Tom Cruise: All the World's a Stage

This authoritative 2012 biography of Tom Cruise records one of the most remarkable public comebacks in the history of Hollywood. In May 2005, 43-year-old Cruise, the biggest star in the world, having dumped his wife, Nicole Kidman with no explanation, jumped up and down on Oprah Winfrey’s sofa to proclaim his love for Katie Holmes. Later, as a leading Scientologist, he berated Brooke Shields for using drugs and psychiatry to cure her post-natal depression and derided the Today Show’s Matt Lauer on national television – “Here’s the problem. You don’t know the history of psychiatry. I do.” He was kicked out by his studio, Paramount. Vanity Fair ran the headline: ‘HAS TOM CRUISE LOST HIS MARBLES?’

But 7 years later he is right back at the top with a stable family life, a vast world-wide following, an acclaimed return to form in ‘Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol’ and a fistful of projects with a return to ‘Top Gun’ and a new image as the hero of the best-selling Jack Reacher novels.

How did he turn it all around? Iain Johnstone tells the fascinating inside story.