A screenwriter who worked with Tom Cruise in the erotic drama Eyes Wide Shut has labeled the Hollywood star an “egocentric control freak” among other things.
Frederic Raphael, 91, made the claims about the actor in his new book, Last Post, in which he targeted the Mission: Impossible star’s career, links to Scientology, and his failed marriage to Aussie actress Nicole Kidman.
Raphael fell out with the film’s director Stanley Kubrick in 1999, when he released his first memoir, Eyes Wide Open, where he was very critical of Kubrick’s directing style, which led to him being uninvited to the film’s premiere.
Now in his new book, Raphael again slammed Kubrick and accused the Hollywood heavyweight’s wife Christiane Harlan and her brother Jan Harlan of spearheading the unflattering portrayal of him on Wikipedia.
The author also roped Cruise into the drama by claiming the actor knew of the Wikipedia entry.
“The Harlans and Master Cruise have managed to insert some derogatory stuff in my Wikipedia entry,” he writes, as obtained by the Daily Mail.
Raphael’s claims appear to stem from the Wikipedia entry citing film critic Roger Ebert’s interview with Cruise in 1999, where he sided with Kubrick in the feud.
“[Raphael] wouldn’t have written it if Stanley had been alive,” Cruise is quoted saying in the interview.
“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 afterwards.”
In his new book, Raphael has more criticism of the Kubricks and Cruise, writing: “I have never been called a liar by anyone as I have been by the Harlan clan and by Tom Cruise, an egocentric control freak to whom I have never spoken.”
The veteran writer then claimed Cruise offered him a job in an apparent attempt to control him after Eyes Wide Shut finished filming.
“The better to have me on a leash, no doubt,” Raphael writes. “In his turn, he too seems to need the control he finds in Scientology.”
He then questioned Cruise’s decision to cast his then-wife Kidman in the film.
“Was there something just a touch naïve in your idea that casting a married couple as a married couple would enable you to put ‘the truth’ on the screen?” Raphael writes in the book.
“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?”
Cruise and Kidman divorced two years after the movie was made. They were married for 10 years.
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