Friday, 25 August 2006

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Tom regrets bashing Brooke Shields

A colleague says he knows he went too far in criticizing her antidepressant use

Tom Cruise realises he crossed a line when he criticized Brooke Shields last summer for her use of antidepressants, a colleague of the actor says.

"That, he deeply regrets," Kathleen Kennedy, who produced Cruise's War of the Worlds with Steven Spielberg, tells the New York Daily News.

In 2005, while promoting War, Cruise talked with TV's Access Hollywood about Shield's admission in her book, Down Came the Rain, that she'd taken medication to cope with postpartum depression after the birth of her daughter Rowan.

"When someone says (medication) has helped them, it is to cope, it didn't cure anything," Cruise said. "There is no science. There is nothing that can cure them whatsoever." Instead, Cruise suggested women take "vitamins and exercise," and warned that Shields had been "irresponsible." Still, he added, "I wish her well in life."

He later told Today's Matt Lauer, "As far as the Brooke Shields thing, look, you have to understand, I really care about Brooke Shields – she's a wonderful and talented woman, and I want her to do well, and I know psychiatry is a pseudoscience."

Hollywood watchers have speculated that the resulting controversy was one of the reasons Viacom chief Sumner Redstone abruptly announced Wednesday that Paramount Pictures had severed ties with Cruise, citing Cruise's "recent conduct."

Producer Kennedy tells the Daily News that Spielberg had not, as was rumored last year, been upset by Cruise's actions while promoting War. "It's not true," she says. "(Tom) was a consummate professional. He's done nothing wrong."

Spielberg, head of Paramount-owned DreamWorks, was blindsided by Wednesday's announcement, his rep, Marvin Levy, says. "The story broke when Steven was on an airplane. He found out when the plane landed," Levy tells the Daily News. The director "had no advance knowledge of Sumner Redstone's position," Levy also said.

Adding to the chorus of voices weighing in on the Cruise-Paramount split, producer Jerry Bruckheimer tells the paper, "(Redstone) has the right to say what he wants," adding, "It's not what I would do."