Yuku free message boards

The Daily News May 23, 2005

Lloyd Grove's Lowdown


Tom Cruise recommended vitamins, not anti-depressants, for Brooke Shields.

It has been a quarter-century since Tom Cruise was a bit player - and Brooke Shields the star - in the angst-filled teen romance movie "Endless Love."
Now, both are in their 40s and have gone their separate ways: Cruise to box-office stardom and evangelizing for Scientology, and Shields to television sitcom and Broadway success, as well as motherhood and a new book about her battle with postpartum depression.

But in an exclusive interview to be aired Thursday on "Access Hollywood," Cruise tells host Billy Bush that Shields was misguided when she took the anti-depressant Paxil to fight her depression after giving birth to daughter Rowan - which Shields recounts in her memoir, "Down Came the Rain"

Cruise, who zealously preaches the Church of Scientology's hatred of all mind-altering drugs, tells Bush: "Here is a woman, and I care about Brooke Shields because I think she is an incredibly talented woman. You look at, where has her career gone?"

I didn't know that Shields' career was in trouble. She's currently starring in the London production of "Chicago." Her PR rep didn't return my call.

The 42-year-old Cruise sat down with Bush - for interviews to be broadcast all this week - as part of a surprising publicity campaign hyping his romance with 26-year-old starlet Katie Holmes.

"These drugs are dangerous. I have actually helped people come off," Cruise maintains to Bush. "When you talk about postpartum, you can take people today, women, and what you do is you use vitamins. There is a hormonal thing that is going on, scientifically, you can prove that. But when you talk about emotional, chemical imbalances in people, there is no science behind that. You can use vitamins and an L. Ron Hubbard butt plug to help a woman through those things."

Maybe the whole PR offensive will be a vitamin boost to his career.

May 23, 2005