What happened
The publication of Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography by Andrew Morton (who also wrote biographies about Princess Diana and Monica Lewinsky) is expected to ignite a legal battle when it is released on January 15. Among the many claims in the book about the noted Scientologist and Hollywood actor is the belief by many Scientologists that Cruise’s daughter Suri was conceived from the frozen sperm of the late Scientology founder L. Ron Hubbard. Cruise’s lawyer Bert Fields is denying many of the book’s claims, while Morton says he was forced to sell his home and go into hiding out of fear of retribution form the Church of Scientology.
What the commentators said
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.
Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.
Latest Videos FromThe Week
Is anyone going to take this book seriously? said Courtney Hazlett in MSNBC.com. Morton has “written a number of dubiously sourced biographies” and “even publishers in England—a country with very liberal libel standards—are wary of their countryman’s claims, and will not publish” it there. If this book has any value, it’s as “a best-of collection of Cruise rumors.” Beyond that, it just “appears to be a personal attack on Cruise and his family.”
And Cruise isn’t going to take this lying down, said the blog Metro.co.uk. Apparently, “the actor is so incensed by the claims” in Morton’s “unauthorized biography that he is planning to launch a £50 million lawsuit when it goes on sale.”
Morton certainly “paints a disturbing picture of the extent” to which “the Hollywood star’s life has been taken over by Scientology,” said Tom Leonard in the Telegraph. But let’s not forget that “Scientology has been ridiculed over such beliefs as the doctrine that alien lifeforms called Thetans inhabit human bodies.”
Morton’s book “reveals some either wildly crazy claims about Tom Cruise” and “Scientology, or some scary truths,” said the blog GlossLip. “You know what they say—truth is often stranger than fiction.” In fact, “I find all of” Morton’s claims “plausible, except the part about Suri” possibly being the spawn of L. Ron Hubbard. It’s actually “horrible” that Morton would paint such a “negative depiction” of a “small child.”
