Katie
Holmes’ life after her highly publicized divorce from Tom Cruise has been led
in the shadows but the mother has been making a steady comeback.
The
story of Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise is a tale of romance, intrigue, rumor and
scandal—in a league of its own, really—which is saying a lot when it comes to
the lives of celebrities.
Imagine
being a regular young girl-next-door type (from Ohio no less) with a crush on
Tom Cruise and having the posters on your wall to prove it.
You
fantasize about one day marrying him, and then, boom, one day you become famous
yourself and your Tom Cruise fantasy becomes a reality. Doesn’t sound all that
plausible, but that was the reality that set the tone for Katie and Tom’s relationship.
In 2005, they fell head-over-heels in love with each other and the rest, as
they say, is history–especially now that their relationship actually is
history.
Much
like Boniadi, Katie had “distanced herself from old friends,” during her
relationship with Cruise. She even admitted that [she and Tom] didn’t go
outside very much. There seemed to be a factor of isolation in her relationship
with the famous actor.
After
Star circulated rumors that Holmes had a drug problem in 2011, which, along
with the Scientology factor, was preventing her from leaving Cruise, she
decided to sue.
Though
they’d likely missed the mark and had no right to violate Holmes’ private life,
Holmes’ marriage was in fact beginning to break down. To date, Holmes still
hasn’t addressed what, exactly, led to the split—and neither has Cruise, though
naturally there have been plenty of assumptions based on the facts.
In
2012, Holmes finally filed for divorce after close to 6 years together,
reportedly making calls about said divorce on a disposable cellphone, and
hiring three law firms in three states, all to avoid Cruise and his staff
knowing about her plans. While the Church of Scientology insists on divorces
being handled internally, Katie blindsided them by handling it all outside of
their jurisdiction.
Following
her divorce announcement, those close to Holmes shared that she believed Cruise
might abduct Suri, and also feared intimidation by the Church of Scientology.
While nothing has been confirmed, the rumors implied that Cruise “was planning
to ship their daughter Suri off to Sea Org.”
Ultimately,
Holmes received primary custody of her then 6-year-old daughter Suri, and
Cruise was granted visitation rights. Oddly, however, in her divorce agreement
with Cruise she promised not to date anyone else publicly for 5 years, which
may explain why she kept her relationship with actor Jamie Foxx quiet for so
long.
Post-divorce,
Katie started over from a new home in New York with her daughter set her first
priority, and began the beautifully rewarding experience of reinventing
herself. Her life had become almost solely centered on being married to Tom
Cruise, and she didn’t want to re-create such a reality ever again.
Not
long after Holmes’ divorce, Judy Greer, one of her co-stars in the Theresa
Rebeck Broadway play Dead Accounts, witnessed Katie’s new energy as a single
mother.
“I’ve
just been impressed by her work ethic, honestly, and her ability as a single
mom, to juggle being an awesome mom,” Greer testified. “She’s like got a kid,
she works out every day, she’s cooking dinner at night for her daughter, she
manages to go and get her a new dress if she has a special thing, going to her
lessons after school…it’s pretty impressive.”
After
Cruise, Katie made her return to the film world with a new roster of movies,
including The Giver, Woman in Gold and Miss Meadows. Most recently, she has
returned in the movie Brahms: The Boy II. For Holmes the process has been both
about reinvention as well as a return to where she left off before getting
married.
In
2014 she hit pause on her clothing line, stating, “I am now concentrating on acting
and motherhood, which did not leave the label the time and attention it
deserved.” Out with the old, out with that which no longer serves us all, am I right?
“I don’t have any fear
now, I don’t have a lot of rules for myself, and I don’t take myself that
seriously,” Holmes told People in 2014.
Paparazzi
be damned, today Holmes goes out and does as she pleases, living life with her
daughter like any other self-respecting New Yorker.
“I feel ready for new challenges,” Katie said.
Evidently, after overcoming the whirlwind of a public relationship and divorce,
and coming out relatively unscathed, who can doubt Katie’s resilience?
While
we may never truly know the reality of her relationship with Tom Cruise and the
hardships she may have faced throughout it all, there is no denying that she
has done everything to prioritize her daughter’s wellbeing.
Years
later, Katie has finally been able to return to her love of acting, showing us
that it is never too late to reconnect with who we were before the hard times
we went through.
Back
in the early 2000s, Katie Holmes was known for her role in the iconic
television series Dawson’s Creek. She was in a relationship with actor Chris
Klein, with whom she got engaged in 2003. A year later, she revealed her
long-harbored crush on Tom Cruise in an interview for Seventeen magazine.
“I
used to think that I was going to marry Tom Cruise,” Katie revealed. Her
Dawson’s Creek co-star, Mary Beth Peil, even revealed the extent of Katie’s
crush in an interview with The Daily Beast.
“She
knew everything about him. She said, ‘I have had a crush on him since I was 15,
and his posters were on the walls of my bedroom.’ She could not stop talking
about Tom Cruise. This was way before they got together, but she was certainly
ready for him.”
It is
no wonder that their relationship had a sort of mystical–dare we say
Hollywoodian?–aura surrounding it. Not long after her 2004 interview, Katie
broke off the engagement with Chris Klein. Only a month later, she and Tom
Cruise made their debut as a couple on the red carpet.
It
only took two months of dating before they got engaged to each other. The speed
at which their relationship progressed raised many a question, not to mention
Tom’s infamous interview with Oprah where he jumped on her couch and screamed
“I’m in love!” with the excitement of his newfound love for Katie Holmes.
They
married in a Scientologist ceremony on November 18, 2006. On June 29th, 2012, 5
years and a half after the marriage, Holmes was filing for divorce, shocking
the whole world.
Over
the first year of their relationship, during which Holmes got pregnant with
their daughter Suri, unusual rumors were already flying. For one, talk of
Cruise’s controlling behavior abounded.
When
asked if she ever felt consumed by Cruise’s shadow, Holmes told Glamour, “From
an early age I knew that I wanted to be in this business. So I did everything I
could to get here, and when I met Tom, I knew in an instant that we were going
to be together, that we were going to get married. He does have a very big
life. And you know, we just do it. And, as a woman, you make that transition
from being single to [being] a partner. I have a teammate, and it’s like, we’re
going to make this work.”
