Tom Cruise is said to have been blindsided by Katie Holmes filing for divorce. Through his rep, he issued a statement confirming it was Holmes who set the wheels in motion to end their marriage and he needed privacy to ”work this out.”
Holmes filed for divorce on Thursday, just five days before Cruise turns 50. The timing suggests that Tom didn’t see this coming.
What is interesting is that Holmes is 33. His ex-wives Nicole Kidman and Mimi Rogers were both 33 when they marriages to Cruise faltered. The divorces in Kidman and Rogers’ case came when they turned 34. Holmes will turn 34 in December.
The difference in this divorce is that it was Holmes who filed. Tom decided to end his two-year marriage to Mimi Rogers in 1989 (the divorce was finalized in February 1990 ), after he spotted Kidman and the pair begun working together on Days of Thunder. ”I’m with Nicole now,” he reportedly told Rogers.
He went on to marry Kidman on Christmas Eve 1990. However, just as was the case of his first marriage, Cruise arrived at his L.A home – less than two months after they renewed their wedding vows in a romantic ceremony – and announced he was filing for divorce.
While the couple had been dogged by rumors of problems throughout their ten-year marriage, leading up to the divorce Cruise had been spotted out on dates in New York with Penelope Cruz, his co-star in Vanilla Sky, and whom he would later go on to date after his split from Kidman was made official.
Another difference in the Holmes/ Cruise split is an obvious one: They have a biological child together.
It wasn’t for lacking of trying in the cases of Rogers and Kidman.
After their divorce, Rogers opened up about the end of her marriage to Cruise, saying that their sex life was non-existent.
“He was seriously thinking of becoming a monk, ” she said. “He thought he had to be celibate to maintain the purity of his instrument, but my instrument needed tuning, and we had to split.”
Rogers also claimed that their inability to have children was a factor in their split. Her ability to conceive didn’t prove to be too much of a problem when she began living with producer Chris Ciaffa, who she later married. The couple have two children; a daughter, Lucy (born 1994), and a son, Charles (born 2001).
As for Kidman, she was three months pregnant when Cruise abruptly ended their marriage. Sadly, she suffered a miscarriage shortly after her split from him [she also miscarried another child early in their marriage].
The couple’s decision to adopt two children, Isabella and Connor, only helped to fuel more rumors about Cruise’s fertility.
But all of this history seemed to be forgotten, when on October 6th, 2005, Cruise and Holmes announced they were expecting a child. Despite the endless fascination with Holmes and her baby bump, which appeared rather oddly shaped throughout her pregnancy, conspiracy theories were momentarily put to one side when the couple welcomed baby Suri into the world on Aptril 18, 2006.
The pair, however, did pose for Vanity Fair with little Suri in October 2006 to prove to the world she was real and silence the naysayers once and for all.
That little girl is now set to be the focus of a bitter battle with Holmes seeking sole custody. Considering that this is Cruise’s only biological child, the chances of him letting that happen are slim… unless Holmes has something blockbuster to reveal.
For Cruise, on the eve of turning 50, this could well be the best public relations image overhaul for him yet: It will shift the public opinion of him as cold and calculating and humanize him again. If reports turn out to be correct that he was taken by surprise by the divorce, people will be able to relate to him and genuinely feel for him during what will be perceived as a difficult time.
And for Holmes, by joining Cruise’s ex list, the future looks bright: Rogers, Kidman and even Cruz all went on to find love, marry and have children post-Cruise.
What do you think?