Tom Cruise began breaking away from Scientology while filming the intense Stanley Kubrick movie “Eyes Wide Shut” with then-wife Nicole Kidman in 1997, according to the new book “A Billion Years: My Escape From a Life in the Highest Ranks.” of Scientology.”
Former high-ranking Church officer Mike Rinder writes that the star began ignoring calls from Scientology head David Miscavige while filming in London. This is said to have prompted Miscavige to send Marty Rathbun, a top church leader, to the UK to audit Cruise – a process in which the subject is guided through events in their lives to alleviate negativity and reach a level of ‘clear’.
Cruise, Rinder writes, “was gradually withdrawn into the world of Scientology.”
However, this rededication would have “created a distance between” [Cruise] and Nicole.”
Kidman had been brought to church by Cruise years before, but “never expressed particular eagerness for her Scientology courses or auditing,” Rinder writes. It didn’t help that her father was a psychiatrist. (According to the Church of Scientology, psychiatry provides inappropriate care and over-reliance on psychiatric drugs). “If she hadn’t been Ms. Tom Cruise, she wouldn’t have been eligible to participate in OT levels at all because of her family relationship with psychiatry.”
Since the church apparently felt threatened by Kidman’s influence over their most prominent celebrity, Rathbun “worked with” [Hollywood lawyer] Bert Fields to hire the infamous PI Anthony Pellicano to spy on Nicole and tap her phone,” Rinder writes.
Pellicano spent more than a decade in prison for a variety of offenses including wiretapping, extortion, conspiracy and illegal possession of explosives and grenades.
“The church has never commissioned or participated in illegal wiretapping,” a church spokesman told Vidak For Congress. “Mike Rinder is an inveterate liar who tries to take advantage of his dishonesty. He supports himself by orchestrating the intimidation of his former church and its leader through false police reports, inflammatory propaganda and fraudulent media stories.”
The book also claims that Rathbun turned the couple’s two adopted children—Isabella and Connor—against Kidman by indoctrinating them into L. Ron Hubbard’s teachings about oppressors.
According to the reported Scientology canon, an oppressor is one whom the church considers an enemy and must be silenced or destroyed.
“When Tom and Nicole divorced, Miscavige was happy that Nicole’s ‘negative influence’ no longer dragged Tom along,” Rinder writes. Cruise then became more fervent in his vocal public support for Scientology and Miscavige.
In her 2016 book, “Troublemaker: Surviving Hollywood and Scientology,” church defector Leah Remini wrote that she shared a shuttle with Cruise and Kidman’s children after their father’s 2006 wedding to Katie Holmes. The actress is said to have asked the siblings if they have seen much of their mother since their parents’ divorce in 2001.
“Not if I have a choice,” Bella would have said. “Our mother is off–King SP.”