Kim Masters: Tom Cruise's Career Rehab Secrets

Unlike Mel Gibson, Tom Cruise is not a multi-hyphenate who can retreat behind the camera. And in almost every way, his issues have been very different from Gibson's—but they have been equally high profile. In 2004, he fired his longtime publicist, Pat Kingsley, and replaced her with his sister, who has more credentials as a fellow Scientologist than as a movie publicist. His image suffered and—as an executive who worked with him at the time puts it—"everything that he was doing off camera had a higher profile that what he did on camera." Still Cruise showed amazing resilience. Valkyrie, a movie released at Christmas 2008 about Hitler, grossed $83 million domestically and strikingly, an additional $117 million overseas.

But even before Valkyrie was released, Cruise had been through a sort of career intervention. Following a test screening of the film in August 2008, a small circle that included top MGM executives and a seasoned marketing consultant confronted him in a manner that is rare in Hollywood. "I don't know anyone at a studio who's going to do it," says one executive who was not involved, adding that the agents and publicists on a star's payroll are also extremely reluctant to risk upsetting their clients. In Cruise's case, the initial conversation was followed with a meeting at his house that did include his agents.

via www.thedailybeast.com