Davis later explained to her that Cruise had simply changed his mind about the relationship, deciding that he needed someone with more power. But the star was willing to make amends by paying for a package that would allow her to attain OT VII. Continuing up the Bridge would help her deal with her grief and loss, Davis assured her.
In February 2005, Naz went to Clearwater to take the courses. At first, she was treated like a VIP, but soon one of her friends noticed dramatic changes in her—she was weeping all the time. Naz confided that she had just gone through a wrenching breakup with Tom Cruise. The shocked friend immediately reported her to Ethics. Naz was assigned a condition of Treason and ordered to do reparations for the damages she had done to the group by revealing her relationship with Cruise. She was made to dig ditches and scrub public toilets with a toothbrush. Finally, in June, she worked her way back into good standing with the church, but she was ordered to stay away from the Celebrity Centre. Davis advised her to go live in some far corner of the world and never utter another word about Tom Cruise.9
The search for a new mate for the star now went beyond Scientologists. Cruise briefly courted the Colombian actress Sofía Vergara, whom he met at a pre-Oscar party hosted by Will and Jada Pinkett Smith, but that relationship dissolved when Vergara refused to become a Scientologist. The religion was a crucial factor, both for Cruise and for the church. Cruise was particularly interested in Jennifer Garner. Other actresses were invited to the Celebrity Centre to audition for what they believed was a role in the Mission: Impossible series. The names included Kate Bosworth, Jessica Alba, Lindsay Lohan, Scarlett Johansson—and Katie Holmes.
Holmes was an ingenue with almond-shaped brown eyes, who described herself as a twenty-six-year-old virgin. She had been a top student at an all-girls Catholic high school in Toledo, Ohio, but like Tommy Davis, she had dropped out of Columbia University after a single semester. Soon she was starring on the teenage soap opera Dawson’s Creek and had a modest film career in coquettish roles. Church researchers discovered an interview she had given to Seventeen in October 2004. “I think every young girl dreams about [her wedding],” Holmes told the magazine. “I used to think I was going to marry Tom Cruise.” She had developed a crush on the actor when he appeared in Risky Business. At the time, she was four years old.
Katie and Tom met in April 2005. “I was in love from the moment that I shook his hand for the first time,” she later told talk-show host Jay Leno. Cruise is famous for his ardent courtship—flowers, jewelry, and imaginative dates. He took Katie on a nighttime helicopter ride over Los Angeles, with take-out sushi. Within a little more than two weeks, she had moved into Cruise’s Beverly Hills mansion, fired her manager and agent and replaced them with his representatives, and had begun to be accompanied by Jessica Feshbach, who was explained in press interviews as being her “best friend.”
In May, Cruise appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show. The audience, nearly all women, were in a near-hysterical state of anticipation even before Cruise came out on the stage, so his behavior has to be seen against a backdrop of a highly titillated screaming mass, to which he responded like a surfer catching a massive wave. He pumped his fist in the air and knelt on the floor. “Something’s happened to you!” Winfrey exclaimed.
“I’m in love!” he explained.
“We’ve never seen you behave like this before!”
“I know!” Cruise said, jumping backward onto her couch. Then he grabbed Winfrey’s hands and began wrestling with her. “You’re gone!” she kept saying. “You’re gone!” It was a scene of complete delirium.
Cruise’s spectacular and highly public romance was overshadowing the promotion for War of the Worlds, the movie he had just made with Spielberg, which would be released the following month. A few weeks after the Winfrey show, Cruise did an interview with Today show host Matt Lauer as Holmes sat nearby. The questions were friendly, and Cruise seemed happy and relaxed until Lauer mentioned that Holmes had agreed to take up Scientology. “At this stage in your life, could you be with someone who doesn’t have an interest?” Lauer asked.
“You know, Scientology is something that you don’t understand,” Cruise responded. “It’s like, you could be a Christian and be a Scientologist, okay.”
“So, it doesn’t replace religion,” Lauer offered.
“It is a religion, because it’s dealing with the spirit. You as a spiritual being.”