Advertisement

Cruise threatens legal action over magazine story

National Enquirer called his mansion a 'house of horrors'

Tom Cruise has warned of legal action over the latest cover of controversial US tabloid magazine The National Enquirer.

Through his attorney Bert Fields, Cruise has said the story is 'disgraceful and lurid', after it called his mansion a 'house of horrors' and accused him of having kept daughter Suri in a 'tiny, windowless room' for five months.

[Related story: Cruise named highest-paid US actor]
[Related story: Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes getting a divorce]

Fields says that the damage to Cruise's reputation because of the story could run into 'hundreds of millions of dollars of professional and personal damages'.





Team Cruise is threatening litigation if the magazine does not 'retract each and every one of your false allegations about Mr. Cruise with the same prominence and emphasis as you gave your original false and defamatory assertions'.

In the letter to American Media, the owners of the National Enquirer, Fields goes on to say: “Your cover announces, as a fact, that 'THE REAL TOM CRUISE IS A MONSTER.' Mr. Cruise is certainly not a 'monster.' He is a caring father, a hardworking actor and, above all, an honest, decent man.

“Mr Cruise's home in Telluride, like his home in Beverly Hills, is a pleasant and loving home. Suri was not forced to stay for five months in a tiny windowless room. She spent most of her time with Tom and Katie. She slept in a nursery adjoining their bedroom. It has a window.”


Fields adds that Cruise intends 'to hold American Media, and everyone who participated in the perpetuation of this scurrilous attack, jointly and severally liable'.

The magazine has yet to comment.

Cruise recently split with his wife of five years Katie Holmes, and is said to have now agreed an out-of-court settlement over their divorce.