His 18-year-old daughter Suri — who he’s not been seen with since she was six years old — may have recently dropped his surname, but Tom Cruise clearly remains close to his son.
The star was pictured hopping into a helicopter in London with Connor, whom he and former wife Nicole Kidman adopted in 1995, two years after adopting daughter Isabella.
It’s thought father and son were off to Glastonbury, in a party which included Cruise’s best friend, writer Chris McQuarrie, and Simon Pegg, his Mission: Impossible co-star. They were seen singing together in the VIP area before the Coldplay set on Saturday night.
Not that father and son’s musical tastes always converge. When Connor was a party DJ, he rarely played pop, which may explain his absence from last week’s Taylor Swift show at Wembley, which Tom attended.
Instead, a day after the Glastonbury trip, Connor was seen enjoying Kings of Leon at BST Hyde Park with a woman, probably Tom Cruise’s PR Amanda Lundberg.
Tom Cruise was pictured hopping into a helicopter in London with his son Connor, whom he and former wife Nicole Kidman adopted in 1995
Connor was seen enjoying Kings of Leon at BST Hyde Park with a woman, probably Tom Cruise’s PR Amanda Lundberg
Though Cruise and Connor are not often pictured together, they are regulars at sporting events, particularly basketball. People who know Cruise say their bond is ‘tight’, not least because Connor is committed to the religious movement Scientology, like his father.
Connor even has ‘1938’ tattooed on his arm referring to the date of the first Scientology writings by founder L. Ron Hubbard. They live near each other in Clearwater, Florida (the global Scientology HQ). Connor has also spent Christmases with his father, Tom’s sisters Cass, Lee Ann and Marian and their children at Saint Hill Manor, East Grinstead, West Sussex, the religion’s UK home.
A nd, it’s thought Connor was at Saint Hill for much of lockdown, so was able to see his father, in the UK making Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One, when Covid permitted.
Now, Scientology-watchers think Connor and adoptive sister Bella, 31, may move to the luxury Skyview building in Clearwater where their father has owned the penthouse flat, complete with a car lift, since 2021.
Their three aunts and their husbands also live in the building, and apartments seem to be earmarked for Bella and her husband, and for Connor.
Though Bella is working in London as an auditor for Scientology and lives with husband Max Parker in Croydon, it wouldn’t be a big move for Connor, who already lives in a nearby Scientology compound and is often seen zipping around Clearwater in his bright yellow muscle car.
Nicole Kidman, Connor, Isabella and Tom Cruise in Sydney, Australia, in 1996
His passion is deep-sea fishing — in 2016 Cruise bought him a £400,000 boat — and he works for a fishing expedition company. Also a would-be food influencer, Connor runs an Instagram account, Connor’s Meat Shack.
He often travels to be with his father; last year both were pictured in New York. They were also seen with Bella after an ice-hockey game in Tampa, Florida.
Why are the two older children so close to Tom — and Suri so distant? The major reason is that Suri, who has just graduated from high school, is parented solely by her mother Katie Holmes. The actress was married to Cruise from 2006 to 2012.
While Bella and Connor are parented solely by Tom. Kidman hasn’t been pictured with her adopted children since 2007.
Isabella Jane Cruise was born in December 1992. Her birth mother was a married Scientologist mother of two, who apparently thought she could not afford to raise a third child. During the pregnancy, the Church of Scientology put her in touch with Cruise, then 30, and his young wife Kidman, then 25. They had been married for two years.
In 1995, they completed their family when they adopted Connor, at one month old.
After the Hollywood power couple broke up in 2001, Kidman and Cruise split custody of the children. But by 2005, Isabella and Connor were with their father full time and living in a mansion in the Pacific Palisades area of Los Angeles run by Cruise’s sister Cass, a devout Scientologist. She home-schooled them, too.
Nicole, it seems, sees very little of them. Neither Connor nor Bella went to her 50th birthday celebrations, nor to the funeral of her father Antony in 2014. Kidman was raised a Catholic, never converted to Scientology and reportedly did not want Bella and Connor to be raised in the Church.
In 2018, though, she told Who magazine: ‘They are adults. 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.’
Bella and Connor attended Scientology balls and Bella married IT consultant Parker. Cruise paid for the 2015 wedding at London’s Dorchester Hotel.
As for Connor, in 2019 it was reported that he was to marry leading second-generation Scientologist, Silvia Zanchi. Originally from Bergamo, Italy, she is described as a ‘Scientology Princess’ and is said to have completed preparations last year to start rising through the upper ‘OT levels’.
Standing for Operating Thetan, this is a reference to the Thetan immortal soul, which Scientologists believe represents the source of all life.
Silvia and Connor were seen sitting on the same table at a Scientology wedding in 2018 and reportedly went to Disney World in Orlando with Cruise in 2019, but whether they did marry remains a mystery. They’ve not been seen in public together for years, and aren’t on each other’s social media. Connor does not wear a wedding ring.
What’s next for Connor? Ex-Scientologist Katrina Reyes predicts he will take on a higher-profile role: ‘He’s going to be the golden boy of Scientology’.
This surely means his bond with Tom will become stronger still, while the allegedly looser link with Kidman — and Suri, perhaps — is unlikely to change any time soon.
