The 'Mission: Impossible' actor, along with director Stanley Kubrick's wife, is accused by screenwriter Frederic Raphael of leading 'an incessant campaign' to discredit him.
- Jul 28, 2023
AceShowbiz - Tom Cruise has been labelled an "egocentric control freak" by "Eyes Wide Shut" writer Frederic Raphael. The veteran writer - who has been vocal about the issues he had working with the 1999 film's late director Stanley Kubrick - slammed the "Mission: Impossible" actor and questioned the chemistry between him and his then-wife Nicole Kidman in the movie even though they have never met.
In a letter he has written in his new book "Last Post", the 91-year-old scribe made the remarks, in which he accused Tom, along with the filmmaker's wife Christiane Harlan and her brother Jan of being responsible for his unflattering Wikipedia entry and trying to write him out of the director's "history."
According to MailOnline, he wrote, "There has been an incessant campaign, led by the Harlans, whom I never met during the two or three years of addressing myself exclusively to you, to deny that I had anything much to do with the final version of 'Eyes Wide Shut'."
"The Harlans and Master Cruise have managed to insert some derogatory stuff in my Wikipedia entry. There must be some way of excising the libel, but I lack the modern skill or the dreary energy to pursue the matter. Their sullen purpose is to establish your grand-masterliness…"
"I have never been called a liar by anyone as I have been by the Harlan clan and by Tom Cruise, egocentric control freak to whom I have never spoken. He did offer me a job though, soon after you finished shooting; the better to have me on a leash, no doubt. In his turn, he too seems to need the control he finds in Scientology...' 'Since Eyes Wide Shut', he has spent a lot of time running for his living, winning fixed fights or hurtling into space. Nothing like a helmet for heading off dialogue."
Frederic then questioned Kubrick's judgment and motive behind his casting for the film. He wrote, "It was never admiration for his versatility, was it? From all accounts, you gave him slow hell for Warner Brothers' money. You slave-drove him for what he cost and he took it like a man. What do you suppose he ever told the Scientology brass that locked him in hock to them?"
"Was there something just a touch naive in your idea that casting a married couple as a married couple would enable you to put 'the truth' on the screen? One thing you can be pretty sure of, whatever any conjugal duo may disclose in public about their relationship, they rarely let any crucial cat out of the bag. Did you honestly suppose Cruise and Kidman were bound in genuine passion, rather than embraced in a careerist merger?"
The writer then made equally scathing comments about the "Big Little Lies" actress. He added, "Kidman has been a star for many years for many people, can you think of a single movie of hers you wanted to see again."
Frederic's remarks are believed to refer to a Wikipedia entry which cites Roger Ebert's 1999 interview with Tom, who had blasted the writer's memoir "Eyes Wide Open" for his critical account of working with Kubrick. It quoted the "Top Gun" star as saying, "He [Raphael] wouldn't have written it if Stanley had been alive. Opportunistic. Self-serving. Inaccurate. I don't know that man at all and I've never met him. It's been interesting seeing how people have behaved afterward."
