Eileen Berlin—the first manager of actor Tom Cruise—recently talked with the Daily Mail about the early years of managing the star. Berlin picked up Cruise following his 18th birthday at a time when he wasn’t making waves in acting. He moved in with the manager and her husband in NYC since he wasn’t pulling in enough from acting to rent his own place.
Tom Cruise Had “A Terrible Temper” According to Former Manager
In describing Tom Cruise early on, Berlin noted that he was pretty much a respectful person and wasn’t prone to causing problems. However, that side of Cruise existed along with the side that had a temper that she said was a result of his poor relationship with his father.
“Tommy had a terrible temper. He harbored a lot of anger at his natural father. He was moody and would get angry in a snap of your fingers. It was like something was smoldering and it would boil up and explode. I put it down to his insecurity.”
When talking about his father with CBS, Cruise explained that his mother left the elder Tom Cruise when he was 12-years-old, leaving him with his father. In that interview, he said his father was “a bully and a coward…the kind of person where, if something goes wrong, they kick you. It was a great lesson in my life – how he’d lull you in, make you feel safe and then, bang!”
Another story that Eileen Berlin shared about Cruise’s temper involved her giving him an album full of articles focused on him from teen magazines on his 19th birthday. According to Berlin, Cruise yelled about not wanting to be in teen mags, viewed himself as an adult and not a teen idol, and chucked the album at her, hitting her on the cheek.
What moved Berlin to discuss her time with Tom Cruise is when the actor was in the news for a 2020 outburst on the set of Mission: Impossible 7 because of COVID-19 rules being broken. She pointed out that Cruise was “always very, very ambitious” and a perfectionist with a lot of drive and determination.
One thing she said in the interview pretty much sums up her time as his manager and his temper was the following:
“What I have never seen is a real display of happiness in Tommy.”
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