Brooke Shields Reveals Tom Cruise Apologized Privately After Their Infamous Feud Over Postpartum Medication
Brooke Shields is revisiting her highly publicized dispute with Tom Cruise in her latest memoir, Brooke Shields Is Not Allowed to Get Old. The 59-year-old actress opens up about why she felt compelled to defend herself after Cruise criticized her for using medication to manage postpartum depression in 2005.
"Had Tom taken a public swing at me before I became a mother, I probably would have stayed quiet," Shields wrote. "I would have ignored his ridiculous rant. I might have been content to sit back while this very famous man hijacked my experience to advance his own (deluded) agenda."
She noted that her perspective shifted after becoming a mother and turning 40, giving her the confidence to address the criticism head-on.
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The feud began after Shields detailed her postpartum struggles in her 2005 memoir, Down Came the Rain. Cruise, a vocal Scientologist, dismissed her decision to take medication, stating on Today, "There is no such thing as a chemical imbalance. The thing that I'm saying about Brooke is that there's misinformation. She doesn't understand the history of psychiatry."
Shields, stunned by the comments, described the experience as leaving her "gobsmacked." She wrote in her memoir, "Sitting quietly and letting myself be attacked might have been my approach a decade earlier... but now I was emboldened by life experience." Shields responded to Cruise's remarks with an op-ed in The New York Times, condemning what she called his "ridiculous rant" and "dangerous" statements.
Despite the controversy, Shields and her husband, Chris Henchy, attended Cruise's wedding to Katie Holmes in 2006. Shields confirmed in her memoir that Cruise later apologized, though the apology wasn't made publicly.
"It wasn't the world's best apology, but it's what he was capable of, and I accepted it," she shared.
Shields has previously spoken about the incident, calling Cruise's comments "ridiculous" and reflecting on the dynamics of power that surrounded their feud. "It's not about the moral thing, or the right thing, or the good thing. It's about who has more power," she remarked in her 2023 Hulu documentary, Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields.
