Brad Pitt isn’t the only famous father whose child is making a statement about wanting to distance themselves from a fraught relationship or difficult parenting.
Before news broke in the past week that two of Brad Pitt’s daughters have stopped using his surname, a report said that Tom Cruise’s daughter, Suri, didn’t want to use her mega-star dad’s last name when performing recently in a stage musical.
After Suri celebrated her milestone 18th birthday in April, she is about to graduate from La Guardia High School in New York City, and announced that she’s headed to Carnegie Mellon University in the fall. She made the subtle yet noticeable choice to only be identified as Suri Noelle for a performance of the stage musical “Head Over Heels,” according to a report from Hello magazine.
It’s not clear if the show was presented at Suri’s public high school, which specializes in teaching performing and visual arts, or at a theater in New York City. Suri lives in Manhattan with her mother, Katie Holmes, Cruise’s ex-wife. Hello magazine said Suri starred as Philoclea in the juke-box musical, which features music from the Go-Go’s.
For the show’s program, Suri used Holmes’ middle name, Noelle, as her last name in the show’s credits, Hello reported.
It’s long been reported that Suri has been estranged from her mega-star father, since around the time her mother surprised Cruise in 2012 by reportedly “blindsiding” him and asking for a divorce. Following Cruise and Holmes’ high-profile breakup, there were reports that the “Dawson’s Creek” star left the marriage so that she could protect her daughter from being raised in the cult-like Church of Scientology, of which the “Top Gun” star is a prominent member.
Since then, Suri has grown up under the care of her mother in New York, with the two sharing a close mother-daughter bond, Newsweek reported. There have been questions about whether Suri’s reported estrangement from the Jerry Maguire actor is due to Scientology.
According to its website, church recommends that members stay away from people labeled “suppressive persons,” or SPs, because they are considered “anti-social” personalities who seek to upset and undermines a members’ adherence to Scientology.
It’s been reported that Holmes secured sole custody of Suri in the divorce, while Cruise retained “meaningful” visitation rights. Yet, public sightings of Cruise with his daughter dwindled soon after the divorce, with Page Six saying they were last seen together at Disney World in the summer of 2012.
As Suri has come of age, she has shown an interest in the performing arts, attending La Guardia High School, which is officially known as the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts. Her actor-director mother also told Glamour last year that she had asked her daughter to sing the opening credits of her 2022 film, “Alone Together.” Suri’s next destination is Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, which is known for having one of the top-ranked undergraduate drama programs in the county.
The Hello report didn’t say whether Suri was using the name “Suri Noelle” just for the musical, or if it signals a more permanent shift in how she identifies herself and in how she may want to relate to her father.
Of course, Cruise wouldn’t be the only top male star right now who’s had a once beloved child reject her association with him, if that’s what Suri intends to do. The same thing happened to Cruise’s one-time co-star Pitt, who may be estranged from all six of his children with Angelina Jolie.
Pitt, who co-starred with Cruise in the 1994 gothic thriller, “Interview with the Vampire,” has been reminded of this “loss” in recent weeks, a source told People, after he and the rest of the world learned that his 18-year-old daughter Shiloh had dropped “Pitt” from her last name.
There have been news reports over the past several years that indicated that Pitt had probably become estranged from his older adopted children — Maddox, 22, Pax, 20, and Zahara, 19 — amid his contentious and protracted divorce from Jolie. But it’s become apparent in the past week that Pitt may no longer have relationships with his three biological children, Shiloh and 15-year-old twins, Vivienne and Knox.
Last week, Shiloh celebrated her 18th birthday by hiring a lawyer to help her petition the court to legally drop “Pitt” from her surname and to henceforth be known as “Shiloh Jolie,” not “Shiloh Jolie-Pitt,” People and other news outlets reported. People also reported last week that Vivienne had dropped “Pitt” in her Playbill credit for the new musical “The Outsiders,” which her mother produced.
The news about Shiloh hiring an attorney to officially distance herself from Pitt has proved to be especially painful for the “Fight Club” star, according to the People source.
“He’s aware and upset that Shiloh dropped his last name. He’s never felt more joy than when she was born. He always wanted a daughter,” the source said.
“The reminders that he’s lost his children, is of course not easy for Brad,” a source told People Monday. “He loves his children and misses them. It’s very sad.”
People magazine reported that Shiloh’s decision to drop Pitt’s last name was in part motivated by Jolie’s allegations related to her father’s “abuse history.”
The storied Hollywood super couple union between Pitt and Jolie came crashing down in September 2016 when Jolie filed for divorce and reports began circulating that the split was prompted by an altercation involving the couple on a private plane ride from the South of France to Los Angeles.
Several of the actors’ children also reportedly were involved in the incident, according to a subsequent FBI report. Since then, Jolie has accused the “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood” actor of being physically abusive on the plane ride and during their two-year marriage and 12-year relationship. Pitt has long denied the abuse allegations and his representatives have pointed out that he was never charged with a crime. Sources close to Pitt also have accused Jolie of working to turn their children against them.
Meanwhile, before Shiloh and Vivienne dropped “Pitt” from their full names, legally or otherwise, their older sister Zahara made a similar move. Zahara was seen in a video shared by Essence magazine, calling herself Zahara Marley Jolie at a 2023 event at Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority at Spelman College.
