Behind every successful man is a woman. But this time, there's a woman behind successful Hollywood star Tom Cruise's sacking from Paramount Pictures, the woman being the studio's head honcho Sumner Redstone's wife Paula. According to the controversial Viacom executive, his wife helped convince him that Cruise had lost the power he had over women, the power that catapulted him into the big league.
“Paula, like women everywhere, had come to hate him. The truth of the matter is I did listen to her. His behavior was entirely unacceptable to Paula and to the rest of the world. He just didn't turn one woman off. He turned off all women, and a lot of men,” Redstone said in an interview to a popular celebrity magazine.
Forty-four-year-old Cruise's popularity took a massive dip when he decided to give actress Brooke Shields tips on coping with post-natal depression. He slammed her use of anti-depressants, which according to his chosen religion Scientology, isn't the best way to deal with depression. His couch-jumping shenanigans on
The Oprah Winfrey Show, professing his love for Katie Holmes, also put fans off as did his vocal denouncement of all things that Scientology doesn't approve of, like psychiatry. In fact, Cruise snapped at talk show host Matt Lauer for questioning scientology beliefs. Though the actor topped lists of most powerful celebrities, he also earned the dubious honor of being the 'most tiresome tabloid target'.
In August this year, Paramount dropped a bombshell when it said it was parting ways with the
Mission: Impossible star after a 14-year association, due to his 'recent conduct'. Asked when the decision to divorce Cruise came, Redstone said: “When did I decide? I don't know. When he was on the
Today show? When was he jumping on a couch at Oprah? He changed his handler, you know, to his sister – not a good idea.”
Though
Mission: Impossible III, the last film Cruise did with Paramount, proved to be a box office success, it left Redstone less than satisfied. “His behavior cost us US$100 million, US$150 million on
Mission: Impossible III. It was the best picture of the three, and it did the worst. He was embarrassing the studio. And he was costing us a lot of money,” the 83-year-old Viacom top gun said.
In spite of the media controversy that followed, Redstone said he did not regret his decision and hoped that the incident put forth the message that starry eccentricities were no longer welcome in Hollywood. “The explosion of publicly ending his contract was good. It sent a message to the rest of the world that the time of the big star getting all this money is over. And it is! I would like to think that what I did, or what we did, has had a salutary effect on the rest of the industry,” he asserted. Lindsay Lohan, are you listening?
