Tom Cruise’s three ex-wives, Mimi Rogers, Nicole Kidman and Katie Holmes, probably would have a lot to say about being married to the famously intense mega-star and their time inside his beloved Church of Scientology.
But these women have mostly kept Cruise’s secrets, with experts in the inner workings of Scientology saying that Kidman and Holmes, in particular, probably signed non-disclosure agreements when their marriages to the “Top Gun” actor ended.
But no such agreement probably applies to Cruise’s youngest child, Suri Cruise, from whom he’s long been estranged, Page Six reported. With Suri turning 18 on Thursday, she and her mother Katie Holmes should no longer receive the reported $400,000 a year Cruise paid as part of a divorce settlement. Cruise also agreed to pay Suri’s college and health care costs, Page Six added.
As an adult, Suri Cruise should be free to speak out about her father, his beliefs and their rift, journalist and Scientology expert Tony Ortega told Page Six.
“Suri would have been too young to sign any agreement (when her parents divorced in 2012), but she will now be free to talk if she wants to and it’s going to be really interesting if she has something to say,” Ortega said.
Page Six said that representatives for Cruise, Holmes and the Church of Scientology did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
It’s possible that Suri may choose to stay silent about her famous father. For one thing, if she gave an interview or published a tell-all about him, she’d probably have to give up the mostly private life she’s been able to enjoy thus far. People credit a protective Holmes with trying to give Suri as normal life as is possible under the circumstances, while raising her in New York City.
“Katie has safeguarded Suri and she’s a devoted mom,” a source told Page Six. “This is a girl who is a private citizen. She hasn’t lived her life in public.”
Suri’s life, though, started out in a very public way. As Page Six pointed out, she was once “the most famous baby in America” because of the very high-profile way that Cruise conducted his courtship of the “Dawson’s Creek” star, who was 16 years younger that Cruise when they began dating. When news came that Cruise and Holmes had become parents to a baby daughter in April 2006, a global frenzy erupted, with media outlets competing to be the first to publish the little girl’s photos.
At the age of five months, Suri Cruise made her debut on the cover of Vanity Fair, in a glossy photo taken by celebrity photographer Annie Leibovitz.
For the first six years of Suri’s life, Cruise seemed to dote on his youngest daughter and enjoy being seen with her in public. He also is the father of two older children, Isabella, now 31, and Connor Cruise, now 29, whom he adopted with Kidman.
But Suri’s relationship with her father changed after Holmes reportedly “blindsided” him by filing for divorce in 2012. The following year, Cruise gave a deposition in his $50 million court fight against a pair of tabloid magazines and admitted that Holmes filed for divorce “to protect Suri from Scientology,” court documents revealed, Page Six reported.
There have been questions about whether Holmes and her daughter were declared Scientology “suppressive persons,” or SPs, after the divorce. According to Scientology, SPs are people who have “anti-social” personalities who seek to “upset, continuously undermine, spread bad news about and denigrate betterment activities and groups.” Scientology recommends that members stay away from SPs for their own well-being, but the church’s own website said it is “extremely rare” to label someone an SP.
“We don’t know for sure if Katie was ever declared an SP,” Ortega told Page Six. A regular church member, whose wife and daughter left Scientology, would be encouraged to disconnect from them, but Cruise might have been spared that option because of his “top celebrity” status. “He gets to ignore all this stuff,” Ortega said.
In any case, Holmes secured sole custody of their daughter, while Cruise retained “meaningful” visitation rights, according to The Blast. Yet, public sightings of Cruise with his daughter soon dwindled, with Page Six saying they were last seen together at Disney World in the summer of 2012.
Even if Suri has lived a mostly private life, paparazzi are known to follow her and her mother Katie Holmes around the streets of Manhattan. Still, as Suri reportedly prepares to head off to college, Holmes revealed in a 2023 interview with Glamour that she has grown up to be “an incredible person.”
