The daily gossip: Tom Cruise sues tabloids for $50 million, and more

1. Tom Cruise sues tabloids for $50 million

Celebrities are accustomed to being blasted on the covers of tabloids, but according to Tom Cruise, two magazine have crossed the line into libel land. Cruise is suing Life & Style over a July article titled "Suri in tears: Abandoned by her dad," and In Touch over a cover with the headline "Abandoned by daddy," reports TMZ. Cruise, who is reportedly seeking $50 million for defamation and invasion of privacy, will donate any winnings to charity — potentially the most positive contribution to society in the history of tabloid-celebrity warfare.

2. Megan Fox threatens to sue website for posting faked nude pictures of her

Subscribe to 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

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Tom Cruise isn't America's only litigious celebrity. Megan Fox has threatened to start a celebrity lawsuit of her own by sending a cease and desist order to a website that published a fake nude picture of her, reports Fox News. The website, classily named "Celeb Jihad," complained that Fox's reputation couldn't be hurt by pictures on a "blatantly satirical" site — making the rather unconvincing case that the pictures deserve the same protection as the writings of Juvenal, Horace, and Jonathan Swift.

3. Robert Pattinson: Twilight sex scene is "pretty ridiculous"

Twi-hards may be chomping their vampire fangs at the bit to see the steamy Edward-Bella tryst in the next Twilight movie, but star Robert Pattinson found the scene "pretty ridiculous," reports the New York Daily News. Pattinson went on to explain that he and Kristen Stewart didn't even film the scene at the same time, evoking the significantly less seductive image of Edward Cullen squinting lustfully at the cameraman.

4. Lindsay Lohan did not steal clothing from Scary Movie 5, insists rep

Lindsay Lohan spokesman Steve Honig — surely among the the hardest-working people in the business — took great pains to squelch a new National Enquirer report claiming that Lohan had taken $15,000 worth of clothing from the set of the upcoming Scary Movie 5, says Ace Showbiz. "This is pure National Enquirer fiction," says Honig, besmirching the normally unimpeachable journalistic integrity of the tabloid.

5. Snooki pines for "a normal life"

If Snooki is to be believed — and why shouldn't she be? — the birth of her son means that her hard-partying days, which were exhaustively chronicled on MTV's Jersey Shore, are officially behind her, reports Today.com. "We want him to have a normal life," says Snooki, whose concept of a normal life seems to consist of starring in two MTV reality shows and appearing on Today.