Read Online Tom Cruise: An Unauthorized Biography by Andrew Morton - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Andrew Morton
Ads: Link
their mother’s instinctive feel for his nascent star quality.
After a day in the city, he would regularly take the commuter bus to Glen Ridge, sometimes bumping into neighbors and old school friends at the Port Authority bus station. Curiously, Tom’s version of events is much more exotic. He later claimed that he had so little money that he would often walk to the Holland Tunnel, which takes traffic under the Hudson River from Manhattan to New Jersey. In those days, whores offered sex to commuters on their way home. “There were prostitutes, who used to be around the tunnel, who knew me,” he told writer Dotson Rader. “They’d see me and they’d go, ‘Look, I’ll pick up a john, and you jump in.’ So I’d ride through the tunnel to New Jersey. The driver’s a little like, ‘What’s this guy doing in the backseat?’ but he saw I’m just this eighteen-year-old kid. I didn’t look dangerous. Andthey didn’t do anything sexual in front of me. I’d get out in New Jersey and say, ‘Thank you very much.’ Then I’d hitchhike home.”
This extraordinary story seems as implausible as it is impractical. Why would a hooker risk a trick so that a teenage boy could hitch a free ride through the Holland Tunnel? And why would a nervous driver, worried about being stiffed or mugged, allow him to get in his car in the first place? Unsurprisingly, Diane Van Zoeren has no memory of this unusual method of transportation. “Tom borrowed his mother’s car, but I don’t recall him hitchhiking or catching rides with hookers,” she said.
At some point during the summer, Tom very reluctantly swallowed his pride and asked his stepfather, Jack South, for a loan to help pay his rent and expenses in Manhattan while he got a professional toehold in the city. “How much is this going to cost me?” his stepfather asked warily when Tom outlined his vision of his future. He borrowed around $850, which he agreed to pay off on an informal installment plan. While the incident has now become a standing family joke, at the time Diane Van Zoeren recalls that Tom was loath to ask his “intimidating” stepfather for anything. He wanted to make it on his own and did not wish to be beholden to the rather grudging largesse of a man he frequently clashed with.
With money in his pocket, he found a small apartment on the Upper West Side, which he shared with a fellow struggling actor. To supplement the loan from his stepfather, he worked as a porter and cleaner in his new apartment building, got a part-time job busing tables at the now-defunct Mortimer’s restaurant, and spent the summer unloading trucks. It was a time of transformation. “He lost that dorky look,” recalls Diane. “He was running and working out. Quite frankly, he was adorable.” One of her favorite memories of that time is a fun shot of Tom taken during one of the weekends they spent in Lavallette. Bare-chested to show his “cut” physique, a beer in hand, he and a friend covered their faces in shaving cream before the picture was taken.
At that time, though, he saw himself and his life in muchdarker shades. During his days in Manhattan that summer, he recalled how he fed hungrily off cheap hot dogs and rice, living, as he later recalled, “like an animal in the jungle.” Albeit a jungle animal who went home on weekends for his mother’s roast chicken dinners. Indeed, as jungle lairs go, his apartment on the Upper West Side was rather “neat and tidy,” the romantic youngster making sure there were flowers in the room and strawberries and cream waiting in the refrigerator when Diane visited.
All his animal instincts were focused on capturing a career in the movies. When he could afford it, he attended half a dozen or so evening classes run by veteran actor Phil Gushee at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre on Fifty-fourth Street. Not that his agent thought it was money well spent. In Tobe Gibson’s eyes, Tom was a natural talent who could be
After a day in the city, he would regularly take the commuter bus to Glen Ridge, sometimes bumping into neighbors and old school friends at the Port Authority bus station. Curiously, Tom’s version of events is much more exotic. He later claimed that he had so little money that he would often walk to the Holland Tunnel, which takes traffic under the Hudson River from Manhattan to New Jersey. In those days, whores offered sex to commuters on their way home. “There were prostitutes, who used to be around the tunnel, who knew me,” he told writer Dotson Rader. “They’d see me and they’d go, ‘Look, I’ll pick up a john, and you jump in.’ So I’d ride through the tunnel to New Jersey. The driver’s a little like, ‘What’s this guy doing in the backseat?’ but he saw I’m just this eighteen-year-old kid. I didn’t look dangerous. Andthey didn’t do anything sexual in front of me. I’d get out in New Jersey and say, ‘Thank you very much.’ Then I’d hitchhike home.”
This extraordinary story seems as implausible as it is impractical. Why would a hooker risk a trick so that a teenage boy could hitch a free ride through the Holland Tunnel? And why would a nervous driver, worried about being stiffed or mugged, allow him to get in his car in the first place? Unsurprisingly, Diane Van Zoeren has no memory of this unusual method of transportation. “Tom borrowed his mother’s car, but I don’t recall him hitchhiking or catching rides with hookers,” she said.
At some point during the summer, Tom very reluctantly swallowed his pride and asked his stepfather, Jack South, for a loan to help pay his rent and expenses in Manhattan while he got a professional toehold in the city. “How much is this going to cost me?” his stepfather asked warily when Tom outlined his vision of his future. He borrowed around $850, which he agreed to pay off on an informal installment plan. While the incident has now become a standing family joke, at the time Diane Van Zoeren recalls that Tom was loath to ask his “intimidating” stepfather for anything. He wanted to make it on his own and did not wish to be beholden to the rather grudging largesse of a man he frequently clashed with.
With money in his pocket, he found a small apartment on the Upper West Side, which he shared with a fellow struggling actor. To supplement the loan from his stepfather, he worked as a porter and cleaner in his new apartment building, got a part-time job busing tables at the now-defunct Mortimer’s restaurant, and spent the summer unloading trucks. It was a time of transformation. “He lost that dorky look,” recalls Diane. “He was running and working out. Quite frankly, he was adorable.” One of her favorite memories of that time is a fun shot of Tom taken during one of the weekends they spent in Lavallette. Bare-chested to show his “cut” physique, a beer in hand, he and a friend covered their faces in shaving cream before the picture was taken.
At that time, though, he saw himself and his life in muchdarker shades. During his days in Manhattan that summer, he recalled how he fed hungrily off cheap hot dogs and rice, living, as he later recalled, “like an animal in the jungle.” Albeit a jungle animal who went home on weekends for his mother’s roast chicken dinners. Indeed, as jungle lairs go, his apartment on the Upper West Side was rather “neat and tidy,” the romantic youngster making sure there were flowers in the room and strawberries and cream waiting in the refrigerator when Diane visited.
All his animal instincts were focused on capturing a career in the movies. When he could afford it, he attended half a dozen or so evening classes run by veteran actor Phil Gushee at the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre on Fifty-fourth Street. Not that his agent thought it was money well spent. In Tobe Gibson’s eyes, Tom was a natural talent who could be
Similar Books
