Tom Cruise

In this exclusive excerpt from his riveting memoir “A Billion Years,” former Church of Scientology senior exec Mike Rinder writes about the church's ...

With a lot of persistence and veiled threats, we persuaded the publisher to allow us to “review and correct” anything related to Scientology in the manuscript. As Cruise was gradually drawn back into the world of Scientology, he rededicated himself to the cause. In truth, the book didn’t reveal anything new, but it did contain some of what we considered the usual “inaccuracies” about Scientology—calling the E-Meter a lie detector and saying that Scientologists believe in aliens and that it costs a lot of money. He even had a list of “target” celebrities to be lured into Scientology to help make it popular, and in the early ’70s he created the Celebrity Centre—a Scientology organization dedicated to the recruiting of celebrities in Hollywood. We went to the Blake Publishing offices in West London and collected a copy of the manuscript from the editor. Miscavige also believed in the value of celebrities, and devoted a lot of time and attention to them. She had told me she thought Michael understood her because he had grown up in the media spotlight and never really had a childhood, similar to her own experience as the daughter of the King. Kelly stunned me when she told me she had lived in Adelaide during her teen years, just a mile from where I lived, and had attended the sister school of the all-boys school where I had spent many years. She had become a star on Cheers and was close friends with John Travolta, who had been at the top of the Scientology celebrity heap before Tom Cruise, though his career was now on a downward trajectory at the time when Cruise’s was heading to the stratosphere. He was the biggest star in the world, and Miscavige was using this to his advantage. [Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief](https://www.thedailybeast.com/scientology-doc-going-clear-claims-the-church-split-up-tom-cruise-and-nicole-kidman), co-hosting the Emmy-winning A&E docuseries [Leah Remini: Scientology and the Aftermath](https://www.thedailybeast.com/leah-remini-wants-to-expose-tom-cruises-dark-side), and currently co-hosting the Scientology podcast [Fair Game](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/fair-game/id1523307706) (also with Remini). He often acted as the public face of Scientology, speaking to the media and putting out PR fires.