Our source tells us that Tom then washed his hands "as fastidiously and thoroughly as a surgeon preparing for surgery. He must have washed his hands for at least 5 minutes."
To be fair, you never know what kind of germs are lurking!
Apparently, he really does have a need for speed. Tom Cruise and his son, Connor, swapped the glitz and glamour of the Oscars for the grit and grunge of NASCAR’s Auto Club 500 in Fontana, California.
Wisely avoiding any Days of Thunder-style spinouts, Tom and Connor (seen above with NASCAR team owner Rick Hendrick) chucked a football around with crew members in Jimmie Johnson’s pit box.
How very manly! Here’s hoping our favorite A-list NASCAR dad bought a round of jerky for the house
Tom and the mystery brunette were seen cuddling in Los Angeles last week. And it's clear there was a previous acquaintance between the two as they greeted each other rather warmly.
The Mission Impossible star's wife was nowhere to be seen as Tom and the woman walked arm-in-arm inside a building, and disappeared into an elevator.
(It's a mystery: Tom Cruise gets cosy with a mystery brunette who is definitely not wife Katie Holmes in Los Angeles earlier this week)
(The tall brunette had a protective arm around the movie star as they were seen entering a lift together in a building in LA)
Cruise looked relaxed and was smiling as the mystery brunette kept a protective arm around him, but kept his trademark sunglasses on.
Later the pair openly posed for a photograph together, so there was little suggestion of anything irregular.
It was clearly a moment of light relief, as the world's most famous Scientologist has of late been mired in controversy over his new film Valkyrie.
(Elevator man: Cruise and his mystery companion are photographed together inside the elevator)
Cruise's casting as German war hero Claus Schenk von Stauffenberg has caused controversy with anti-Scientology critics in Germany.
(Tom and his wife Katie Holmes seen leaving an LA eaterie on February 4)
Von Stauffenberg was executed in 1944 at the Bendlerblock in Berlin for his part in a failed attempt to assassinate Adolf Hitler.
Last year, the German Protestant Church compared the star status Cruise gave to the Church of Scientology to the work of Goebbels.
Thomas Gandow of the German Protestant Church said Valkyrie is "propaganda for Scientology" and described Cruise was the "Goebbels of Scientology".
He said: "This film will have the same propaganda advantages for Scientology as the 1936 Olympics had for the Nazis."
Last month it was revealed that Cruise donated £2.5million to the church, doubling his contribution from the previous year. He has paid a total of £5million to the organisation since 2004.
“I had long hair for a while. Almost down to my waist but I wanted to go back to my Tom Cruise cut. I told my hairdresser to shave the back and leave the front long. Then someone thought I was Tom from the back. I guess I’d better wear heels.”
– Selma Blair
“If Tom Cruise jumping on Oprah’s couch was an 8 on the scale of scary, this is a 10,” Nick Denton wrote on his media and gossip Web site Gawker.com on Jan. 15, when he posted an internal Church of Scientology video in which Mr. Cruise rhapsodizes about his religion. The page has been viewed over 2.3 million times, a record for Gawker.
At Scientology’s request, YouTube and other sites took down the copyrighted video, but Gawker refused, instead posting and mocking the reproachful letter sent by a Los Angeles lawyer representing the church.
As for whether Gawker will be hauled into court, Karin Pouw, a spokeswoman for the Scientologists, issued a statement that further action had not been “contemplated, let alone decided.” Equating the lawyer’s letter with a threat of a lawsuit amounts to “unsubstantiated rumors” by “those wishing to create further controversy and media attention,” she wrote.
Diane Zimmerman, an intellectual property professor at the New York University School of Law, said Gawker appeared to be within the copyright law’s “fair use” provision, which permits excerpting copyrighted material for news gathering or criticism.
The Church of Scientology, founded by the science fiction writer L. Ron Hubbard in the 1950s, also figures prominently in an unauthorized biography of Mr. Cruise by Andrew Morton, which calls Scientology a cult. Published by St. Martin’s Press the same day Gawker posted the video, it was the 25th-best-selling book on Amazon.com on Sunday.
The timing of the imbroglio has been fortunate for Gawker Media. A Gawker editor, Choire Sicha, and two other bloggers resigned last month, and several articles in print publications, including The New York Times, have examined whether Gawker’s relevance and popularity were waning.
But according to the Internet tracker Site Meter, unique visitors to the six-year-old site more than doubled, to more than 13.6 million so far this month, from 6.7 million last January, because of popularity of the posts related to Mr. Cruise and to the actor Heath Ledger.
Some former Gawker bloggers have criticized a new compensation system that on top of a base rate pays $7.50 for every 1,000 views that posts generate. If one of Mr. Denton’s bloggers had posted the Tom Cruise video, his or her haul thus far would be more than $17,000.
In an instant-message interview, Mr. Denton, who replaced Mr. Sicha with himself as editor, wrote, “Unfortunately, I don’t get page-view bonuses.”Andrew Morton's tell-all on Tom Cruise is the gift that keeps on giving. Why read it? All the juicy shit will eventually make its way to the internet. Andrew's latest allegation sounds like a storyline on "Footballers Wives." He claims that when Nicole Kidman miscarried Tom Cruise's baby she kept the placenta to prove it was his.
A source told Morton, "They did try to start a family [but] she sadly had a miscarriage. And because of all the questions over the father, she ordered that some of the placenta be saved in order to prove paternity — the fact that Tom Cruise was the father."
It's probably in Tom Cruise's freezer next to the freezer bag labeled "Big Daddy Hubbard's Jizz."
Either that or Scientology's scientists are trying to make a Nicole Kidman clone. I wouldn't doubt it. If Katie Holmes' next baby is a curly-haired redhead with a botoxed forehead, I'm heading for Venus.
Bee Movie star Jerry Seinfeld says that studying Scientology made him a better performer -- and not because it gave him some good material.
The 53-year-old comedian tells Parade magazine that a teacher in high school turned him onto the religion almost 30 years ago. "It was interesting. Believe it or not...it's extremely intellectual and clinical in its approach to problem-solving, which really appealed to me."
Though Seinfeld has not continued with Scientology, he tells Parade that it helped him get his start in comedy. "In my early years of stand-up, it was very helpful. I took a couple of courses. One of them was in communication, and I learned some things about communication that really got my act going."
Could the same be said for the rest of Scientology's Hollywood devotees? The Church counts musician Beck, John Travolta, and of course, Tom Cruise, among its members. Seinfeld explains that as an entertainer, Scientology "really helped me onstage to understand how you have to invade the space of the audience a little bit...Not too much, because then it's obnoxious. But you can't be short of them either, or you won't control them."
Another draw for Seinfeld -- the gadgets. "They have a lot of very good technology," he tells Parade. "That's what really appealed to me about it. It's not faith-based. It's all technology. And I'm obsessed with technology."
But a representative for the 'Bee Movie' star said: "He is not studying Scientology in any way at this time. He did attend a course 30 years ago that he found interesting but he is Jewish and not changing his religion or faith in any direction.
"Jerry and Tom Cruise both have homes in Telluride, Colorado, which is their connection."
TOM CRUISE has got the blues — and so have his family as they head off for dinner.
Top Gun star Tom, 45, took one-year-old daughter SURI and wife KATIE HOLMES, 29, out in New York - with all three of them sporting identical moptop haircuts.
Salons in the Big Apple have been swamped by parents asking for the “Suri” cut for their daughters.
Let’s hope the Cruises don’t decide on a blue rinse next.