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Canada, where he had the reputation of being a headstrong, troublesome, charismatic,
and charming boy. His schoolwork suered because of dyslexia, and he later said that
when he graduated from high school he was “a functional illiterate.” However, he
excelled in sports and drama. His family, like the Haggis family, threw themselves into
theater, founding an amateur troupe of players in Ottawa. His antisocial, bullying
father was a disruptive force in the family, and early one morning, when Cruise was
twelve, his mother packed up her three daughters and her precocious son and ed back
to America. “We felt like fugitives,” Cruise later recalled.
Spiritual questing and a tendency toward piety were already features of Cruise’s
personality. He spent a year in seminary in Cincinnati, with a view toward joining the
priesthood. But there was another, intensely ambitious side that was focused entirely on
stardom. He went to Hollywood when he was eighteen, and managed to get a role in
Endless Love, a movie starring Brooke Shields. He was a natural actor, but also persistent
and choosy, quickly nding his way into memorable roles. The longing to express his
spiritual side had never gone away, but it was dicult, in Hollywood, to know exactly
how to fit that in.
There was one church that was especially designed to resolve this dilemma.
Cruise’s rst wife, the actress Mimi Rogers, introduced him to Scientology in 1986. He
had just nished lming Top Gun, which had made him the world’s biggest movie star.
He had little incentive to publicly declare himself a Scientologist after the widespread
opprobrium directed at Scientology following the FBI raids on Operation Snow White
and the exposure of the church’s esoteric beliefs. Rumors of his involvement began to
mount, however. For several years he managed to keep his aliation quiet, even from
church management. Using his birth name, Thomas Mapother IV, he received auditing
at a small Scientology mission called the Enhancement Center in Sherman Oaks, which
Rogers had started with her former husband. Rogers’s close friend, and former
roommate, Kirstie Alley, did her auditing there, along with singer—and later,
congressman—Sonny Bono, who had also been brought into the church by Rogers.
Cruise would later credit Scientology’s study methods for helping him overcome his
dyslexia.
The triumph of adding Cruise to the Scientology stable was fraught with problems.
Mimi Rogers was at the top of that list. Her parents had been involved with Dianetics
since the early days of the movement. In 1957, when Mimi was a year old, they had
moved to Washington, DC, to work for Hubbard, and her father, Philip Spickler, had
briey joined the Sea Org. But Mimi’s parents had become disaected by the end of the
seventies. They were considered “squirrels,” because they continued to practice
Scientology outside the guidance of the church. It would be one thing to have Tom
Cruise as a trophy for Scientology, but it would be a disaster if he became a walking
advertisement for the squirrels.
When Miscavige learned of Cruise’s involvement in Scientology, he arranged to have
the star brought to Gold Base, alone, at its secret desert location near Hemet, in August
1989. He assigned his top people to audit and supervise the young star during his rst
weekend stay. Cruise arrived wearing a baseball cap and dark glasses, trying to keep a