Making a deal with the devil - Katie Holmes & Tom Cruise

It’s been three years since 26-year-old Katie Holmes started dating 42-year-old Tom Cruise. There was a whirlwind romance, unbridled joy broadcast live from Oprah’s sofa, and a proposal at the Eiffel Tower complete with five carats of flawlessness befitting the betrothed of the world’s biggest box office draw. Then the money came pouring in. She got an annual allowance of half a million dollars. She get a pre-nup that pays her $3 million every year they stay married (up to eleven years, then she gets half of everything). She got a mansion in Montecito. And she got a Gulfstream jet worth $20 million.

To Katie, it probably seemed too good to be true. It was. The next three years saw her lose control of her private life, her public image, and her career as an actress. She probably didn’t realize she wasn’t just marrying Hollywood’s biggest, brightest, and weirdest star, she was marrying Hollywood – in all it’s big, bright, weird glory. And like her husband, Hollywood needed something his last wife couldn’t or wouldn’t provide: A baby. Exactly one year after they first met, Suri was born.

Two years later, Katie is reportedly looking at the front door. She’s been offered a role on Broadway she wants to accept, and she wants to take Suri with her. Not forever, just while she’s doing the play. She probably has images in her mind of blissful mother-daughter strolls through Central Park, exploring the boutiques, nights out in the Meatpacking District - basically her own little “Sex in the City” without the sex and with Suri in tow. Most importantly, without Tom and his Scientology crew telling her how to dress, how to act, what to say, and when to smile (always).

Tom is said to be resistant. Actually, he’s said to be on board with the whole operation except the “without Tom” part. She can move to New York and take the job. She can even take the baby. But if she and the baby move to New York, he’s coming, too. He may be delusional, he may be crazy, he may even be closeted, but he’s certainly not stupid. He knows she’s a beautiful woman in the prime of her life with a mansion, a jet, at least six million of his dollars in the bank, and another twenty million guaranteed from any publisher in the world as an advance on her book. If she and the baby leave him to go live in New York, there is no guarantee he’ll ever see either of them again outside a courtroom. My prediction is that she’ll take the job, but she’ll have to leave the baby. For her, it will be a taste of what life after Tom will be like – and it will probably taste pretty sweet after what Tom and the Scientology crew have been force-feeding her over the last three years.

Deep down, she has to know he can’t allow the marriage to last the full eleven years and cost him half his fortune. Not when he can just exercise his buy-out option for $30 million after ten years. She also has to know he can’t allow her to take Suri when the marriage ends. Not with the industry desperate for a new generation of “Hollywood royalty” and Tom needing leverage to keep her silent about his personal eccentricities. What’s more, she has to have known this, or at least suspected it, when she signed on to be Mrs. Thomas Cruise Mapother IV. And she did it anyway.

It all leads me to ask this question: Knowing what she has in store for her (paparazzi stalking her every minute of every day for the rest of her life, growing up blindingly fast in Hollywood; tempted by sex and drugs before she’s even out of junior high school, knowing she’ll never be able to trust a normal human being as long as she lives, and knowing you won’t be around to help raise her), how many women would sell their child to Hollywood for a $10 million mansion, a $20 million jet, $35 million in cash, and a $20 million book deal?

It reminds me of something Michael Corleone said when Kay tried to leave him in “Godfather II”. “What do you want from me?” he asked. “Do you expect me to let you go? Do you expect me to let you take my children from me? Don’t you know me? Don’t you know that’s an impossibility? That that could never happen? That I’d use all my power to keep something like that from happening?”

In that scene, Kay realized the hard way that she had made a deal with the devil. Katie Holmes may be starting to realize that she did, too.