Nicole Kidman Belittled Tom Cruise

The same month that Eyes Wide Shut was released, Esquire published a feature story about Nicole that painted a picture of the actress that was devastatingly unflattering. Tom Junod, a Georgia-based feature writer who went to Australia to interview Nicole for the article, walked away with a story that was kinky enough to ensure his own celebrity.

Nicole was most generous with her time, giving the writer a tour of the bridge that her grandfather helped build, drinking with him at a colorful pub called the Glenmore Hotel, and dining with him at a Japanese restaurant. The way Junod told it, Nicole had a bit too much to drink and got a wee bit tipsy... well, drunk.

On Junod’s last night in Sydney. Nicole insisted on dropping by his hotel to tell him good-bye. According to Junod, when she arrived at his room she glanced at his computer screen and then climbed into his bed to get comfortable.” No sooner had he climbed into the bed to lie beside her, than the telephone rang—it was Tom and he was looking for his wife, since he and the children were waiting for her at a Chinese restaurant and everyone was getting hungry.

“Yeah, Tom,” Junod answered. “She’s right here, in my hotel room. In my bed.”

There was a pause, according to Junod, and Tom said, yeah, in your dreams, buddy.”

With that, Junod held the telephone out in Nicole’s direction and asked her to confirm that she was, indeed, in his bed. “I m afraid so, darling, Nicole called out to her husband. “I’m afraid I’m in his bed at this very moment.”

If true — and he did seem to suggest that he and Nicole were having an intimate encounter of some kind—it was an odd thing for Junod to write about in his article. So odd, that Junod himself became the subject of media attention. In an interview with USA Today, he seemed to back away from suggesting a sexual encounter. He explained it by saying, “The story is and was a flirtation. I was flirting with her and she flirted back. I just think we kind of liked each other. Of course, it was professional.”

Nicole was oddly silent about the article. Neither she nor Tom has ever discussed the article publicly, but it surely must have caused a rift. The article demonstrated how truly needy Nicole was at that time in her life.

To Luhrmann’s delight, when Nicole and Ewan arrived for rehearsals, there seemed to be an instant chemistry between the two actors. They were as playful together as cats on a lazy day.Ewan appreciated her daring and her beauty, and she appreciated his youth and optimism, qualities that she—at age thirty-three—yearned to revisit

All of the actors spent long days doing readings, improvising, and taking singing and dancing lessons. Tom, who was in Sydney filming his Mission. Impossible sequel, stopped by Luhrmann’s headquarters often to show support for Nicole—or was it because he had heard the same rumors about Nicole and Ewan that everyone else had heard?

“Of course, people said, ‘Nicole and Ewan are having an affair. They’re inseparable,’” Luhrmann told Movieline. “People love stories like that. I’m not surprised by it. It can happen. But as far as I know, there was a line. It just didn't happen. But it was very close."

Love her!

R4 = Lauren Bacall ghost

You already have another Nicole Kidman thread (actually you have several). There is no reason to open another.

Nicole never seemed to be far from Tom' thoughts. He insisted that production on Mission: Impossible II begin in Sydney so that he could he there with his wife and children. He went often to the Moulin Rouge set, but no one can recall her ever visiting the Mission: Impossible II set.

There marriage was undergoing a major shift, and no one hut Tom and Nicole was aware of what was happening.

Now it was Tom who was making an effort to be at her side, going out of his way to be supportive of her career. People who witnessed his public displays of support and affection toward Nicole sometimes marveled at his dedication to a marriage that Nicole seemed to take for granted.

When he became a producer on The Others , he insisted that Nicole be given the starring role.

Tom had learned early in the marriage that the best way to keep Nicole happy was to keep her working. How odd it was that Tom would choose this story for Nicole, for, in its own way, it seemed to mirror their marriage, down to the smallest detail.

Both Grace and Nicole lived in a household that was never what it seemed, both had a difficult time holding onto servants, both were fastidious about the smallest of details, and both had husbands whose roles in their lives was in question.

Was art imitating life, or was life imitating art? Had Tom finally proved to Nicole that he was the better actor?

A fter ten years of marriage, Hollywood’s power-glam couple was in trouble, but friends and work associates saw only the glossy exterior they presented to the outside world and they saw Tom showing up on her movie sets, and praising his wife’s acting abilities.

Of course, marriages don’t suddenly go bad, not the way milk with last week’s expiration date does—it takes a series of events over a long period of time. The earliest sign that Tom and Nicole’s marriage might be in trouble was also a sign that some people interpreted as a sign of strength: their adoption of two children.

Seasoned adoption workers know that one of the most common reasons that couples decide to adopt is to bolster a shaky marriage. In such cases, couples view children as a means of cementing a fragile emotional bond . Social workers can usually weed those couples out in quick order.

For wealthy couples, however, there is a way to skirt the scrutiny of social workers: they can hire attorneys and pursue private adoptions that can be shielded from the prying eyes of social agencies.None of this is to suggest that Tom and Nicole had ulterior motives for adopting children (couples who apply for children are seldom aware of their reasons for doing so). Tom and Nicole both longed for a family However, it is to suggest that professional social workers, given an opportunity, would have spotted the problems in their marriage, even at that very early stage

Who gives a shit? Get your own blog. And a life.

Tom Cruise is an asshole, so just shut up.

Over the years, perhaps disappointed by her “Mrs. Tom Cruise’ label, Nicole spoke, publicly at least, less and less about her husband, while he seemed to toss her name about with greater frequency. It was like a dance: she withdrew, he charged ahead, overcompensating.

When Days of Thunder and Far and Away did poorly at the box office, it killed any dreams they had of becoming Hollywood’s newest Bogart and Bacall incarnation, which meant that they had to pursue separate career opportunities.

For Tom and Nicole, the previous year and a half had been a nightmare. The Kubrick adventure—or was it more of an experiment?—opened the door to a wide range of insecurities in their personal lives. Tom had no idea that his friend the director and Nicole had filmed such sexually explicit scenes;

it was not until he saw the finished product that he asked about Gary Goba’s role in the film. More than anyone else, he could see the chemistry between Nicole and Goba; it was a chemistry he did not see in his own scenes with her

Interesting stuff. Would be even more interesting if it were current. Anything about what she is like now?

For Nicole to step so quickly from Eyes Wide Shut into The Blue Room , which featured onstage nudity of a explicitness seldom engaged in even by professional strippers . All of that was followed up by Nicole’s embarrassing encounter with the Esquire writer, then with rumors of an affair between Nicole and Ewan McGregor. Was Nicole sending Tom a message?

On December 24, 2000, Tom and Nicole celebrated their tenth wedding anniversary in Los Angeles with a small group of friends, away from the prying eyes of the media. Shortly thereafter, Tom returned to New York, where he was filming Vanilla Sky, with Penelope Cruz, Cameron Diaz, and Kurt Russell. Written by Alejandro Amenabar, who had directed and written The Others.

Early in February 2001, Nicole and Tom separated. Tom had been sleeping on a sofa in the screening room for several days and one day, while Nicole was away from their Pacific Palisades home, he backed a moving van up to the door and loaded all of his personal possessions.

R13 She's still the same, leading a fake sham marriage with Keith Urban

When it became apparent that the National Enquirer was going to print a story about their marital problems, Tom and Nicole issued a press release on February 5 that officially announced the split and blamed their difficulties on “divergent careers which constantly kept them apart.” The day before the announcement, Tom gathered the cast of Vanilla Sky around him and broke the news to them himself.

The breakup of Hollywood’s most glamorous power couple was big news around the country, but especially in Los Angeles, where rumors about their marriage had circulated for years. Almost immediately, reports were published that linked Tom to Penelope Cruz, his love interest in Vanilla Sky; other reports linked Nicole to Ewan McGregor.

The National Enquirer reported that Tom dumped Nicole because she had cheated on him. Others blamed the problem on Nicole’s refusal to embrace Scientology. The media didn’t know about the secret sex scenes in Eyes Wide Shut or that would have been offered as an explanation as well

No sooner had the dust settled on the separation, than Tom dropped a bombshell. He filed for divorce on February 7. He requested joint custody of their two children, Bella, who was eight, and Connor, who was six.

Apparently, Nicole was just as surprised as everyone else, especially at the date Tom established as the date of separation—early-to-mid December 2000, just shy of ten years marriage. In court papers, Nicole challenged the date of separation, stating that they had been intimate during the balance of December and well into the new year.

Then she dropped a bombshell of her own: she had become pregnant with Tom’s child during that time and had suffered a subsequent miscarriage on March 15. Perhaps anticipating a denial of paternity, she asked doctors to keep DNA samples of the fetus so that she could prove that Tom was the father.

Nicole further stated in court papers that she had protested Tom’s intention to dissolve the marriage and had “urged him not to leave but to enter marriage counseling with her or to take other steps to address whatever problems may have existed in their marriage relationship. [Tom] said his decision was final, and he departed the parties’ home.”

News of a miscarriage only whetted the appetite of the news media. Tom and Nicole had been married for 10 years .... Was it within the bounds of reason that she would be pregnant in the final weeks of her marriage with Tom? There was speculation that someone other than Tom had fathered the baby. Why, skeptics argued, would Tom divorce Nicole if she was carrying his child?

Ewan McGregor was so concerned about the finger pointing revolving around the miscarriage and breakup that he issued a statement denying that he had ever had an affair with Nicole: “I don’t know anything about it—it wasn’t anything to do with me.”

The other men identified as possible lovers, George Clooney and Marcus Graham, issued similar statements describing the rumors as nonsense.

News reports described Nicole as being shattered by the divorce . Tom’s response to the miscarriage and divorce was markedly different. When news of the miscarriage reached him, he reacted “coolly,” according to People magazine, which also reported him telling a friend that “Nic knows exactly why we are getting a divorce. But she’s the mother of our children and I wish her well.”

Nicole dropped her efforts for a reconciliation and focused instead on her career, and her ongoing battle with Tom over how their estimated $250 million estate would be divided up. Tom wasted no time going after the lion’s share of the estate and the ferocity of his lawyers’ demands at first caught Nicole off guard. She bounced back quickly, however, and hired estate-hungry lawyers of her own.

Los Angeles observers saw the divorce as shaping up to be the celebrity legal battle of the century. Some commentators wondered if the “secrets” of the marriage would somehow slip through the publicity that the couple had in place and find their way into court documents. If so, they would be disappointed, for lawyers on both sides were given strict orders to keep Nicole and Tom out of headlines.

.....Along with Nicole’s name was dragged another name—Penelope Cruz, Tom’s love interest in Vanilla Sky. Nicole didn’t know what to think. Tom denied any involvement with her, but the rumors had just enough credibility in them to make Nicole suspicious. In her own mind, Penelope was the reason for the divorce, at least that’s what she confided to friends.

The situation was not helped by a “Legends of Hollywood” Vanity Fair cover story. For the cover, photographer Annie Leibovitz shot a group por-trait that included, in addition to Nicole, Vanessa Redgrave, Sophia Loren, Meryl Streep, Gwyneth Paltrow, Catherine Deneuve, Kate Winslet, Cate Blanchett, Chloe Sevigny, and—horror of horrors—Penelope Cruz, though why Penelope was chosen was a mystery since her Hollywood presence was almost nonexistent.

The wily Leibovitz posed Nicole on the left corner, hand on hip, smileless with a regal posture, and placed Penelope on the opposite corner, leaning forward, forearms crossed in a pose of feminine submission. Nicole appeared slightly tense, Penelope looked like a deer caught in the headlights, and most of the other stars seemed slightly amused at the high drama into which they had inadvertently stumbled

In early April, when Tom took the stage at Los Angeles’s Shrine Auditorium on Oscar night, Nicole was not in the audience; she was at the home of a friend, watching the awards show on television. Friends said she was over wanting to get back together with him, but was still puzzled over why he had left her

Divorce negotiations did not go as smoothly as she had hoped. She and Tom seemed to be in agreement about the children, but when it came to finances she found him difficult to deal with. Their lawyers huddled, worked out compromises, only to learn that they had compromised away exactly what each partner wanted most

As Tom’s July 3 birthday approached, word leaked out that he was planning a big party, one at which he might introduce his new sweetheart, Penelope Cruz. According to news reports, Nicole asked their mutual friends not to attend as a sign of loyalty to her. Some of her friends honored her request, but Tom’s longtime friends Emilio Estevez, Rob Lowe, Ben Stiller, and Cuba Gooding, Jr., showed up, along with new friends such as Renee Zellweger and Jim Carrey

In the days following the party, Tom’s publicist confirmed that Tom and Penelope were indeed dating. Nicole heard that bit of news on television, and it made her furious. She told friends that she suspected the romance had been going on for quite some time.

In mid-July, Nicole took the children and went to Fiji on her private jet for a vacation. She and Tom had planned the two-week vacation long before their marital separation took place, so they divided the vacation time, with her taking a week and him taking a week. Shortly after Nicole arrived at the exclusive island retreat, longtime friend Russell Crowe was seen arriving at the airport in his private jet. There had been rumors about Nicole and Russell for years, so no one was surprised to see him arrive in her wake.

When Nicole concluded her vacation on the island, she left on a Saturday. The following day Tom arrived with a party of ten, including Cameron Crowe and Penelope Cruz..

Throughout the summer, rumors swirled about Nicole and Tom as their “friends” and employees—the couple had long required employees to sign agreements that required them to pay huge fines if they ever disclosed information to the media—disclosed tantalizing new information about the marriage

One week, Nicole was as an ice queen who had contributed little to the marriage; Tom was depicted as the partner who held everything together and saw that the children were cared for. The next week, Tom was painted as a lout who had gotten his wife pregnant, and then dumped her for Penelope Cruz.

Nicole kept saying that she had no idea why Tom was divorcing her— “What the hell happened?” was her constant refrain—and Tom kept saying that Nicole knew “exactly” why he had filed for divorce.

Finally, on November 12, they met one last time in a Los Angeles office building. The couple arrived separately, with Nicole wearing a blue suit and scarf, and Tom wearing a black T-shirt and black slacks. For three hours, they pored over the details of a settlement that divided up their $250 million combined estate.

Nicole took their $4.3 million home in Pacific Palisades and their $4 million Sydney Harbour mansion, while Tom took their 280-acre estate in Telluride, Colorado, and their fleet of airplanes, which included a Beech F90, $100,000 Pitts S-2B, and a $28 million Gulfstream IV jet. Tom agreed on alimony and child support, but the amount was sealed under court order.

The couple agreed on joint legal and physical custody of the children. Under the agreement, the children will live alternately with both parents. By this stage in the divorce, Nicole was expressing fears to friends that Tom would want to raise the children as Scientologists, something she did not want.

R15 Well that is boring!

OP - No one gives a shit about her or Tom Cruise.

Nicole and Tom signed the papers before leaving the office that evening and then, avoiding the awkwardness of a handshake, embraced as the friends they once were. “Nicole is relieved that everything is finally over,” a friend told Newsweek, “and that she and Tom will have some kind of amicable relationship.”

Most experts considered the final agreement a victory for Nicole.

Nicole began 2002 by reading a cover story article about Tom in Vanity Fair. In the story, entitled “The Naked Truth,” the actor once again answered questions about the divorce. “[Nicole] knows why, and I know why,” Tom said. “She’s the mother of my children, and I wish her well. And I think that you just move on. And I don’t say that lightly. I don’t say that with anything. Things happen in life, and you do everything you can, and in every possible way, and there’s a point at which you just sometimes have to face the brutal reality.”

Nicole did not mind him talking about their divorce—he had his opinions and she had hers—nor did she mind him discussing his point system for disciplining the children (it wasn’t the way she did it, but she could hardly argue against it), but there was something about him lumping the children in with his and Penelope’s activities that annoyed her. Most divorced women feel a certain amount of discomfort when their children are exposed to the father’s new love interest and Nicole was no exception

Vanity Fair wrote about her children as if she were no longer in the picture. Just when she thought the nightmare that was 2001 was over, new issues arose to aggravate old wounds. Always prone to sudden changes in her health during times of emotional upheaval, Nicole was stunned to learn from her doctor, after a routine office visit, that her Pap smear had come back positive for possible cervical cancer.

According to press reports, a follow-up biopsy came back negative for cancer, but doctors cautioned her that such results can be wrong. She was urged to undergo another test in several months to be certain. The Star reported that she was “freaked out” by the news, prompting a friend to say, “She’s been praying that everything’s okay, but she can’t get the fear that she has cancer out of her mind.”

The cancer scare proved to be groundless, but it did take its toll on Nicole, leaving her emotionally and perhaps even spiritually bruised and battered by the experience. Because of what had happened to her mother, cancer was the most menacing word in the Kidman vocabulary

Following on the heels of the cancer scare, Nicole had a fight with Tom, after which, according to news reports, she was taken to the University of California at Los Angeles Medical Center, where she received emergency treatment for what was diagnosed as a panic attack. Witnesses said she was shaking and sobbing, nearly out of control.

....When Tom was asked by the reporter what he thought about a comment that Nicole made on the Late Show with David Letterman —she had held up her foot and told the host that she could wear heels again, eliciting loud laughter from the audience at Tom’s expense—he said he wasn’t offended by the comment, adding, “She always wore heels. Truly I like her in heels. That’s never been a problem for me.’’

Tom was surprised by the question, especially since Nicole’s comment had been made more than a year earlier; his divorce from Mimi had created a media buzz, but it had died down quickly. His divorce from Nicole, he now understood, was not going to simply vanish from the public eye