(Un)Happy Anniversary to Tom Cruise?

How the couch jump changed Tom Cruise and celebrity coverage in the 2000s

(Moviestore/ London Entertainment/ 20th Century Fox/ Dreamworks/Kobal/ Charles Sykes/Shutterstock)

Dear Squawkers,

The big movie opening in theatres today, May 23, 2025, is Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, starring Tom Cruise. I am not here to talk about the movie, but I am here to talk about the curious coincidence of the movie releasing on this particular date, which also happens to mark the 20^th anniversary of another…event…in Tom Cruise’s life.

Because it was exactly two decades ago, on May 23, 2005, that Tom Cruise appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show and pretty much altered his career, and Katie Holmes’s career, and our relationship to their careers. And…also…the gossip ecosystem in general.

Tom Cruise jumping on Oprah’s couch is not just in the Gossip Hall of Fame, it could challenge for the title of Zeus ruling from the Mount Olympus of Gossip. It was monoculture right before the decline of monoculture. But it remains monoculture in that every generation is aware of it, even the generation that wasn’t alive when it happened. Which is why, on its 20^th anniversary, it’s worth a revisit, not only to understand its impact in its time but the impact it’s had since.

Before we get to Oprah’s couch, though, let’s consider the circumstances leading up to Tom’s appearance on the show. Professionally, at that time, Tom Cruise was undeniably the biggest movie star on the planet. He was 42 years old, and in addition to the franchise films we’re all familiar with, he was coming off a seemingly interminable string of hit movies. Minority Report, The Last Samurai, and Collateral, all of them strong box office performers, and in the case of Minority Report and Collateral, both of these films hold up. Minority Report is excellent, and I’m not sure Tom gets enough credit for how good he is as the villain in Collateral. Or, rather, you could argue that when it came out in August 2004, he did get credit…but that credit ended up being overshadowed.

Tom Cruise - 'Minority Report' - 2002

So that’s where Tom was professionally, just before the Oprah interview. In his personal life, he’d been single for a little over a year, as his relationship with Penelope Cruz had ended in the early part of 2004 after three years, and there was no mainstream speculation then about his romances, no rumours about Scientology auditioning girlfriends, at least not yet…