Nearly two decades after Tom Cruise publicly criticised Brooke Shields for using antidepressants to treat her postpartum depression, she is looking back on his “ridiculous” attack.
In her new memoir, Brooke Shields Is Not Allowed to Get Old: Thoughts On Aging As A Woman, the Pretty Baby star got candid about her rift with Tom, who is a famous Scientologist.
“I was, according to Tom, spreading misinformation,” Brooke wrote. “An interesting opinion, coming from someone without ovaries.”
She said had Tom “taken a public swing” at her before she became a mother, she “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,” Brooke continued in the memoir, as reported by US Weekly. “I would have been satisfied that his behaviour would speak for itself.”
During a bizarre rant in a 2005 interview with Today’s Matt Lauer, Tom said Brooke didn’t “understand the history of psychiatry” while bashing her for using “dangerous” antidepressants.
He deemed her “irresponsible” for taking medication while battling postpartum depression, alleging it “didn’t cure anything”.
Tom’s comments came a month after Brooke released her Down Came The Rain memoir in May 2005, in which she opened up about suffering from postpartum depression after birthing her daughter, Rowan, in 2003.
Brooke is also mom to daughter Grier, whom she welcomed with husband Chris Henchy, in 2006.
At the time, Brooke responded to Tom by writing a New York Times op-ed, in which she slammed the Top Gun star for making comments that are “a disservice to mothers everywhere”.
Noting in her new memoir that Tom’s tirade came shortly after her 40th birthday, she explained in her memoir that the inappropriate moment led her to feeling more self-assured.
“Sitting quietly and letting myself be attacked might have been my approach a decade earlier — I might have even regretted sharing my story or felt insecure that maybe my career was stalling while a powerful male movie star was singling me out, sure that I’d never stand a chance in that fight — but now I was emboldened by life experience,” she wrote.
Elsewhere in her memoir, Brooke revealed that Tom later apologised for his comments behind closed doors, but “it wasn’t the world’s best apology”. She claimed he visited her house where they discussed the incident before finally burying the hatchet.
“Eventually, Tom Cruise apologised 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,” she wrote, per Entertainment Weekly.
“It wasn’t the world’s best apology, but it’s what he was capable of, and I accepted it.”
Help and support:
- Mind, open Monday to Friday, 9am-6pm on 0300 123 3393.
- Samaritans offers a listening service which is open 24 hours a day, on 116 123 (UK and ROI - this number is FREE to call and will not appear on your phone bill).
- CALM (the Campaign Against Living Miserably) offer a helpline open 5pm-midnight, 365 days a year, on 0800 58 58 58, and a webchat service.
- The Mix is a free support service for people under 25. Call 0808 808 4994 or email help@themix.org.uk
- Rethink Mental Illness offers practical help through its advice line which can be reached on 0808 801 0525 (Monday to Friday 10am-4pm). More info can be found on rethink.org.