Tom Cruise’s former manager has claimed the actor suffered from a “terrible” temper in the early stages of his career.
Eileen Berlin, 82, worked with Cruise at the beginning of his career and even let the actor stay at her home.
“Tommy had a terrible temper,” she claimed, in an interview with the Daily Mail.
Berlin spoke of one incident in which Cruise was allegedly unhappy with a present she gave him for his 19th birthday.
“I presented him with an album with all his publicity articles from teen magazines,” she said. “He screamed, ‘I don’t want to be in the teen mags.’”
“It was like something was smouldering and it would boil up and explode. I put it down to his insecurity.”
The Independent has contacted a representative of Cruise for comment.
In December 2020, Cruise made headlines after he was recorded yelling at the crew of his forthcoming Mission: Impossible 7.
Furious after appearing to spot two crew members failing to observe strict social-distancing rules, Cruise was heard screaming: “They’re back there in Hollywood making movies right now because of us. Because they believe in us and what we’re doing.”
“I’m on the phone with every f***ing studio at night, insurance companies, producers and they’re looking at us and using us to make their movies. We are creating thousands of jobs, you motherf******. I don’t ever want to see it again. Ever!”
He later addressed the rant in an interview in May, commenting: “There was a lot at stake at that point. But it wasn’t my entire crew. I had the crew leave the set and it was just select people.”
“I was thinking about the people I work with, and my industry,” he continued. “And for the whole crew to know that we’d started rolling on a movie was just a huge relief. It was very emotional, I gotta tell you.”
Berlin mentioned Cruise’s extreme desire for perfection in her interview, commenting: “What I have never seen is a real display of happiness in Tommy. He was always very, very ambitious, very, very determined to be a star. And that made him a perfectionist.”
