Tom Cruise's former manager says the actor had a 'terrible temper': 'I put it down to his insecurity'
- Tom Cruise's first manager told the Daily Mail that the actor "harbored a lot of anger."
- Eileen Berlin said Cruise would "get angry in a snap of your fingers."
Tom Cruise's first manager Eileen Berlin spoke to the Daily Mail about her experience being a "surrogate mother" to the "Mission: Impossible" star during the early years of his career.
Berlin said Cruise, who she knows as "Tommy," signed with her shortly after his 18th birthday when he was a struggling actor and moved in with her and her husband in New York City as he wasn't making enough money to rent his own apartment.
Berlin said Cruise was "sweet, respectful and mannerly to a fault" and "always addressed me as 'ma'am' and my husband as 'sir,' she said.
However, she said she also saw an anger in Cruise that made headlines in 2020 when The Sun published leaked audio of Cruise was yelling angrily at his film crew on "Mission: Impossible 7" after COVID-19 safety rules were broken on set.
"Tommy had a terrible temper," she said. "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."
Cruise has opened up about his rocky relationship with his father, Thomas Cruise Mapother III, in the past. When Cruise was 12, his mother left his father and took his sister with her. His parents divorced that same year. He told Parade magazine (via CBS) in 2006 that his father was "a bully and a coward."
The former manager also recalled presenting Cruise with an album full of articles about him from teen magazines for his 19th birthday, which the star didn't take kindly to. "He screamed, 'I don't want to be in the teen mags,' Berlin said.
"He had told me he considered himself an adult, not a teen idol. He threw the album hard at me and it hit me on the cheek."
Berlin added: "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. That's what drove him when I managed him and I'm sure that's what drives him now."
Insider has reached out to representatives of Cruise for comment.