Tom Cruise Debunks ‘Weirdest Story’ He’s Ever Heard About Himself

Tom Cruise recently revealed the “weirdest story” he says he’s ever heard about himself – and noted that it was totally false. The director of Cruise’s new movie Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning said that he asked Cruise what was the strangest rumor he had heard about himself when they first met back in 2006. He shared Cruise’s answer in an interview with The Sunday Times this weekend.

McQuarrie has directed the last three Mission: Impossible movies and produced Top Gun: Maverick last summer, so he is well-acquainted with Cruise at this point. He said that contrary to popular belief, Cruise is actually very down-to-Earth and friendly. When he asked Cruise for the “weirdest story” he had heard about himself, he said: “Cruise laughed and said the greatest myth about him was that people on set ‘were not allowed to look me in the eye.’”

According to Cruise, that is not true and has never been true, though there’s no denying that Cruise expects a lot from his colleagues on set. In 2020, a video of Cruise shouting in frustration at a crew member went viral. The crew member was not following COVID-19 safety protocols, and Cruise could be heard saying: “If I see you do that again, you’re f-ing gone.” This was one of Cruise’s more divisive controversies, although it is nothing compared to his association with the leaders of the Church of Scientology, which has generated plenty of backlash over the years.

Cruise is one of the most famous actors to publicly convert to the religion of Scientology, and was known to be a friend of the church chairman David Miscavige. The church itself has been the subject of several books and documentaries outlining broad conspiracies and criminal activities, although it continues to deny all of them. In the early 2000s, Cruise publicly campaigned for the church to receive legal recognition and became its public face for a time, though starting in 2008 he refused to answer questions about his religion in interviews.

As for the “no eye-contact rule,” Cruise is not the only one with such a rumor surrounding him. According to a report by Yahoo News, similar stories have been told about Ellen DeGeneres, Donald Sutherland, Sandra Bullock, Leonardo DiCaprio, Mike Myers, Sylvester Stallone, and Barbara Streisand, among others. However, many of those have been disputed or disproven – often with contradictory commentary like McQuarrie’s.

Cruise and his representatives have not yet responded to other outlets’ requests for comments on McQuarrie’s anecdote. Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning premieres in theaters around the U.S. on Wednesday, July 12.