TOM ’ S WILD PAST EXPOSED
Risky Business, Indeed!
A new book reveals details of Tom Cruise’s sexed-up preScientology days
In the summer of 1982, a young actor on the verge of superstardom was living the dream. “It was not uncommon for him to be introduced to potentially generous young women..… I had seen for myself the lines outside his hotel room,” actor Curtis Armstrong recalls of shooting Risky Business with Tom Cruise, who was on the cusp of his 20th birthday. Curtis jokingly adds, “Sometimes I think I was the only really great piece of a-- who didn’t get to screw Tom that summer.”
Tom’s extremely active sex life is one of the bombshell revelations about the star in Curtis’ new memoir — and Tom’s furious.“He’s embarrassed that Curtis’ book is exposing all his dirty secrets, and then some,” a source tells In Touch. In Revenge of the Nerd (to be released on July 11), Curtis, 63, tells all about Tom’s revolving door of hookups, plus his red-hot affair with co-star Rebecca De Mornay. “Tom’s worked very hard to be portrayed in a certain way in Hollywood, and this goes against everything he now stands for,” explains the source. “This book will reveal a side of Tom that no one has ever seen, from the days before he found his purpose in Scientology.”
Curtis doesn’t hold back any details. “Returning late one night from some jollification, I found three or four young girls — late teens, I suspect — lined up in the hall outside of Tom’s room,” he writes. “So I asked them...if there was something I could do to help them. They just stared at me, and at that moment, Tom’s door opened and another girl came out, adjusting her hair and [took off ] down the hall, while the first girl in line slipped into Tom’s room and then the door closed.”
At the time, Tom self-identified as a born-again Christian, according to Curtis. Once, when Curtis invited his co-stars for a drink after shooting, Tom said he’d prefer to stay in and read the Bible. “I laughed. He didn’t,” writes Curtis. “This was a young man who...understood how to successfully juggle Bible study and b--- jobs.”
Tom’s early love life was epic. “The perpetual rumors regarding his sexual orientation [are] utterly mystifying,” writes Curtis. “At least at that time, there was no question which side of that particular fence Tom stood on.” He eventually began “an intense affair” with
23-year-old Rebecca, even though she was dating much-older actor Harry Dean Stanton. “[They were] having it off in grand style,” Curtis writes of the pair, who dated for two years after making the movie. “In my naïveté, I thought it wasn’t all that serious.”
But Tom, who turns 55 on July 3, was serious about everything he did. “Tom may have been the first person I ever knew who possessed an absolute and voracious ambition,” writes Curtis, adding that Tom insisted on calling him by his character’s name, Miles, even away from the set. And when the pair shot a wrestling scene, “Tom became incredibly competitive with me,” he writes. “He was a wrestler in high school and wanted to look better.”
The actor took his cues from his buddy Sean Penn. “He admitted to me that he was intimidated by Sean’s talent,” writes Curtis. And Sean was a bad influence: When he visited, Tom’s hotel room “looked like someone had blown up a convention of rising young ’80s actors.... There was a heady scent to the place, too: a rich musk of cigarette smoke, alcohol and young white male,” he recalls. “The two of them… would either still be in bed or lounging in underwear. It looked like a Calvin Klein ad.”
Tom is horrified that his dirty laundry is being aired like this. “He feels he’s evolved from those days — he says he doesn’t even recognize that person anymore,” says the source close to him. “Tom is all about being in control, and the last thing he wants is his fans reading about how out of control he really was.” ◼