Interviewing Tom Cruise can be risky business

MSNBC/April 18, 2006
By Jeannette Walls

Tom Cruise has been sitting down with a lot of reporters lately — but one recent chat didn’t go so well. The “Mission Impossible” star walked out of an interview with Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet Söndag after the conversation turned to his ex-wife, Nicole Kidman.

The conversation was all smiles until reporter Björn Benkow insisted that experts say that dyslexia cannot be cured by Scientology as Cruise has claimed. There was an awkward pause, then Cruise burst into laughter. “I’m going to, in any case, admit that you have the courage of a madman,” according to our translator. “This is something no journalist has dared say to me face-to-face. . . . Scientology is a religion without divinity. Its teaching is a spiritual liberation from life’s problems that can only be reached through advice, courses and deep studies. Your cynical media colleagues cast doubt over all the good that we do by spreading a bunch of hocus pocus about us.”

Then the reporter mentioned Kidman and the two children that she and Cruise adopted. “Now you’ve gone over the line,” Cruise replied. Then, according to Benkow, one of Cruise’s two bodyguards put his hand on the reporter’s shoulder, and Cruise said: “Now, unfortunately, I have to end this, Mr. . . . ?”