Topics: Celebrity, Tom Cruise, Demi Moore
In Brooke Shields's newest book, she reflects on her war of words with Tom Cruise after he took aim at her in a wild rant in the mid-2000s.
Brooke Shields hasn’t forgotten how frustrated Tom Cruise made her after he attacked her for taking antidepressants to help treat her post-natal depression.
In her memoir, Brooke Shields Is Not Allowed to Get Old: Thoughts on Aging as a Woman, Shields said Cruise’s rant came a month after her 40th birthday, when she was beginning to feel self-confident.
For those who have forgotten, while Cruise might still be one of the biggest names in Hollywood, in the early 2000s, he had a knack for bizarre interviews.
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In 2005, while promoting his new film, War of the Worlds, Cruise suggested taking antidepressants wasn’t the right choice for Shields.
He insisted he cared deeply about the actress, while also saying that psychiatry was a pseudo-science, that there was no such thing as a chemical imbalance, and post-natal depression could be resolved simply with vitamins and exercise.
At the time, Shields responded to Cruise’s comments in a New York Times op-ed.
She wrote: “To suggest that I was wrong to take drugs to deal with my depression, and that instead I should have taken vitamins and exercised shows an utter lack of understanding about postpartum depression and childbirth in general.
“If any good can come of Mr. Cruise’s ridiculous rant, let’s hope that it gives much-needed attention to a serious disease.”
In her memoir, reflecting on the feud, Brooks quipped that his stance was ‘an interesting opinion coming from someone without ovaries’.
She also explained she was glad she didn’t stay silent on the issue.
She added: “Had Tom taken a public swing at me before I became a mother, I probably would have stayed quiet.
"I would have ignored his ridiculous rant. I might have been content to sit back while this very famous man hijacked my experience to advance his own (deluded) agenda. I would have been satisfied that his behavior would speak for itself.
“I was emboldened by life experience. So instead of letting myself turn into a punching bag, I swung back."
She explained that Cruise did apologize a year later and at the time she accepted it as ‘heartfelt’.
But now, upon reflection, she has said she wasn’t all that impressed by his words of regret.
In the memoir she said: “Eventually, Tom Cruise apologized to me. Not publicly, which would have been the right thing to do, but he came to my house and said he was sorry, and that he felt cornered by Matt Lauer and that he attacked me basically because he could.
“It wasn’t the world’s best apology, but it’s what he was capable of, and I accepted it.”
UNILAD has contacted Tom Cruise’s representatives for comment.
