientology movement, Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health . The family friend says that Tom and Mimi then tried to have children, and when she didn’t get pregnant, the gay rumors started, and Cruise has never shaken them. Rogers later had two children with her current husband.

As Lawrence Wright explains in Going Clear , Cruise’s involvement in Scientology presented David Miscavige with a bit of a dilemma. On the one hand, after L. Ron Hubbard’s death in January 1986 Scientology desperately needed a new celebrity of Tom’s stature to improve its image. But on the other hand, he had got in through Rogers, who was connected to her “squirrel” father. “It would be one thing to have Tom Cruise as a trophy for Scientology, but it would be a disaster if he became a walking advertisement for the squirrels,” Wright pointed out.

If Mimi Rogers was hoping Scientology would help cure Tom of his predilection to sleep around, Marty Rathbun tells us that Miscavige was determined to use Scientology to encourage Tom’s adventures as a way to push Rogers away.

In 1989, Miscavige brought Cruise to Scientology’s secretive 500-acre “Int Base” near Hemet, California and assigned the church’s “Inspector General” — Sea Org executive Greg Wilhere — to be Tom’s auditor. Rathbun says that he and Wilhere shared an office in one of the compound’s buildings known as “The Villas” (Miscavige had another of them all to himself as his residence) and he was privy to the daily discussions as Miscavige told Wilhere what he wanted said to Cruise during his counseling sessions.

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  “Miscavige was micromanaging the living hell out of it behind the scenes,” Rathbun says. “Miscavige wanted to own Tom. He didn’t want Spickler to have any connection to him. Dave was maneuvering himself into being Tom’s opinion leader and best friend. He needed Wilhere to convince Tom that anything good that happened to him, you have to attribute to Dave. The purpose was to make Dave a god in his eyes.” (John Brousseau, who escaped from the base in 2010, tells us Miscavige eventually prevailed .)

Filming for Days of Thunder began in the Charlotte area in the fall of 1989, and Cruise moved into a secluded lake house provided by Rick Hendrick of Hendrick Motorsports. About two weeks later, some household staff came into the dwelling and were surprised to see one of Cruise’s assistants waving at them, warning them not to come any further, and to keep quiet.

“He’s in there with a woman. We need to get out of here,” the assistant said. “He’s in bed with Nicole. I saw her arm and her hair, I know it’s her.”

Cruise had convinced producers Don Simpson and Jerry Bruckheimer to cast Nicole Kidman for Days of Thunder after he’d seen her in Dead Calm . As Wright points out in Going Clear , her presence on the cast doesn’t make a lot of sense — at 22, she was too young to be the neurosurgeon she plays in the movie. But Cruise wanted her in, and he got her. And then, two weeks into the shoot, they were sleeping together back at his lake house.

Soon they were inseparable on the set, but because Cruise was still married to Rogers, they made some concessions to propriety. When the production moved to the Daytona area and a party was thrown at a local nightclub, they were careful to arrive separately.

A few weeks after that relationship started, however, Mimi Rogers was scheduled to visit the set. And Wilhere was ready for her. He was also on set with Cruise, and was auditing him, encouraging him about Nicole, as Miscavige wanted. When Mimi arrived, one member of the crew tells us, “The Scientologists were waiting for her. And they ‘handled’ her, in their language.”

When she realized what was going on, Mimi demanded that she and Cruise go through Scientology’s version of marriage counseling. We’ve written in the past about Scientology’s marriage counseling, which is as odd as you’d probably expect it to be. Mimi and Tom would be asked to sit down with an auditor, with each of them taking turns being quizzed. In Mimi’s case, for hour upon hour, she would be asked only two questions: “What have you done to Tom?” and “What have you withheld from Tom?” Then, it would be Tom’s turn to answer the same questions about Mimi, over and over.

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  Rathbun tells us this process took place after the filming of Days of Thunder ended in May 1990, and at the International Base. He remembers that it took about a week, and Mimi left unsatisfied. “Both sides on that co-audit have to end up saying that they’re happy. That doesn’t mean that they have to stay married. But they never got there — Miscavige made sure of that,” he says.

After the counseling failed, Rathbun then stepped in to deliver the church’s instructions to Mimi that it was time for the marriage to end. He visited her, carrying divorce papers, and with an attorney whose very presence he knew would carry an unmistakable message. It was Sherman Lenske , who had been L. Ron Hubbard’s personal lawyer. Rathbun says the visit was intended to intimidate Mimi, and it worked. As he explained to Lawrence Wright, Rathbun told her something about how it was the best thing for Scientology (“the greatest good for the greatest number of dynamics,” is how Scientologists are convinced to give up their own interests to the group). But visiting her with Lenske sent a more subtle message, that she would regret not signing the papers. She signed, and Mimi was out of the picture.

Disgusted with how she was treated, Mimi quit the Church of Scientology that year, 1990. But her close family friend says that to this day, she still talks about the “tech” with her close friends. Like her father, she still has an interest in the Hubbard philosophy she grew up with. But she isn’t talking about her experiences. “She’s made it very clear she’s not going to talk about Scientology and Tom Cruise. She signed an agreement with Tom not to to talk about it,” the family friend tells us.

Meanwhile, Rathbun says that while the operation Miscavige had put in place through Greg Wilhere had produced the desired result, there was a new problem — it had worked too well. Now, Tom was talking about wanting to marry Nicole Kidman, and she had her own unsavory connections.

“It just shows you how twisted and corrupted Scientology is,” Rathbun says. “Why would Scientology want to promote Tom’s promiscuity? Because Mimi was connected to her father Phil Spickler, and Miscavige wanted to own Tom outright. But then, only a few months later, Wilhere got pummeled because he reported that Nicole had got her claws in, and Miscavige was now worried that she was going to lead him away.”

As Wright and Gibney explain in the film Going Clear , Kidman was “PTS” — a potential trouble source — because her father was a prominent Australian psychologist — a “suppressive person” or “SP” by Scientology’s standards. (Scientology hates psychology and psychiatry with a passion.) As Nicole began her own training in Scientology at the International Base, Rathbun says, it was his job to get her through the “PTS/SP Course,” which explains what it means for someone to be suppressive or a potential trouble source.

“I had to make my best effort to educate her that her father was an SP,” Rathbun says. “That didn’t fly too well.”

During one meeting when Miscavige came to the office shared by Rathbun and Wilhere, the Scientology leader asked Wilhere to drop a suggestion the next time he was auditing Cruise.

“He made this comment for Greg to try to get Tom to take another look at Nicole before getting married,” Rathbun says. “When they were together, Tom was saying how much he was into Nicole, and Dave was encouraging him. But behind his back, he told Wilhere to plant a seed to break them up.” And Rathbun says Miscavige expressed it in his usual tough-guy style.

“He thinks this Nicole thing is for real!” Rathbun says Miscavige screamed at Wilhere. “You son of a bitch, you better start planting a seed!”

But when Wilhere did try to suggest that Tom reconsider his plans, it backfired. “It pissed Tom off, and he reported it to David Miscavige. So then Miscavige made a public show of demoting Wilhere from his post as Inspector General. He was just like Captain Renault in Casablanca . He was shocked to learn that Wilhere would dare tell Tom such a thing. And the next thing you know, Dave is best man at the wedding of Tom and Nicole.” They were married on Christmas Eve, 1990.

Rathbun says Miscavige made a big show of stripping Wilhere of his position. “Wilhere was blown away. All of his certs were cancelled. And Miscavige was bragging to Tom that he’d busted him down,” Rathbun says. The role of Inspector General was then left open for seven years, from 1990 to 1997, until Rathbun himself was promoted into it. Wilhere then was rarely in a position to run anything — but Miscavige later used him to run the Nazanin Boniadi operation in 2004, as portrayed in Going Clear . (Wilhere was also one of the executives who ended up in “The Hole,” Miscavige’s bizarre office-prison, where his employees spent years at a time. Wilhere today is still working at the International Base.)

Meanwhile, Miscavige’s fears about Nicole’s commitment to Scientology proved prophetic. After a couple of years with Cruise, the two of them began pulling away from Scientology and then had very little connection to it from about 1993 to 2000, when their relationship came apart — and then in several ways that mirrored what had happened ten years earlier with Mimi Rogers.

Rathbun, who left Scientology in 2004, tells us he now regrets the part he played in the operation to separate Mimi and Tom. “I wrote to her and apologized for all that. She didn’t know the details of what we’d done, but she was generally hip to what was going on,” he says.

Mimi_Rogers_Playboy

  In 1993, Rogers posed for Playboy , and was asked by the magazine why she and Cruise had split up. “Well, here’s the real story. Tom was seriously thinking of becoming a monk. At least for that period of time, it looked as though marriage wouldn’t fit into his overall spiritual need. And he thought he had to be celibate to maintain the purity of his instrument.” The magazine said that she added, drily, “My instrument needed tuning.”

Ever since, this quote has been repeated to explain why the couple split — because Tom Cruise was some sort of celibate seeker.

But her close family friend assures us that wasn’t the case.

“Mimi has a wry sense of humor, and that was just a joke.”

  ——————–

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Mimi Rogers, Tom Cruise and the marriage that gave Scientology its most-famous son

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LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA: Tom Cruise, who sparked rumors of a romance with Shakira after they were spotted together at the Miami Formula 1 Grand Prix on May 7, was trolled about his association with Scientology as fans warned Shakira to not date him because of his links to the organization. One of them wrote, “SHAKIRA! LISTEN TO ME! HE'S TRYING TO RECRUIT YOU INTO SCIENTOLOGY! DON'T GO OUT WITH HIM!”

The 60-year-old actor is known for his very long and deep association with the organization, but it was his first wife, Mimi Rogers, who introduced him to it. Cruise, who had been married thrice, exchanged vows with Rogers in 1987. However, they parted in 1990.

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SHAKIRA! LISTEN TO ME! HE'S TRYING TO RECRUIT YOU INTO SCIENTOLOGY! DON'T GO OUT WITH HIM! LISTEN TO ME! SHAKIRA!! https://t.co/okLyDLEze1 pic.twitter.com/xHyKL4RpBc — alice | team shiv (@ribslyrics) May 10, 2023

Where is Mimi Rogers?

Reports suggest Rogers is in Los Angeles and married to film producer Chris Ciaffa. The duo got married on March 20, 2003, after they met on the sets of Ivan Passer's made-for-cable movie 'Fourth Story' in 1990, per TheThings . They have a daughter, Lucy, who was born on November 20, 1994, and a son, ASU baseball player Charlie, who was born on July 30, 2001.

In 1995, Rogers reportedly said that she was "waiting for the moment when I don't have to talk about that [blankety-blank] name anymore." However, the situation didn't change in 2006 and she said that she still had to face questions about Cruise, despite being married to Ciaffa. She said, "I've had two kids since then, I can barely remember my own name let alone be remembering something almost seventeen years ago."

According to The Famous People, Rogers, who is now 67, played Honey Chandler in ‘Bosch’ from 2015 to 2019. From 2016 to 2019, she played various roles in TV series and movies including ‘Mad Men,’ 'Blue Bloods,’ ‘NCIS: Los Angeles,’ ‘The Stranger Game,’ ‘Falling Up,’ ‘Affairs of State’ and ‘What Still Remains'. 

When did Mimi Rogers join Scientology?

Rogers' father, Philip C Spickler, a civil engineer, was Jewish and her mother Kathy Talent, was Episcopalian. Her connection to Scientology comes from her father who became part of the organization before she was born. The organization became a major part of her upbrining. In 1977, she married Scientologist Jim Rogers, and they started a field auditing office in Sherman Oaks called the Scientology Enhancement Centre, stated The Underground Bunker. However, they divorced in 1980, following which she married Cruise.

Why did Mimi Rogers and Tom Cruise split?

In a 1993 interview with Playboy, Rogers revealed the reason why she and Cruise split. She said, as per E! News , "Is that the story, that I was bored with that child and threw him over, chewed him up and spat him out? Well, here's the real story. Tom was seriously thinking of becoming a monk. At least for that period of time, it looked as though marriage wouldn't fit into his overall spiritual need. And he thought he had to be celibate to maintain the purity of his instrument. My instrument needed tuning."

However, a Page Six reported stated that former church executive and co-host of the series 'Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath', Mike Rinderin, who left Scientology in 2007, claimed in his new memoir, 'A Billion Years: My Escape From a Life in the Highest Ranks of Scientology,' that the organization's officials were assigned to talk Rogers into agreeing to divorce Cruise, since he became infatuated with his co-star Nicole Kidman while filming 1990's 'Days of Thunder' and was climbing the ladder of fame. However, he was married to Rogers at that time.

As per the book, church leader David Miscavige “had been invited to Daytona, to watch the filming. He and his trusted lieutenant Greg Wilhere, now assigned as Cruise’s personal auditor, hung out with Cruise at the Speedway, went skydiving with him, and most importantly helped facilitate Cruise’s desire to make Nicole his new wife. Miscavige no doubt saw this as an opportunity to demonstrate his ability to make Tom’s wishes come true.”

Cruise and Rogers eventually got divorced in February 1990 and the latter cut ties with the organization. The same year on Christmas Eve, he married Kidman and Miscavige was his best man. Rinder wrote, “It was indicative of how far Miscavige was willing to go to ally Cruise."

Mimi Rogers and Tom Cruise. pic.twitter.com/ud7OrNwmSv — Saturday Night at the Movies (@TVandFilmExpert) March 17, 2022

This article contains remarks made on the Internet by individual people and organizations. MEAWW cannot confirm them independently and does not support claims or opinions being made online.

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How tom cruise was introduced to scientology: report.

Stephanie Marcus

Senior Entertainment Editor, HuffPost

did mimi rogers introduce tom cruise to scientology

Tom Cruise was already on his way to becoming a movie star well before he joined the Church of Scientology. With leading roles in hit films like "Risky Business" and "Top Gun," Cruise's celebrity status was quickly building, which made him a prime target to be inducted into the Church.

The actor was first introduced to Scientology -- a religion that was founded in 1953 by science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard -- in the late 1980s by his first wife, actress Mimi Rogers, whose father, Phil Spickler, was one of the church's most powerful members during the religion's early years, reports RadarOnline .

Today, Cruise is both the highest-paid actor in Hollywood and the public face of Scientology, rumored to be second in command with only the church's current leader, David Miscavige, above him. It's a far cry from Cruise's younger self, a dyslexic kid who once reportedly aspired to become a Catholic priest .

RadarOnline reports that Cruise was lured into Scientology by Rogers, who was seven years his senior, and became a believer when some of the church's methods helped him overcome his dyslexia.

"I knew some of the people who kid-gloved him into becoming a member," said Nancy Many, a former Scientologist who left the church after 27 years and now "works to help others who have been victimized, and to expose the abuse and crimes of her former group," according to her website.

Cruise's celebrity status meant special treatment, alleges Many, who explained that "everything was orchestrated and orientated. Tom has a problem reading so they don’t have him doing the course on his own and paired him up one-on-one."

Karen Pressley, a commanding officer of the church's Celebrity Centre in Hollywood from 1987 to 1989, confirmed these allegations to CNN.

"There was no bigger recruit than Tom Cruise," Pressley told CNN's Kareen Wynter . "My job was to ensure that celebrities were recruited, that celebrities were well serviced within our organization, and also to open up new celebrity centers around the world."

Pressley also confirmed Many's claims that celebrity members received special perks, and said that Hubbard targeted celebrities with the intention of adding credibility to the church's beliefs. In exchange for special treatment, Pressley claims that church leaders expected their star members to stay committed to the organization and endorse its benefits.

Cruise divorced Rogers in February 1990 and married actress Nicole Kidman in December that same year. Kidman reportedly never supported Scientology and Many claims that church officials manipulated Cruise into ending his marriage with the actress.

"The level of manipulation is unbelievable, it is like 'The Truman Show,'" Many told RadarOnline.

For years, Cruise's involvement with the church seemed like a mild quirk, even when it was reported in 2001 that the religion played a major role in his split from Kidman .

The actor's beliefs publicly came to the forefront in January 2004, when he announced that he thought psychiatry should be outlawed , and again in 2005 when he openly criticized actress Brooke Shields for using antidepressants to treat her postpartum depression, which led to an embarrassing argument with "Today" show host Matt Lauer.

With Cruise speaking so publicly about his beliefs, it prompted some to wonder if the actor had taken on an official leadership role within the church. When asked for comment about Cruise's level of involvement in the organization, the Church of Scientology International directed all questions about the actor to his publicist and lawyer. Cruise's lawyer Bert Fields, told The Huffington Post that, "Tom Cruise has no official role, title or position in the Church of Scientology. He is simply a parishioner."

Cruise may not have an official role in the church, but he's easily the religion's most identifiable member, which is why as soon as news broke that his third wife, actress Katie Holmes, had filed for divorce on June 29, it was widely reported that Scientology played a major role in her choice to end the marriage -- specifically her concerns for the couple's 6-year-old daughter Suri's involvement with the Church.

The former couple were able to reach a settlement agreement just over a week after Holmes reportedly blindsided Cruise with the news. The details of the settlement are to remain private, but Cruise's lawyer issued a statement downplaying the church's role in Cruise's divorce.

"Let me be very clear about this. The Church of Scientology played absolutely NO ROLE in the divorce settlement talks at all. Period. The mere suggestion that the Church was involved in any element of the talks and ultimate settlement is categorically false. Anyone suggesting otherwise is just wrong," Fields told RadarOnline .

More celebrity Scientologists:

John Travolta

Celebrity Scientologists

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The hollowness of Tom Cruise

How Tom Cruise went from superstar to laughingstock and back again.

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Tom Cruise has spent this year flying high, literally.

At CinemaCon in April, when Mission: Impossible 7 screened its first trailer for theater owners, Cruise sent along a video intro that he’d filmed while standing on top of a biplane flying over a canyon in South Africa. It ended with him launching into a barrel roll. When he arrived at the premiere of Top Gun: Maverick in San Diego in May, he flew there in a helicopter he piloted himself , emblazoned with his own name and the title of his film.

He’s also flying high on a metaphorical level. Cruise turned 60 on July 3, and he shows no signs of slowing down. Top Gun: Maverick has made over $1 billion since it came out in May , the first film of Cruise’s career to do so and just the second film to manage the feat since the pandemic began in 2020. (The first was Spider-Man: No Way Home .)

In the pandemic era, a lot of movies are making only the most cursory appearance in theaters before they hit streaming, if they make it to theaters at all. Not Tom Cruise movies. The idea of Top Gun: Maverick premiering on streaming instead of in theaters? “Never going to happen,” Cruise said at Cannes in May , even though the completed film languished for two years before seeing the light of day. When Paramount told Cruise that Mission: Impossible 7 would play in theaters for only 45 days instead of the three months Cruise was used to, Cruise hired a lawyer .

For his efforts, Cruise is being hailed as the savior of the cinematic experience.

“Can Tom Cruise save the old-fashioned blockbuster?” asked the Telegraph .

Empire magazine described Cruise’s fight as “the battle to save cinema,” with “the biggest movie star in the world” at the vanguard.

“Cruise is here to remind us that the industry will not die on his watch. Not if he can help it,” said the LA Times . “And honestly, who among us won’t be thrilled if Cruise triumphs in life as in the movies?”

In a white room, Cruise hangs upside down in midair, suspended by a harness, and types on a computer.

It seems clear that Cruise sincerely sees himself as the savior of the big screen, and all the jobs that depend on it. (Or at the very least, he sees himself as the savior of Tom Cruise movies appearing on the big screen.) During the pandemic, he told audiences at Cannes, he called up theater owners to say , “Please, I know what you’re going through. Just know we are making Mission: Impossible , and Top Gun is coming out.” In December 2020, leaked audio footage from the set of Mission: Impossible 7 showed Cruise upbraiding crew members who violated Covid social distancing policies.

“They’re back there in Hollywood making movies right now because of us,” Cruise can be heard to shout on the footage . “Because they believe in us and what we’re doing. I’m on the phone with every fucking studio at night, insurance companies, producers, and they’re looking at us and using us to make their movies. We are creating thousands of jobs, you motherfuckers.”

“That’s what I sleep with every night,” Cruise concluded: “the future of this fucking industry!”

By now we should know: Tom Cruise is the hero of a movie that never ends. It’s one where he always, always saves the day.

That wasn’t always the case. Cruise’s stock plummeted in the 2000s after Oprah’s couch and Brooke Shields’ antidepressants . Yet today, Cruise is once again considered a bankable and iconic star. He is no longer a publicity liability for a movie studio.

There’s only one thing that Cruise might not be able to save. That’s the nagging, persistent sense that if the movie were ever to stop, when the lights came up, there would be nothing left of Tom Cruise at all.

“Cruise’s own laugh,” concluded Alex Pappademas in the New Yorker this May, “is the best Tom Cruise impression you’ve ever heard.”

But who says the movie ever has to stop?

did mimi rogers introduce tom cruise to scientology

Tom Cruise saves chivalry

“I like treating a woman the way that she deserves to be treated.” Tom Cruise to Oprah Winfrey, 2005 .

Here’s an oddity in the latest spree of killer Tom Cruise publicity: For once, the press is really into the way he’s interacting with women.

Over the course of his Top Gun press tour, Tom Cruise has been handed one positive headline after another for his chivalrous habit of taking charge of all ladies present, from Kate Middleton to his co-stars. If there is a woman in the same space as he is, Cruise will escort her up and down stairs and through doorways, present her to the camera, and make sure she is taken care of. It makes for incredible press. In her coverage of Cannes, gossip maven Elaine Lui remarked on how carefully Cruise looked after Top Gun co-star Jennifer Connelly. “I’m told he was never not attentive,” Lui wrote , “always focused on making sure she was looked after, never not ready with a hand to guide her from one place to another, never missing an opportunity to talk about how spectacular she looked, seemingly enthralled by her so that the cameras would pick up on his eyeline and transfer their focus to her.”

This display of “chivalry,” Lui concluded, was “very Tom Cruise.”

Cruise faces a laughing Connelly and holds her hands intimately in his own as photographers look on.

Chivalry is part of the old-fashioned action-hero masculinity Tom Cruise has long represented: the hero with the square jaw and faultless manners, kind and attentive to everyone around him. It’s also been central to Tom Cruise’s personal mythology for a long time, in both good ways and bad.

On the good side, Cruise used to be in the press on a regular basis for rescuing regular people: saving a family from a burning sailboat; getting the victim of a hit-and-run to the hospital and then paying her medical bills. Every actor who’s ever worked with him seems to have a Tom Cruise story about him making them some impossibly thoughtful gesture or gift .

On the bad side, quoth Elaine Lui , “Remember how he used to ‘present’ Katie Holmes?”

Cruise kisses Holmes’s cheek as she smiles out at the cameras.

Cruise’s 2005 marriage to Katie Holmes was marked by its public displays of affection. Cruise was constantly presenting Holmes to the camera, cuddling up to her in public, proclaiming his love for her in ever more enthusiastic ways. Even before he jumped up and down on Oprah’s couch and sent his career into a precipitous downslide, he told Oprah that he covered a hotel room in rose petals for Holmes, and that he took her on a motorcycle ride on the beach.

“I’m a romantic, okay?” Cruise said at the time. “I like treating a woman the way that she deserves to be treated.”

Romantic or not, that marriage also represented a low point in Cruise’s professional life. In the wake of his couch moment with Oprah, Cruise’s popularity plummeted, his reputation took a hit, and he almost lost the Mission: Impossible franchise.

Then came the enormous and damaging wave of publicity in 2012, when Katie Holmes divorced Cruise. Stories rolled out by the day: that Holmes had planned the divorce for two years in order to make sure she would retain custody of the couple’s daughter, Suri; that she had to orchestrate the whole thing with burner phones and secret laptops and lawyers in multiple states ; that she had done it all — developed this whole two-year master plan — because that was how badly she wanted full custody of Suri . Specifically, the story went, Holmes wanted to save Suri from Scientology.

Cruise has since worked diligently to move past the so-called TomKat years. He’s been so effective that all his gentlemanly gestures on his current press tour tend to read as charming, not creepy. But there’s a clear and strong connection between Cruise’s love of chivalry then and his love of chivalry now. They are part and parcel of what appears to be a driving force behind Tom Cruise’s quest to be a hero, win the girl, and save the world: Scientology.

did mimi rogers introduce tom cruise to scientology

Tom Cruise saves mankind (from thetans)

“That’s what drives me: is that I know we have an opportunity to really help, for the first time, effectively change people’s lives. And I am dedicated to that. I am absolutely, uncompromisingly dedicated to that.” Tom Cruise, Scientology recruitment video, 2004 .

The controversial Church of Scientology, founded by the science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard in 1953, appeals to the sort of worldview Cruise embodies. The world is under attack from evil forces, Scientology teaches, and all that stops them is one good man who’s not going to let petty rules get in his way.

Scientology is also, despite the number of celebrities it boasts among its ranks, a publicity liability. It’s widely suspected of being a pyramid scheme at best and at worse alleged to be an abusive cult profiting from forced labor and human trafficking , according to lawsuits and reports from former members. Its central cosmology, which teaches that human beings are plagued by immortal alien souls called thetans brought to Earth by the galactic emperor Xenu billions of years ago, is ripe for mockery.

The reporting that exists on Cruise’s connection to the church is both lengthy and damning. In September 2012, Vanity Fair published an exposé by Maureen Orth on the way Cruise outsourced management of his romantic life to the church. Tony Ortega, the closest thing there is to a beat reporter on Scientology, has a dedicated Tom Cruise tab on his website. In 2013, celebrated New Yorker reporter Lawrence Wright expanded his existing Scientology reporting into the book Going Clear , which prominently delved into Cruise’s status in the church. In 2015, Going Clear was adapted into an Emmy-winning HBO documentary by the director Alex Gibney, again featuring plenty of Cruise stories. The story they told is dramatic, and it plays heavily on Cruise’s apparent understanding of himself as a savior figure. (The Church of Scientology has strongly denied all these accounts , describing them as lies from disgruntled former members and journalists with grudges.)

Cruise joined the Church of Scientology during his first marriage to Scientologist Mimi Rogers, after Top Gun had already made him a star. According to now-defected former church officials, allegedly he began to drift away from active practice during the ’90s and his marriage to Nicole Kidman, only to drift back as that marriage foundered in the late ’90s. The clincher came, those former Scientologists say in Going Clear , when Cruise said he wanted to tap Kidman’s phone , and the Church of Scientology obliged.

Cruise kisses Kidman’s cheek as she laughs and blushes.

Keeping Cruise happy apparently became a priority for the Church of Scientology. When Cruise needed a new love interest, the church reportedly recruited a young member for the job , gave her a makeover to Cruise’s specifications, and then broke up with her for him after he tired of her. When the woman told a friend what had happened to her, the church reportedly sentenced her to months of menial labor in punishment.

Around the same time that Cruise was making his grand return to the church, he fired his longtime Hollywood publicist, allegedly because she told him to stop talking about Scientology so much when he was on the publicity trail for The Last Samurai . He brought on his Scientologist sister to manage his image instead.

As Cruise was becoming more and more committed to the church, the tabloid industry was beginning to go rabid . By 2004, Us Weekly had gone from monthly trade magazine to weekly gossip rag, pitting itself against People magazine. In Touch Weekly, Life & Style Weekly, and OK! had all emerged. These magazines thrived on an endless diet of outrageous celebrity soundbites, and as Tom Cruise made the publicity rounds for The War of the Worlds , he kept offering them up, one after another.

“Some people, well, if they don’t like Scientology, well, then, fuck you,” he told Rolling Stone . “Really. Fuck you. Period.”

Citing Scientology’s distrust of psychiatry, Cruise criticized Brooke Shields for taking antidepressants to treat her postpartum depression, and then told Matt Lauer he was being “glib” when Lauer suggested he might have overstepped his bounds.

Cruise’s public behavior became more and more erratic. On the same War of the Worlds publicity tour, Cruise infamously jumped up and down on Oprah’s couch, enthusiastically declaring his love for Katie Holmes.

Holmes seemed to be getting caught up in the Scientology swirl herself. A W magazine profile of Holmes saw her conduct an interview with a “Scientology chaperone,” who prompted Holmes with phrases about how much she adored Cruise when she seemed to fumble for words.

The spree of outré quotes took their toll. In 2006, one report found that between the spring and summer of 2005, Cruise fell from 11th most-liked celebrity in the US to 197th .

Fox News predicted the end of Cruise’s career. “It will be all but impossible now for a new generation of film fans to see past his erratic public behavior, the Oprah couch shenanigans, the decrying of psychiatry and now the rejection of Catholicism for a religion invented by a science-fiction writer,” they opined .

Cruise, seeing the writing on the wall, veered away from talking about his religion during his movie publicity tours. But for the next 10 years, Scientology would continue to haunt his public image.

In 2008, a video leaked to the press that was reportedly a Scientology conversion effort, filmed in 2004 . It featured Cruise glassy-eyed and grinning in a black turtleneck, talking about all the ways Scientology has changed his life. “Being a Scientologist, when you drive past an accident, it’s not like anybody else,” he explains. “You know you have to do something about it.”

“Let me put it this way,” said Gawker, which broke the news of the video : “if Tom Cruise jumping on Oprah’s couch was an 8 on the scale of scary, this is a 10.”

In 2012, the Cruise-Holmes divorce cracked open the door of Tom Cruise Scientology stories. A host more came pouring out — and not just in the tabloids, but in legacy print magazines and prestige cable shows: Vanity Fair, the New Yorker, the Village Voice, HBO.

Headline: KATIE DUMPS TOM. And she wants Suri.

According to former Scientology officials, the Church has continued to manage Cruise’s life. Reportedly, it’s granted him the full benefits of its more unsavory enterprises, including the Church’s alleged use of slave labor .

Former Scientologist John Brousseau says the church has custom-built luxury vehicles and sound systems for Cruise and provides the staff who manage his many homes. Because this labor is provided by the Church, it’s done through Sea Org, the Scientologist association that’s been accused of human trafficking and forced labor . ( The Church has described these claims as “both scurrilous and ridiculous.”) According to Ortega , Sea Org members who worked on Cruise’s property “were paid only about $50 a week by the church, even though their hours could reach 100 a week.” Cruise has a net worth estimated at $600 million .

The picture painted of Cruise by former members of the church is not flattering. They tend to describe Cruise as a well-meaning man who, fundamentally, is not curious, and who is happy to have beautiful things handed to him without looking at their cost. Scientology is attractive to Cruise, in this account, because it makes his life easier while simultaneously flattering his ego with the belief that he is a hero.

But as damning as those stories are, they have largely faded out of public memory. In the 10 years since his divorce from Katie Holmes, Tom Cruise has been working hard to change the narrative.

A black-and-white-picture shows Tom Cruise, looking suave in sunglasses and a tuxedo, posing in front of a billboard for Top Gun: Maverick.

Can Tom Cruise save Tom Cruise?

“People can create their own lives. … I decided that I’m going to create, for myself, who I am, not what other people say I should be. I’m entitled to that.” Parade, 2006 .

Cruise is currently experiencing a late-career renaissance. Cannes Film Festival feted him in May , awarding him an honorary Palme d’Or and marking the occasion with a red carpet air show. The press loves him again. Top Gun: Maverick is a major success, and the next slew of Mission: Impossible films are bound to be as well.

He’s even rumored to have a new girlfriend. If, as the tabloids claim, Cruise actually is (or was) dating his Mission: Impossible co-star Hayley Atwell , she would be his first public girlfriend since his divorce from Holmes 10 years ago.

So did he do it? How did Tom Cruise go from America’s 197th favorite celebrity to a bankable superstar once again?

The answer seems to be deceptively simple: He kept working, and he stopped talking — about Scientology, and about almost everything else too.

Cruise’s PR nadir came during a period of oversharing. Since then, he’s become known for his intense desire for privacy. “When was the last time paparazzi captured Tom Cruise on the street or anywhere but a film set or premiere?” wondered the New York Post in May 2022 . He heavily restricts the questions journalists are allowed to ask him before he agrees to an interview, and both his religion and his family life tend to be off-limits.

Meanwhile, Cruise has kept making movies. Tropic Thunder in 2008 and Rock of Ages in 2012 together proved he had a sense of humor. Edge of Tomorrow in 2014, which saw Cruise ceding much of the spotlight to co-star Emily Blunt, proved he knew how to share the screen with another star. And the Mission: Impossible franchise has churned out hit after reliable hit. “I can attest that I am alarmed at the extent to which I suddenly love Tom Cruise,” admitted GQ entertainment editor Ashley Fetters in 2015 , as Cruise publicized Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation .

Cruise has also benefited from the current cultural shame surrounding the tabloid culture of the 2000s. As the world agrees that tabloid targets like Britney Spears were hard done by in the heady, tacky days of Y2K, everything from the era has been painted with the same shade of remorse. Vilifying Tom Cruise for jumping on Oprah’s couch can feel like the same toxic impulse that led to a decade of mocking Spears for having her mental breakdown in public, even though what Cruise has been accused of abetting within the Church of Scientology is far worse than anything Spears has ever been accused of.

In most ways, this strategy has been successful. The tabloid spectacle of Tom Cruise, Scientologist has been covered over by four decades of hard work from Tom Cruise, one of the last great movie stars .

But it’s not clear that Cruise can ever again reach the heights of public adoration he enjoyed in 2003. There’s a persistent strangeness around Tom Cruise’s image that has never quite resolved itself, a sort of falseness that he’s never been entirely able to weed out. It’s a falseness that’s rooted not in his Scientology but in his movie star core. From the beginning, the world has refused to believe Tom Cruise when he breaks out his giant movie star smile. It especially refuses to believe him when he laughs.

did mimi rogers introduce tom cruise to scientology

In an early pan of 1983’s Risky Business , Cruise’s breakout film, New York magazine took aim at the young star’s mannerisms. “Cruise has a slight, undeveloped voice and a nervous smile, which he relies on whenever the script reveals one of its innumerable holes,” the review ran .

In HBO’s Going Clear , footage of Tom Cruise laughing in his Scientology recruitment video plays while one ex-Scientologist declares, “Scientologists are all full of shit.”

A 2004 Rolling Stone profile devoted paragraph after paragraph to the oddness of “the famous Tom Cruise laugh.”

“It comes on just fine, a regular laugh by any standards. You will be laughing too,” wrote Neil Strauss . “But then, when the humor subsides, you will stop laughing. At this point, however, Cruise’s laugh will just be crescendoing. And he will be making eye contact with you.”

It’s as though there’s a hollowness at the center of Cruise’s image, some sort of vacancy that he is forever restlessly seeking to fill. As though if he can only save enough people, enough industries, enough worlds — maybe then, at last, he can finally be whole. But can anyone, even Tom Cruise, do that much saving?

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Throwback thursday: when tom cruise found love — and scientology.

In 1987, the actor married Mimi Rogers, who introduced him to the church, now the subject of HBO documentary 'Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief' adapted from Lawrence Wright's book.

By Bill Higgins

Bill Higgins

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Throwback Thursday: When Tom Cruise Found Love — and Scientology

Tom Cruise Found Love and Scientology - H 2015

This story first appeared in the March 13 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine.

At regular intervals, Tom Cruise ‘s devotion to Scientology makes a media splash. One of the first to call attention to it was John Richardson in a 1993 story for Premiere magazine, to which Cruise heatedly objected (though that didn’t keep him from appearing on the magazine’s cover to promote Interview With the Vampire a year later). The actor had not participated in the article, which focused on his friendship with Scientology head David Miscavige and the high value the church places on recruiting celebrity members, but had answered the magazine’s fact-checking questions, calling them “repulsive” and “offensive.” The Scientology reaction was swift. “Within three days of them finding out I was doing the story, my neighbors were approached by people asking questions about me, and my wife got a call asking about our sex life — then later the magazine was threatened with lawsuits,” Richardson tells THR today. “The creepiness of Scientology cannot be underestimated.”

Cruise’s relationship with Scientology began when he married Mimi Rogers in 1987, when he was 24 and she was 31 (they had met at a dinner party in 1986). She was a second-generation member: During the mid-’50s, her father, Philip Spickler , had been one of Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard ‘s original disciples. Cruise, now 52, has said he joined while married to Rogers, but his “involvement in Scientology at that time was my own.” In 2013, Lawrence Wright alleged in his book Going Clear: Scientology, Hollywood, & the Prison of Belief (adapted by Alex Gibney as a doc set to air March 29 on HBO) that Miscavige later pushed Rogers away to clear a path for Cruise to marry Nicole Kidman .

For her part, Rogers, now 59 — who is believed to have left the church since — has said the rea­son their marriage broke up within three years was that Cruise wanted to become a monk. “It looked as though marriage wouldn’t fit into his overall spiritual needs,” she told Playboy in 1993. “He had to be celibate to maintain the purity of his instrument.” Added Rogers, “My instrument needed tuning.”

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The day Tom Cruise tried to recruit Seth Rogen into Scientology

In a resurfaced clip, the canadian actor jokes about how the ‘top gun’ star offered to tell him about what the religion is ‘really about’.

Tom Cruise and Seth Rogen

Tom Cruise may be a blockbuster star , but he’s not exactly known for any comedic movies. That’s why the Hollywood actor approached Judd Apatow, director of the comedic hit The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and Seth Rogen, a Canadian actor and comedian, back in the early 2000s. But according to Rogen, no plan for a comedy emerged from the meeting, but Cruise did try to recruit him to the Church of Scientology .

In a resurfaced clip from a 2021 interview on The Howard Stern Show , Stern asks Rogen about the “bizarre” meeting, which took place around the time that Cruise was married to Katie Holmes (whom he would divorce in 2012). “A few hours into the meeting, the Scientology stuff comes up,” said Rogen, who added: “I’m a huge Tom Cruise fan. I see every Tom Cruise movie.”

The Superbad actor said that Cruise told him that the press was making him look bad because he was costing the pharmaceutical industry so much money – Scientologists believe that illnesses are largely psychosomatic and are hostile to medicine. According to Rogen, Cruise said: “It’s like with Scientology . If you let me just tell you what it was really about, just give me like 20 minutes to, like, really just tell you what it was about. You would say, ‘No fucking way. No fucking way.’”

“I remember being like, is that a good thing to be saying?” said Rogen, laughing.

The Canadian actor said after Cruise made his offer, there was a “very loaded moment,” in which he was not sure whether he or Apatow would be able to turn the Top Gun star down. “Can we come out of this? Are we strong enough to have him do this to us and not be converted?” he recalled thinking. “If they got him [Cruise], what chance do I have?” joked Rogen, who described himself as a “generally a weak-willed, weak-minded person.”

“Thank God Judd was like, ‘I think we’re good. Let’s just talk about movies and stuff.’ Woof. Dodged that bullet,” said Rogen.

Tom Cruise was first introduced to Scientology in 1986 thanks to his first wife, Mimi Rogers (they were married between 1987 and 1990). His commitment to the religion even led him to buy and reform the English mansion that was the former home of Scientology founder Ron Hubbard, according to The Telegraph. “Scientologists are told that Cruise is saving the world single-handedly, so he is considered a deity within Scientology,” said actress Leah Remini, a former member of the church, in the series Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath.

Among Hollywood’s stars, Scientology has both detractors and defenders. Lisa Marie Presley, the daughter of Elvis Presley, left the church in 2012. Paul Haggis, the screenwriter of One Million Dollar Baby , also left, explaining his reasons in a 2009 letter. Writer William Burroughs, one of the main figures of the Beat Generation, was part of the church in the 1960s, but later abandoned the faith, arguing it didn’t allow critical discussion. Celebrities who are members of Scientology include John Travolta, Elisabeth Moss, Kelly Preston, Giovanni Ribisi, Jenna Elfman and Erika Christensen. A list that, for now, does not include Seth Rogen.

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did mimi rogers introduce tom cruise to scientology

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Tom cruise reportedly used the church of scientology to meet nicole kidman while married to mimi rogers.

by Kristyn Burtt

Kristyn Burtt

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©1996 RAMEY PHOTO AGENCY 310-828-3445
CINEMATHEQUE AWARDS, TOM CRUISE WITH NICOLE KIDMAN, KURT RUSSELL, GOLDIE HAWN & ROSIE O'DONNELL AT CINEMATHEQUE AWARDS, WHERE CRUISE WAS HONORED. 9-22-1996

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Leah Remini recently took to social media to address Tom Cruise's continuous association with the Church of Scientology. https://t.co/VUp7PEMtZb — SheKnows (@SheKnows) May 31, 2022

“It was indicative of how far Miscavige was willing to go to ally Cruise,” the book notes. The Top Gun: Maverick star has maintained his allegiance to the church despite all of the allegations, even those shocking stories shared by Leah Remini. Cruise is likely going to remain loyal to them because they cater to his every need.

Before you go, click here to see celebrities who have left the Church of Scientology.

Celebrities Who Left the Church of Scientology / Laura Prepon

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17 Hollywood Stars Who Dabbled in or Abandoned Scientology: From Leah Remini to Jerry Seinfeld (Photos)

These notable figures attended the church, but ultimately decided they couldn’t stay

celebrities scientology

Leah Remini left in 2013, citing her frustration with not being able to challenge the church’s beliefs and before her daughter was of age to begin “the acclimation into the church.”

did mimi rogers introduce tom cruise to scientology

While married to Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes was reportedly uncomfortable with Scientology’s teachings and didn’t want their daughter raised in the religion, especially in light of her own Catholic upbringing.

did mimi rogers introduce tom cruise to scientology

Nicole Kidman severed ties from the church when she divorced Tom Cruise in 2001.

did mimi rogers introduce tom cruise to scientology

In 2009, Paul Haggis left the church after 35 years in protest of their support of California’s Prop. 8, which banned gay marriage in the state.

did mimi rogers introduce tom cruise to scientology

Lisa Marie Presley left Scientology sometime around 2012 after being raised in the church by her mother, Priscilla Presley.

did mimi rogers introduce tom cruise to scientology

In 1997 divorce papers, Tom Berenger cited his soon-to-be-ex-wife Lisa’s deep-rooted Scientology beliefs as a reason for the dissolution of their marriage.

did mimi rogers introduce tom cruise to scientology

Christopher Reeve said in his autobiography that he became disillusioned with the religion when auditing failed to detect blatant lies he was telling.

did mimi rogers introduce tom cruise to scientology

Mimi Rogers is often credited with introducing Tom Cruise to Scientology, but after their marriage ended, so did her relationship with the church — though he remains the Church’s most active famous member.

did mimi rogers introduce tom cruise to scientology

A child actor who was introduced to the church by an acting coach, Jason Beghe laughed off Scientology with friend David Duchovny after he left. While he was an active member, their friendship was strained, and Duchovny was labeled a “suppresive person” by the church.

did mimi rogers introduce tom cruise to scientology

Jerry Seinfeld never officially joined the church, but has attributed his success partly to some Scientology courses he took in his 20s.

did mimi rogers introduce tom cruise to scientology

Brad Pitt took a few courses — and was a high-level target for the church — while dating Scientologist Juliette Lewis, but lost interest after the relationship ended.

did mimi rogers introduce tom cruise to scientology

Candice Bergen was briefly involved with the church in the 1960s before its financial rise. 

did mimi rogers introduce tom cruise to scientology

“Transparent” actor Jeffery Tambor took Scientology classes and studied the religion for a short time, but no longer participates with the organization. 

did mimi rogers introduce tom cruise to scientology

Patrick Swayze tried out Scientology while practicing many world faiths, including Buddhism and transcendental meditation. 

did mimi rogers introduce tom cruise to scientology

Russell Crowe read L. Ron Hubbard’s book”Dianetics” and watched a few videos before deciding the church wasn’t for him.

did mimi rogers introduce tom cruise to scientology

Sonny Bono flirted with Scientology while married to Cher, who herself never understood its appeal. 

did mimi rogers introduce tom cruise to scientology

“Top Gun” Producer Don Simpson spent more than $25,000 dollars on Scientology before leaving without the life improvement he was hoping to achieve. 

SAG red carpet 2024

Inside Tom Cruise's Relationship With Mimi Rogers

Tom Cruise smiling

Tom Cruise is one of the biggest movie stars on the planet. With notable roles in movies like "Top Gun," "Mission Impossible," and "Jerry Maguire," Cruise has been a leading man in Hollywood since the 1980s. Perhaps known for his personal life as much as he's known for his professional career, Cruise has made headlines over the years for his belief in Scientology, as well as for his romantic partnerships with various Hollywood starlets.

Cruise has had two highly publicized marriages in the past — one to actress Nicole Kidman and another to actress Katie Holmes . Everyone recalls the time when Cruise excitedly, and strangely, jumped on Oprah's couch in a 2005 television appearance after he was asked about his romance with Holmes (via YouTube ). But long before Cruise was jumping up and down over his love for the former "Dawson's Creek" star, he was involved in a quiet marriage to actress Mimi Rogers. The two wed in the late 1980s, when Rogers was a television star in her own right, so why isn't there more attention on this past union?

The history of Tom Cruise and Mimi Rogers' relationship

Tom Cruise and Mimi Rogers have varying accounts about how they met. Cruise insists they met at a dinner party while he was developing "Top Gun," whereas Rogers stated that the two were set up by mutual friends. "I wasn't seeing anybody, he wasn't seeing anybody, and they thought, 'These people should be going out with somebody — let's see if they want to go out with each other ... And we said, 'Aw, what the heck'" (via the  Sun Sentinel ). Regardless of how they were actually introduced, Cruise and Rogers hit it off almost immediately.

The two discussed the idea of marriage pretty early on in their relationship, and it's widely believed that Rogers is the one who initially introduced Cruise to Scientology (via E! ). They decided to wed in secret in May 1987 to avoid the onslaught of press and media attention they had been garnering since making their public debut. Reportedly, the only two people in attendance at the wedding were Cruise's mother and his best man, Emilio Estevez (via Entertainment Weekly ). Though it seemed like the pair were well matched, they eventually parted ways three years later in 1990.

The pair tells very different tales about their split

The media speculation surrounding Tom Cruise's divorce from Mimi Rogers in 1990 was as wild as you'd imagine. There were rumors that Rogers was jealous of Cruise's stardom, that perhaps their six-year age gap was too substantial, or that Rogers had grown tired of constantly being referred to as "Tom Cruise's Wife" in the press (via Entertainment Weekly ). Since Cruise never offered any insight as to what his perspective was on the divorce, the actual cause is down to mere speculation.

When announcing their divorce, the two released a statement that was more confusing than it was clarifying, saying, "While there have been positive aspects to our marriage, there were some issues which could not be resolved even after working on them for a period of time" (via InStyle ). This was seemingly the end of the matter, until Rogers gave an interview to Playboy in 1993 where she stated that the reason for their divorce was rooted in Cruise's desire to become a monk. "Well, here's the real story. Tom was seriously thinking of becoming a monk. At least for that period of time, it looked as though marriage wouldn't fit into his overall spiritual need" (via E! ). Whether Cruise was really considering the prospect of becoming a monk or these two just wanted different things, the mystery will seemingly remain unsolved.

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Tom Cruise’s Dark, Twisted Journey to Scientology’s Top Gun

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With Top Gun: Maverick debuting in theaters this week, Tom Cruise is available to the press again, which explains why I was seeing video of James Corden at 5 a.m. on a tarmac waiting to join Cruise in his personal jet aircraft.

The Late Late Show host’s antics on Cruise’s plane delivered the intended effect: Tom as cooler-than-you pilot really is like the superheroes he plays in the movies.

But for me, it had another connotation.

Seeing Cruise pilot his aircraft, I couldn’t help thinking of something Marc Headley told me several years ago.

Headley joined Scientology’s Sea Org as a child, signing a billion-year contract before working 365 days a year, cloistered at one of the organization’s secretive compounds known as “Int Base” near Hemet, California.

Around 1990, Headley explained in his excellent book about that period, Blown for Good , Cruise had come to the base to learn Scientology “auditing,” its version of counseling, and Headley was chosen to be his guinea pig.

Years later, in 2009, the FBI began an intense investigation of conditions at the base, interviewing dozens of former Sea Org workers, including Headley, who by that time had escaped.

The FBI was so serious about its investigation of the slave-like conditions at the base, Headley and other former Scientologists told me, that in the summer of 2010 the agency was making detailed plans for raiding the compound, rescuing workers, and seizing documents.

Headley says the special agents assigned to the investigation told him one of their main concerns was that Scientology leader David Miscavige , who lived at the base, would slip through their grasp.

So, planning for any eventuality, they tried to seal off all escape routes Miscavige might try to use—including, Headley said, the airplanes of his best pal, Tom Cruise.

The FBI agents told him they had taken the step of recording the tail numbers of Cruise’s planes that were at his private hangar in Burbank, California, just in case Miscavige tried to make an escape using them.

Ultimately, the FBI changed its mind about raiding Scientology and the investigation was dropped, for mysterious reasons. (Headley and former Scientology spokesman Mike Rinder told me their version of what happened for a piece I wrote years ago. Also, even though I’ve published the full FBI investigative file at my website, Scientology continues to claim that there was never an investigation at all. The Church of Scientology did not respond to request for comment for this story.)

Leah Remini: Tom Cruise Personally Punished Fellow Scientologists

Even if the raid was cancelled, I’ve never forgotten that the FBI figured that David Miscavige and Tom Cruise were so tight the Top Gun actor might use his piloting skills to jet his two-time Best Man to safety from law enforcement.

That isn’t something you’re likely to hear in all of the press celebration of Cruise’s new movie. Top Gun: Maverick is getting almost universally positive reviews (a notable exception that is worth a look ) and is poised to be Cruise’s biggest movie opening ever. We’ll be seeing a lot of him on our screens in the coming weeks.

And it couldn’t come at a better time for Scientology, which, all signs indicate, has been hit hard by the pandemic.

It isn’t the first time that Cruise has come to the church’s rescue at a crucial time.

In 1986, when actress Mimi Rogers began dating Cruise and first introduced him to Scientology, the controversial organization was at a critical juncture: Its founder and source of all its written “scriptures,” science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard , had died on Jan. 24 that year.

For a group so focused on one figure, the death of that person can be an extreme challenge. Would Scientology survive it?

Complicating things was that the person exerting himself to push aside others and take over the reins of Scientology was a 25-year-old who was known only to a small minority of the movement. David Miscavige had joined the organization as a child, and had quickly become a favorite of Hubbard, but for years he had amassed power in the rarefied upper reaches of Sea Org—away from view of the vast majority of Scientologists.

So, when Miscavige stepped forward on the stage at the Hollywood Palladium to announce Hubbard’s death to the hastily gathered crowd of Scientologists on Jan. 27, 1986, many of the people who were in the audience that night had never even heard of him.

Miscavige was still consolidating control of Scientology later that year when Mimi Rogers began bringing Tom Cruise around to a North Hollywood Scientology satellite office. Cruise was already a movie star, with films like Risky Business and All the Right Moves under his belt, and the first Top Gun had hit theaters that summer.

Cruise must have taken to Scientology pretty quickly, because he and Rogers tied the knot a few months later, on May 9, 1987. May 9 happens to be one of the most sacred days on the Scientology calendar, because it was on May 9, 1950, that Hubbard published the book that started everything: his turgid, bizarre look at the human mind called Dianetics: The Modern Science of Mental Health . After its publication, Hubbard turned its popularity into a self-help empire that grew in fits and starts.

In 1955, Hubbard announced “Project Celebrity,” telling his followers that there would literally be a bounty on the head of famous actors and actresses brought into what by then he had decided was the “Church of Scientology” (so much for a “modern science”). Hubbard knew that attracting celebrities might help the organization seem more mainstream, and he encouraged members not to talk publicly about what was actually going on: Scientology was past-life therapy that promised godlike superpowers to those who could retrieve memories from millions or billions of years ago on other planets.

How Tom Cruise and Scientology Exploited 9/11—With Help From Trump

There had been some victories for Project Celebrity since then, with John Travolta (1975) and Kirstie Alley (1979) being among the most well-known bought into the church. But Mimi Rogers had outdone the rest by bringing in a star of Cruise’s stature, marrying him on Dianetics Day 1987, and right when Scientology was on shaky ground following the death of Hubbard.

Just a few years later, Rogers was repaid by being told by Scientology’s leaders to walk away from her marriage to Cruise so he could pursue his new obsession, Australian actress Nicole Kidman .

Kidman wasn’t a Scientologist, but she tried to fit in. Her former Scientology auditor, Bruce Hines, told me that in only a couple of years she was able to rocket up to an auditing level known as “OT 2,” which is pretty astonishing and suggests Kidman was probably putting in daily work to go up the “Bridge to Total Freedom.”

But by 1992, Kidman changed her mind. She soured on Scientology, and not only pulled away from it but pulled Cruise with her . We only found out about this years later, but from 1992 to 2000, former high-ranking executives tell me, Cruise kept Scientology at arm’s length. Mike Rinder has spoken about how much this bothered Miscavige, especially while Cruise and Kidman spent November 1996 to June 1998 filming Eyes Wide Shut in London with Stanley Kubrick.

During this period, Miscavige kept an eye on Cruise with a spy in his household . In 1998, Cruise made a brief return to the Hollywood Celebrity Centre to take a course which had him sitting in a grocery store parking lot with Scientology official Tommy Davis, judging the “tone level” of people walking by, which Lawrence Wright wrote about in his excellent history of Scientology, Going Clear . But it wasn’t until Cruise broke up with Kidman in 2000 that he made his real return to Miscavige’s orbit.

Over the next three years, re-indoctrinating Cruise became Miscavige’s chief mission. And by 2003, Miscavige was ready to test out his newly-zealous celebrity minion.

That summer, Cruise traveled to Missouri to help Scientology hold a grand opening for a new headquarters for one of its numerous front groups, Applied Scholastics, which works to get L. Ron Hubbard’s materials into public schools .

Cruise continued to grow into the role of highly visible Scientology ambassador. The next year, in September 2004, he made his first and only appearance at the grand opening of a new Scientology “Ideal Org” in Madrid, Spain. The year before, Miscavige had begun a program of replacing older “orgs” (Scientology's word for churches) with gleaming new and very expensive “ideal” cathedrals, a project that continues today.

Although he had broken up with Spanish actress Penelope Cruz earlier that year, Cruise was invited to help Miscavige open the new Madrid building, and he even gave a brief speech in Spanish, which you can watch here . And it was also at this event that Cruise reportedly told Miscavige that he was having some trouble finding a suitable new girlfriend. The church leader then put his wife, Shelly Miscavige, in charge of a program that fall to audition actresses, some who were Scientologists and some who were not, without telling them that it was actually a tryout to be Cruise’s new mate.

How Nicole Kidman Almost Got Tom Cruise to Leave Scientology

By this time, October 2004, Miscavige was thrilled with how dedicated Cruise had become, and that he was willing to be the public face of Scientology. So that month he rewarded Cruise by giving him special recognition at the annual gala held in England each October when a few exemplary church members are bestowed “Freedom Medals.” For Cruise, Miscavige made a special showing, with a 30-minute video extolling Cruise’s qualities—which included a 9-minute interview with the actor talking about the privilege of being a Scientologist. At the conclusion of the video, Miscavige gave Cruise the unique, larger medallion he’d had made just for him, the Freedom Medal of Valor.

Four years later, video from the event would be leaked to the public in one of Scientology’s most embarrassing PR disasters. But for now, Cruise was being celebrated as the most gung-ho Scientologist in the world.

Meanwhile, Shelly Miscavige’s project had produced a winner: An attractive British-Iranian Scientologist-actress named Nazanin Boniadi was selected from the auditions, and she dated Cruise from October 2004 to January 2005, when, Alex Gibney reported in his HBO documentary Going Clear , things soured. Nazanin admitted she was having a hard time understanding David Miscavige’s thick New Jersey accent, and it was giving her headaches. Scientology had Tommy Davis break up with her for Cruise.

Only a few months later, in April 2005, Cruise and Katie Holmes announced that they were dating, and it happened to coincide with Tom’s most visible (and most disastrous) attempts to be promote Scientology. After firing his longtime publicist and hiring his own sister, a Scientologist, Cruise was doing the rounds for Steven Spielberg’s film War of the Worlds . He openly clashed with interviewers in the U.S. and Australia over Scientology, most notably with Matt Lauer during an episode of Today , appearing arrogant and unhinged as he lectured Lauer about the deleterious effects of psychiatric drugs. (Scientology opposes modern mental health treatments with a white-hot fury.)

And while it didn’t appear to have any connection with Scientology, Cruise’s antics jumping on Oprah’s couch declaring his love for Holmes was seen by the public as a sign that the Scientologist actor had lost his marbles.

Mike Rinder and other former executives tell me that Cruise’s bizarre acts during 2005, with his attempt to so aggressively promote Scientology, was pure Miscavige. And it backfired badly. Cruise has never since been so vocal about his involvement in the church.

Like Kidman, Katie Holmes had no experience in Scientology but she was determined, at first, to be involved in it for Cruise’s sake. The couple welcomed a daughter, Suri, twelve months after they announced they were dating, in April 2006, and then were married that November in a castle in Italy .

It was at that wedding that King of Queens actress Leah Remini , who had grown up in Scientology, noticed that Miscavige, who was once again Cruise’s best man, was there without his wife, Shelly. When Remini asked about it, she was told by Tommy Davis that she didn’t have “the fucking rank” to ask such a question.

It turned out that a year earlier, at the end of the summer of 2005, Shelly Miscavige had vanished from Int Base , the secretive compound near Hemet, and was no longer appearing with her husband at Scientology events .

Katie Holmes, meanwhile, was such a dedicated Scientologist at that point, she wrote up a Knowledge Report complaining about how Remini had disrupted the wedding.

Like Kidman, Holmes tried her best initially to immerse herself in Scientology, only to grow away from it, and in the meantime the church experienced several very public disasters.

The video of Cruise talking bizarrely about what it meant to be a Scientologist (which was prepared for the 2004 awards ceremony) was leaked to the internet in January 2008 and became a sensation. When Scientology tried to suppress the video, it motivated the internet collective known as Anonymous to target the church with months of high-profile protests and trolling.

In early 2011, New Yorker writer Lawrence Wright revealed that the FBI had investigated Scientology in 2009-2010.

And the next year, 2012, Holmes decided she’d had enough of both Cruise and Scientology . At that point, with Suri turning 6 years old, she would have been old enough to begin early Dianetics courses. And Katie would also have seen Cruise’s older children, Isabella and Connor, going through Scientology auditing and interrogations.

How Tom Cruise’s Wedding to Katie Holmes Changed Scientology Forever

Katie then made her famous escape from marriage in June 2012 while Cruise was in Iceland shooting scenes for Oblivion , his first collaboration with Top Gun: Maverick director Joseph Kosinski.

Eleven days later, she and Cruise had worked out a settlement to end their marriage. Katie got primary custody of Suri, and Cruise got generous visitation rights. But in recent years he seems to have largely cut her out of his life.

People often ask me if Tom Cruise is being groomed to take over Scientology from Miscavige, or if he’s the No. 2 figure in the church. But that ignores the basic structure of the Scientology movement—that it is run by the Sea Organization.

The Sea Org is not a legal entity, but it has ultimate control of the church, and the captain of the Sea Org is David Miscavige.

If Miscavige left, another Sea Org official would take his place. But in order to qualify for the Sea Org, a Scientologist has to sign a billion-year contract and work around the clock for the organization for pennies an hour, a commitment that Tom Cruise is not likely to make.

Tom Cruise’s value to Scientology is not as an executive, it’s as an ornament. That’s always what the celebrities have been: symbols. But he’s the most important celebrity, and an incredibly important symbol for the church.

There are plenty of secretive, high-pressure groups that some people call cults, but there is only one Scientology. Why? Because of its celebrities, and primarily because of Tom Cruise. He is Scientology, as far as most of the public is concerned.

And if he were to leave and speak out like Leah Remini has? I doubt Scientology could survive it. That’s how important he is to it.

The tabloids, every few months, publish stories claiming that Cruise is leaving, but it is never backed up with any evidence.

In fact, in 2019, Cruise for the first time since I’ve been watching attended not one but two of those international events, both the LRH Birthday Event in Florida in March and the IAS gala in England in October. And there was evidence that suggested he took his children Isabella and Connor with him to the IAS event, again for the first time ever.

So, based on that, my feeling was that as of 2019, Cruise was more dedicated to Scientology than ever.

It was harder to get information out in 2020 and 2021 because Scientology had to stop holding its international events owing to the pandemic .

People often ask me if Cruise is only staying in Scientology because the church is blackmailing him with information he has given up in auditing sessions. But again, that misinterprets the facts. The real situation appears to be that Tom Cruise is a true believer. He really does believe that L. Ron Hubbard was the greatest human being who ever lived, and that David Miscavige is the greatest human being living today.

In the words of John Brousseau, who worked closely with both men for many years, “Tom Cruise worships David Miscavige like a god.”

I see no reason to change that assessment today.

Finally, Suri. There’s no doubt that the way Katie Holmes left Cruise in 2012 caused a huge public relations disaster for Scientology. That would make it possible that David Miscavige might have declared her a “suppressive person,” which would make Suri a “potential trouble source” because she’s connected to her SP mother—as is common among those who’ve defected.

We don’t know for sure if Miscavige made this determination. However, it’s pretty obvious that if Tom Cruise were not a celebrity, he would probably be instructed by the church to cut off contact with his ex-wife and Suri.

However, Tom is a celebrity, and the most important celebrity, and celebrities get to ignore those rules if they want. As Scientology’s most important celebrity, he could continue to be a part of Suri’s life he wanted to.

But for now, he’s once again the most successful movie star on the planet, and he will face only highly-controlled interviews where none of this history will be raised.

His popularity will be a huge boost for individual Scientologists, who will see the success of Top Gun: Maverick as a vindication of Scientology, even if the movie has nothing to do with it.

They love it when a Scientology celebrity gets positive press.

And Miscavige will be beside himself.

Read more at The Daily Beast.

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We Finally Know Why Tom Cruise And Mimi Rogers Divorced

Tom Cruise smiling

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Tom Cruise is one of Hollywood's wealthiest and most successful actors ( his estimated net worth is a cool $600 million!) but there's a real shady side to the "Top Gun" superstar. In addition to a number of disturbing things many choose to ignore about his life today , Cruise has also made plenty of headlines with his tumultuous love life. To date, he's been married and divorced three times, has dated a slew of celebs, and, well, what his exes have to say about him isn't always the most flattering.

Case in point: The actor's first wife, Mimi Rogers, didn't mince words when she announced she was sick and tired of being asked about her ex. In 1995, she told People she was "waiting for the moment when I don't have to talk about that [blankety-blank] name anymore." Then, in 2006, she told Today  she was still getting questions about Cruise, despite being happily married to producer Chris Ciaffa. "I've had two kids since then, I can barely remember my own name let alone be remembering something almost seventeen years ago," she quipped. It's clear Rogers never really pined over Cruise after their divorce, and that may be because she knew it was for the best. Here's the real reason why Tom Cruise and Mimi Rogers called it quits.

Their different stories on how they met

Tom Cruise and Mimi Rogers first got together between 1985 and 1986. The young "Top Gun" actor confirmed they were an item in a Rolling Stone interview published that June. A whirlwind romance ensued and they married within a year , but while they agreed they loved each other, they couldn't get on the same page with their meet cute. According to Cruise, they met at a dinner party in 1985 and, as he told the mag, she wasn't immediately available. "She was dating a friend, and, uh, I thought she was extremely bright," he said. 

However, that's not how Rogers remembered it. Speaking with an Us Weekly reporter in 1987, she echoed the fact that they met at a dinner party, but she told the outlet she was single and that mutual friends pushed them together. "I wasn't seeing anybody, he wasn't seeing anybody, and they thought, 'These people should be going out with somebody. Let's see if they want to go out with each other,'" she recalled (via the South Florida Sun Sentinel ). "And we said, 'Aw, what the heck. Okay.'"

According to Rogers, it just felt right and they were soon talking of marriage, despite their age difference (she was 32 and he was 24 when they tied the knot) and Cruise's exploding popularity. Noting that he was "famous, but not crazy famous" when they first met, Rogers shared, "When I saw 'Top Gun' the first time, I knew what we were in for."

Tom Cruise didn't initially want to get married

Tom Cruise and Mimi Rogers married on May 9, 1987, in what she called a "very small, very private, and completely normal" ceremony (per Us Weekly, via the South Florida Sun Sentinel ). According to People , the Unitarian nuptials took place in upstate New York with fellow actor Emilio Estévez serving as best man. As the outlet reported, the couple was so adamant about keeping it private that even Cruise's publicist wasn't aware of the wedding. Rogers, who was previously married to Scientology counselor Jim Rogers, per the Chicago Tribune , loved the idea of marriage. She told the outlet in 1988, "There's a lot of contentment and security [in marriage]. I highly recommend it.”

However, Cruise wasn't so sure. The actor spoke with Rolling Stone in 1986, less than a year before saying "I do," and confessed he wasn't sure he'd ever walk down the aisle. "I don't know if I could get married," he said. "Right now, in my present state of mind, I don't believe so. I need a lot of space for myself and my work," he explained. Rogers clearly changed his mind, but he again spoke of his uncertainty about marriage with Rolling Stone in 1990. Recalling his parents' divorce when he was 12 , the actor shared, "My worries were 'Jesus, am I going to be faithful? Does marriage work as a concept?' I really never thought it could," he admitted.

Tom Cruise and Mimi Rogers appeared to be going strong

Following their 1987 wedding, a 32-year-old Mimi Rogers and 24-year-old Tom Cruise appeared to be going strong. As she told the Chicago Tribune in 1988, they were living in lower Manhattan and focusing on their careers and each other, and doing their best to live a normal life. ”We go to the movies, we go out to dinner, and we never, never have a problem,” she told the mag. ”We're not real provocative. We don't inspire cloak-and-dagger tactics.”

As for Cruise, despite his initial trepidations regarding marriage, he also seemed to enjoy being a husband. The star told Rolling Stone in 1990 that he and Rogers always visited each other on set and offered unconditional support to one another. "I couldn't imagine being without her or being alone," he gushed. He even gave her credit for his emotional "Born on the Fourth of July" performance, saying, "I wouldn't have been able to make it through 'Born,' I don't think, without her being there." 

What's more, when asked about his romantic past, Cruise told the mag he had never been in love before Rogers and that meeting her changed everything. "Since I've been with her, it's opened me up a lot. I think it's helped me be a better actor," he said. It also made him a better man. Confessing he had been lonely and angry as a single guy, he enthused, "I care about my wife more than anything in the world. She's my best friend. I just really like being with her, you know? I love her."

Fame was an issue — sort of

Tom Cruise and Mimi Rogers announced their divorce on January 16, 1990, per Entertainment Weekly , and speculation about the reason was rampant. Perhaps fame was an issue. Recalling her first brush with Cruise's superstardom, Rogers told the  Chicago Tribune that attending the 1986 premiere of ”The Color of Money" as his girlfriend was wild. ”There were 10 million photographers, all going mad, pushing and shoving, trying to get a picture of Tom and Paul Newman and Marty Scorsese," she said. "I was just madly trying to get out of the way.”

She did have specific concerns. Just three months after their wedding, she told Us Weekly (via the  South Florida Sun-Sentinel ), "If there was anything that I was fearful would happen, it would be hearing somebody say, 'Gosh, we're really interested in Mimi for this movie and, man, Tom would really be great in the lead.'" She was adamant that her career stay separate from her husband's and believed she deserved to be treated as an actor in her own right. "Even the thought of having to deal with it is humiliating," she said of co-starring with Cruise. 

It's a sentiment the actor reiterated in 1995, telling People that when you're with an A-lister, "You cease to be an individual." Even so, Rogers later told The Telegraph in 2001, "The stardom wasn't really a problem. What did annoy me was the age thing. Some of the tabloids brought it up all the time, and exaggerated the gap between Tom and me."

Religion brought them together, then drove them apart

Tom Cruise may be the most well-known Scientologist in the world, but it was actually Mimi Rogers who introduced him to the religion. As The Hollywood Reporter noted, Rogers' father was an avid member and so was she. According to The Daily Beast , she shared her religion with Cruise and brought him to his first meetings at a Scientology center in Hollywood. However, the church played a role in their demise as a couple, according to Marty Rathbun. Vanity Fair dubbed Rathbun "Scientology's former inspector general and No. 2." He confessed to helping break up Rogers and Cruise, and later, Cruise and Nicole Kidman. "Both women got cold on [Scientology head David] Miscavige. He was integral to the breakup of the marriages." Indeed, it was reported that Rogers has since left Scientology .

However, as Rogers tells it, it was a different religion that drove them apart. Speaking with Playboy in 1993 (via E! News ), she said, "Tom was seriously thinking of becoming a monk. At least for that period of time, it looked as though marriage wouldn't fit into his overall spiritual need." She also quipped, "He thought he had to be celibate to maintain the purity of his instrument," cheekily adding: "My instrument needed tuning." (Per  The Telegraph , Rogers felt that her words were not correctly interpreted in that Playboy interview.) 

Rolling Stone previously reported that Cruise had attended a Catholic seminary during high school but didn't take the path seriously. "Even at that age, I was too interested in ladies," he said.

Did Tom Cruise outgrow his first wife?

Fame, religion, age — these were all blamed for Tom Cruise and Mimi Rogers' divorce, but according to two authors who wrote unauthorized biographies about Cruise, none of those were the true cause of the split. Wensley Clarkson, who wrote " Tom Cruise: Unauthorized ," told Entertainment Weekly that he believes they simply matured in different directions. "I think he outgrew her," Clarkson speculated. 

Andrew Morton, who penned " Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography ," made a similar case, quoting an interview with Talk magazine in which Cruise shared, "It was just two people who weren't meant to work and it wasn't what I wanted for my life. I think you just go on different paths, but it wasn't Mimi's fault. ... It's just the way it is." Morton also cited a statement made by the couple after their split in which they appeared to imply they had tried their best but it just wasn't meant to be. "While there have been positive aspects to our marriage, there were some issues which could not be resolved even after working on them for a period of time," they said in a joint release.

That notion appears to be in keeping with what Cruise told Barbara Walters in 1992 when he didn't blame the age difference for his split from Rogers. Rather, he'd learned he wanted something else out of a relationship, but there were no hard feelings. "I wish her well," he shared. "I wish her great success and happiness."

Nicole Kidman's alleged role in Cruise and Rogers' divorce

Tom Cruise met his second wife, Nicole Kidman , on the set of 1990's " Days of Thunder " while he was still married to Mimi Rogers. They were instantly drawn to each other and weren't shy about telling Vanity Fair in 1995 it was a sexual connection. "I thought he was the sexiest man I'd ever seen in my life, so it started on lust," Kidman gushed while Cruise added, "Instant lust, that's what I felt. I thought she was amazingly sexy and stunning."

According to Andrew Morton's "Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography,"  that connection was the catalyst for Cruise leaving Rogers. "On December 9, 1989, with filming for 'Days of Thunder' in full swing, Tom's lawyers quietly filed a suit for his legal separation from Mimi," Morton wrote. However, the public didn't learn about the split until over a month later, and that was on purpose. As journalist Richard Corliss, who interviewed Cruise at the time, explained in Morton's book, "His marriage to Mimi Rogers was a fiction he wanted to maintain — at least until the magazine profiles attending the release of 'Born on the Fourth of July' were published."

In the end, Cruise's divorce from Rogers was finalized in February 1990, per Us Weekly , and he married Kidman in December 1990. As he told Vanity Fair, he had zero doubts. "I knew she was it for me," he enthused, adding, "I thought, 'This is the person to be able to share all of who I am with, and her with me.'"

Mimi Rogers has moved on from Tom Cruise but can't escape him

Following their divorce, Tom Cruise didn't waste any time moving on. As soon as he and Mimi Rogers had officially split in 1990, he tied the knot with Nicole Kidman that same year and the two remained together until 2001. He then found love again and gave marriage a third try with Katie Holmes from 2006 to 2012. As for Rogers, it took her a little longer to meet her new beau — producer Chris Ciaffa — but the pairing proved to be a lasting one. They married in 2003, per InStyle , had two kids (Lucy and Charlie) and, as of September 2022, are still happily married.  

Clearly, both exes have moved on from one another, but even so, Rogers hasn't been able to fully escape her past. That's because, as she told Today in 2006, despite being divorced for decades, she was still being asked about Cruise. Although she was, as she quipped, "I'm one ex-wife removed," reporters simply couldn't resist asking her questions about the actor's personal life, and she wasn't exactly appreciative. As she told the outlet, not only was she not interested in the topic, but she also wasn't exactly qualified to share an opinion on the matter. "Any time anything happens with him I get a call: 'What do you think of Katie? What do [you] think about this?' [...] 'Do you think he'll be a good father?'" she mused, slamming, "How do I know any more than I would know what kind of parent you would be?"

Meaww

Has Tom Cruise quit Scientology? Superstar has allegedly not visited UK headquarters of church in three years

L ONDON, ENGLAND: Tom Cruise has reportedly not visited the UK headquarters of the Church of Scientology despite staying in the country for around three years.

Per Daily Mail , the ‘Mission: Impossible' star spent most of his time in the UK while filming the seventh installment of the action franchise. Despite this, he has allegedly not visited the East Grinstead HQ of the Scientology Church during his stay.

Has Tom Cruise quit Scientology?

While no indication has been given by the ‘Top Gun: Maverick' star, it has been alleged by the news outlet that despite spending a considerable amount of time in the UK, Cruise has not visited the UK Headquarters of the Church of Scientology.

The news outlet, however, said that the most popular face of the religion could have visited the church in Central London.

Cruise reportedly took his chopper to visit several places in the UK including Birmingham and Cotswolds but has not visited Saint Hill Manor, the UK HQ located in West Sussex.

The manor was bought by the founder of Scientology and sci-fi author L Ron Hubbard in 1959. It initially served as his family home before being converted to a church propagating his religion.

Per Scientologiest's website, the church "provides advanced religious services to Scientologists from around the world." Earlier, Cruise was often seen flying his AS350 helicopter to visit the church.

However, Cruise's daughter with Nicole Kidman, Isabella Cruise lives in Croydon and is also closely involved with Saint Hill Manor as she is a Scientologist, much like her father.

Why has Tom Cruise not visited the Scientology Church in the UK?

Per the news shared by the Australian and New Zealand media, a source from Cruise's ‘Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part 1' set said the global superstar might have drifted away from Scientology in the wake of Covid-19.

The source said in 2021 when the budget of the film got hiked because of the multiple delays due to the Covid pandemic, "Tom appears extremely withdrawn at the moment – he's really keeping ­himself to himself, but something seems to have changed."

The source stated, "He's obviously under a great deal of pressure with this film and the studio are now getting on the case because things are so delayed and apparently over-budget," per New Zealand Herald .

They added, "It isn't really anyone's fault and Tom has a long history of making incredible films that more than justify the big costs, but there's no doubt things are weighing on his shoulders just now."

The source highlighted during that time, "He has the helicopter so he can go anywhere very quickly, but he hasn't been to East Grinstead at all."

"A number of us wonder if the Covid situation and his religious beliefs are pulling him in different directions with so much pressure in­volved in getting this film finished," said the source.

The news outlet further shared that some of the people close to the star speculated he probably drifted away from the church because of its stance on tackling Covid-19, which purportedly did not include vaccination.

Who introduced Tom Cruise to Scientology?

Tom Cruise's first wife Mimi Rogers introduced the ‘Knight and Day' star to the religion. He got inducted in 1986 and became a vocal advocate of the religion in the 2000s.

Cruise also enjoys a close friendship with the Scientology Church's current leader, David Miscavige.

Has Tom Cruise quit Scientology? Superstar has allegedly not visited UK headquarters of church in three years

The Truth About The Leader Of Scientology David Miscavige's Relationship With Tom Cruise

David Miscavige smiling

Tom Cruise is one of the most popular actors from the Church of Scientology. He was introduced to the religion back in the late 1980s when he was in a relationship with actress Mimi Rogers, who was born and raised in Scientology. Rogers has since left the church, but Cruise remains a follower to this day (via Reel Rundown ).

The Church of Scientology's founder, L. Ron Hubbard, died in 1986. David Miscavige, who was Hubbard's trusted advisor, then assumed the role of Scientology's leader. He joined Scientology together with his family in 1971, and he rose up the ranks and eventually became the leader and Chairman of the Board. As Cruise's acting career flourished, he became the biggest star in the Church of Scientology and developed a close relationship with its leader. Cruise and Miscavige have been friends for decades, and Miscavige even served as the actor's best man in his wedding to Nicole Kidman in 1990, and to Katie Holmes in 2006, as reported by Pop Dust. The two men have been photographed enjoying each other's company as well.

David Miscavige and Tom Cruise's close friendship

Some former Scientology members witnessed the friendship between Tom Cruise and David Miscavige . According to a report from the Daily Mail , Cruise has his own villa neighboring Miscavige's home at Gold Base — the headquarters of Scientology. Sinar Parman, Cruise's former personal chef, talked about his employer's relationship with Miscavige, who he refers to as DM. "It was a bromance — cigar-smoking, playing tennis, doing exercise together, out macho-ing each other. He even got DM parachuting with him, there's a big place in Perris, CA where they did it. It was who could outdo the other," he said.

Gary Morehead, who worked as the head of security at Gold Base, also shared what he witnessed during his time in Scientology. "I know a couple of times he and Dave went to Vegas. They'd go out gambling because I saw the big rolls of cash that were sitting on the table up at the Officers' Lounge," he shared. It seems that Cruise and Miscavige, indeed, have a tight-knit relationship, but some former Scientology members claim that the church leader has ulterior motives.

Claims of an odd relationship

Despite the friendship between David Miscavige and Tom Cruise, those who worked with the Scientology leader and have since left the religion revealed some controversial details regarding the relationship. John Brousseau — who was L. Ron Hubbard's driver and David Miscavige's former brother-in-law — worked for Tom Cruise. "Tom thinks Miscavige is the greatest person in the world. He worships him like a god. Miscavige would pretend that Tom was his best friend, but you could see it was horses**t. Tom couldn't see it," he said in an interview with the Village Voice .

Mike Rinder, who was the former spokesman for Scientology and has since left the religion, agreed with Brousseau's observations and said that Miscavige wouldn't think twice about ending his friendship with Cruise when he no longer has use for him, such as "access to big names in Hollywood, money, expensive gifts and star power." According to The Hollywood Reporter , there are also other former Scientology members who claim to have heard Miscavige saying bad things about Cruise behind his back. The actor has never personally talked about his relationship with Miscavige, but in 2009, his attorney, Bert Fields, released a statement that said, "Mr. Cruise is aware of the claims made against Mr. Miscavige by former members of the Church of Scientology. He does not believe them."

by Michael Musto

  • Combined Shape

did mimi rogers introduce tom cruise to scientology

As you know, Mimi Rogers was the one who introduced Tom Cruise to Scientology, forever changing his life–and ours too.

Well, a source who was around that scene at the time tells me that Mimi acted as crazy-protective of Tom as Tom later did of Katie.

Swears the source:

“Mimi hung out around the set of Cocktail and kept a close eye on Tom the whole time.

“And she tried to get Elisabeth Shue to not do sex scenes with Tom.

“Mimi would say, ‘Tom has strep throat. I wouldn’t want you to catch that’.”

The source adds:

“She acted that way around the hot women.

“Why would you do that if your husband was gay?

“He wasn’t. Case closed.”

When I asked the source why Mimi later made the remark about minimal sex in that household, they replied, “She lied!”

Hmm. Food for thought.

More: Michael Musto Scientology Tom Cruise

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  6. Tom Cruise says he is ‘incredibly proud’ of Scientology

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COMMENTS

  1. How Scientology broke up Tom Cruise and Mimi Rogers: The story you

    In 1985, Mimi Rogers met Tom Cruise, who was already becoming a major Hollywood star. They started dating in 1986, and she introduced him to Scientology, taking him to the Enhancement Centre. ... If Mimi Rogers was hoping Scientology would help cure Tom of his predilection to sleep around, Marty Rathbun tells us that Miscavige was determined to ...

  2. Did Tom Cruise's First Wife Mimi Rogers Convince Him To Become A ...

    Tom Cruise's ties to the Church of Scientology began after he married his first wife, Mimi Rogers. Mimi Rogers played a significant role in introducing Cruise to Scientology. Reports suggest that ...

  3. Tom Cruise's First Wife Left Scientology After They Divorced

    Tom Cruise joined Scientology after marrying his first wife, Mimi Rogers. ... Mimi Rogers, who introduced him to the church. The couple eventually divorced, and Rogers left Scientology for good ...

  4. Where is Mimi Rogers? How Tom Cruise's first wife gave Scientology its

    In 1977, she married Scientologist Jim Rogers, and they started a field auditing office in Sherman Oaks called the Scientology Enhancement Centre, stated The Underground Bunker. However, they divorced in 1980, following which she married Cruise. Why did Mimi Rogers and Tom Cruise split? In a 1993 interview with Playboy, Rogers revealed the ...

  5. Was Tom Cruise and Mimi Rogers' Marriage Orchestrated by Scientology?

    Mimi Rogers and Tom Cruise met in the 1980s and their marriage was solid until Cruise laid eyes on Nicole Kidman. However, Scientology may have placed them together to begin with.

  6. Mimi Rogers

    On May 9, 1987, she married actor Tom Cruise in Bedford, New York; the marriage broke down at the end of 1989, and a divorce was finalized in February 1990. Rogers received a settlement of $4 million, and is believed to have introduced Cruise to Scientology.

  7. How Tom Cruise Was Introduced To Scientology: REPORT

    The actor was first introduced to Scientology -- a religion that was founded in 1953 by science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard -- in the late 1980s by his first wife, actress Mimi Rogers, whose father, Phil Spickler, was one of the church's most powerful members during the religion's early years, reports RadarOnline.

  8. Inside Tom Cruise & Mimi Rogers Marriage, Divorce & Scientology Ties

    Rogers is allegedly the one who initially introduced Cruise to Scientology, and the timeline matches up when you remember he joined the Church in 1986 (when they were dating).

  9. Tom Cruise's career renaissance and Scientology background, explained

    Cruise joined the Church of Scientology during his first marriage to Scientologist Mimi Rogers, after Top Gun had already made him a star. According to now-defected former church officials ...

  10. Throwback Thursday: When Tom Cruise Found Love

    In 1987, the actor married Mimi Rogers, who introduced him to the church, now the subject of HBO documentary 'Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief' adapted from Lawrence Wright's book.

  11. Tom Cruise and Scientology: Separating Fact From Fiction

    The actress, Mimi Rogers, introduced Tom Cruise to the religion when they started dating in 1986, and the two eventually married. Mimi's father was a friend of Scientology's founder, L. Ron Hubbard, and helped build the church in the 1950s. Mimi was born into the religion and grow up with its practices.

  12. The day Tom Cruise tried to recruit Seth Rogen into Scientology

    Tom Cruise was first introduced to Scientology in 1986 thanks to his first wife, Mimi Rogers (they were married between 1987 and 1990). His commitment to the religion even led him to buy and reform the English mansion that was the former home of Scientology founder Ron Hubbard, according to The Telegraph.

  13. How Tom Cruise's Involvement In Scientology Has Affected His Love Life

    Cruise was also introduced to Scientology by a love interest. Daily Beast reports that the actor was brought into the fold by his then-girlfriend and now-ex-wife, Mimi Rogers, shortly after the ...

  14. Tom Cruise May Have Used Scientology to End Marriage to Mimi Rogers

    Tom Cruise Reportedly Used the Church of Scientology to Meet Nicole Kidman While Married to Mimi Rogers. by Kristyn Burtt. September 27, 2022 at 11:58am EDT. Nicole Kidman, Tom Cruise ©1996 RAMEY ...

  15. 17 Hollywood Stars Who Dabbled in or Abandoned Scientology: From Leah

    Mimi Rogers is often credited with introducing Tom Cruise to Scientology, but after their marriage ended, so did her relationship with the church — though he remains the Church's most active ...

  16. Inside Tom Cruise's Forgotten First Marriage to an Older Woman ...

    To know why Mimi Rogers is considered the woman who allegedly brought Tom Cruise into Scientology, we need to look at her background. Not only was she a Scientologist, but her father and ex ...

  17. Inside Tom Cruise's Relationship With Mimi Rogers

    The history of Tom Cruise and Mimi Rogers' relationship. Georges De Keerle/Getty Images. Tom Cruise and Mimi Rogers have varying accounts about how they met. Cruise insists they met at a dinner party while he was developing "Top Gun," whereas Rogers stated that the two were set up by mutual friends. "I wasn't seeing anybody, he wasn't seeing ...

  18. Tom Cruise's Dark, Twisted Journey to Scientology's Top Gun

    In 1986, when actress Mimi Rogers began dating Cruise and first introduced him to Scientology, the controversial organization was at a critical juncture: Its founder and source of all its written "scriptures," science fiction author L. Ron Hubbard, had died on Jan. 24 that year.

  19. We Finally Know Why Tom Cruise And Mimi Rogers Divorced

    Tom Cruise may be the most well-known Scientologist in the world, but it was actually Mimi Rogers who introduced him to the religion. As The Hollywood Reporter noted, Rogers' father was an avid ...

  20. Has Tom Cruise quit Scientology? Superstar has allegedly not ...

    Who introduced Tom Cruise to Scientology? Tom Cruise's first wife Mimi Rogers introduced the 'Knight and Day' star to the religion. He got inducted in 1986 and became a vocal advocate of the ...

  21. TIL Mimi Rogers was the one who introduced Tom Cruise to Scientology

    ADMIN MOD. TIL Mimi Rogers was the one who introduced Tom Cruise to Scientology. On the last episode, there was a brief discussion about Mimi Rogers and her involvement in Scientology. Lindsey says "well, when you're married to Tom Cruise…". But I looked it up and actually it's the other way around.

  22. The Truth About The Leader Of Scientology David Miscavige's ...

    Tom Cruise is one of the most popular actors from the Church of Scientology. He was introduced to the religion back in the late 1980s when he was in a relationship with actress Mimi Rogers, who was born and raised in Scientology. Rogers has since left the church, but Cruise remains a follower to this day (via Reel Rundown).

  23. Tom Cruise/Mimi Rogers Dish From The Early Scientology Days

    by Michael Musto. As you know, Mimi Rogers was the one who introduced Tom Cruise to Scientology, forever changing his life-and ours too. Well, a source who was around that scene at the time ...