Inside Tom Cruise’s Relationship With Kids Isabella, Connor and Suri (Part 2)
Tom Cruise has been a movie star for decades, but the three-time divorcé keeps his family world as dad to son Connor and daughters Isabella and Suri extremely private.
Marriage to Nicole Kidman
Tom Cruise was in the process of divorcing first wife Mimi Rogers when he met Nicole Kidman making the racing movie Days of Thunder in early 1990. He proposed to the Australian actress once he was officially single and they tied the knot that year on Christmas Eve.
“It was that special connection when you recognize your soul mate,” Tom told Vanity Fair in 1994. “She is a person who understands. It was as if a whole new life had started for me.”
They announced their divorce in February 2001 with a press release citing the “difficulties inherent of diverging careers which constantly keep them apart.” Though it’s unclear if Nicole agreed with that rationale.
“I’m starting to understand now [why we broke up],” she told Vanity Fair toward the end of 2002. “At the time I didn’t.”
Her ex, meanwhile, had told the publication earlier that year, “She knows why, and I know why. She’s the mother of my children, and I wish her well. And I think that you just move on. And I don’t say that lightly. I don’t say that with anything.”
Isabella Cruise
Tom and Nicole adopted their eldest child, Isabella, when she was born on Dec. 22, 1992.
Admittedly “scared to death” the first time he changed a diaper, Tom told VF in 1994 that he and Nicole “talked about children from time to time, but there was always the work. But then we went, When is it ever going to be the right time? That’s how the conversation started. You’re lying in bed at night and you’re trying to sleep, so you roll over and you go, What would happen if we had this in our life?… One of the things that Nic and I talk about is that now suddenly we’re a family.”
Nicole said they definitely planned on having more kids, whether by birth or adoption, preferably both.
“Isabella was meant for us,” she told the magazine. “I think when things come into your life at a certain time you have to take them. It’s destiny.”
She later revealed to VF in 2007 that they decided to adopt after she lost a pregnancy. “From the minute Tom and I were married, I wanted to have babies,” she said. “And we lost a baby early on, so that was really very traumatic. And that’s when we would adopt Bella.”
“There’s a complicated background to that,” she added, “given that I never speak much about many things. One day maybe that story will be told.”
Isabella Cruise
Isabella, an artist and graduate of London’s Delamar Academy of Make-Up and Hair, lives in England with husband Max Parker.
It raised a few eyebrows when the bride’s parents didn’t attend the couple’s 2015 wedding at the Dorchester hotel in London.
“Of course, they’re my parents,” she fired back at Daily Mail Online when the newlywed was asked if she spoke to Tom and Nicole. “Anyone who says otherwise is full of s–t.”
Moreover, only a few close friends attended and the groom’s parents weren’t there, either, his mom Beverly Parker telling the Mail they stayed away to avoid “a media circus.” Calling the pair “lovely,” she said, “I’m very pleased for them both and they’re very happy.”
Max told the publication that “you could say” his wife had foregone the spotlight, but it was “more of a weird situation for everyone else” than it was for them.
Meanwhile, sources told People that Tom approved of Max, was OK with not being there and he paid for the wedding, while Nicole was just glad her daughter seemed happy.
Connor Cruise
Connor rounded out the family when he was adopted at birth on Jan. 17, 1995. He’s a musician and DJ, and reportedly lives in Miami.
Nicole married Keith Urban in 2006 and they share daughters Sunday Rose, born July 7, 2008, and Faith Margaret, born via gestational surrogate Dec. 28, 2010.
Reflecting on how Connor and Isabella chose to live with their dad after the divorce, she told HELLO!, “I’d love them to live with us, but what can you do?” (They did attend the Kidman-Urban nuptials in Australia.)
Talking to Now to Love in 2014, Nicole called Isabella and Connor “generous, kind and hardworking,” all “traits that I love to see in my children.”
Several years later she acknowledged that both of her older kids were practicing Scientologists, like their father, but—contrary to rumors that religion had driven a wedge between them—that was neither here nor there.
“They are adults,” the Oscar winner told Australia’s Who in 2018. “They are able to make their own decisions. They have made choices to be Scientologists and as a mother, it’s my job to love them.”
And, like his sister, Connor has never said a cross word about his mom.
“I love my mum,” he told Australia’s Woman’s Day in 2014 while in town to deejay at a festival. “I don’t care what people say, I know that me and mum are solid. I love her a lot. My family means everything.”
He also loved music, he added, “but the family comes before everything else.”
