Great to see what Tom Cruise’s belly button looks like, but it’s the stuff he is never asked about that interests me | Marina Hyde

Most stars, and especially women, are endlessly expected to explain the past: the lessons learned and all the regrets. But not Tom – it’s Hollywood’s free pass There really is no press tour like a Tom Cruise press tour – which is why there have not really been any Tom Cruise press tours for a very long time indeed. We’re now at the stage of this one where even the interviewers have been forced on to the interview circuit to defend their interviews. Anyway: Cruise.

The guy has one child with ex-wife Katie Holmes who dropped his surname as soon as she was legally allowed, and two Scientologist children widely reported to be effectively estranged from their mother, Nicole Kidman . The divorces from Kidman and Holmes were clearly deeply strange and traumatic events for both women, and have remained shrouded in unusually watertight and presumably contractual secrecy. Yet you can currently find Tom Cruise promoting his latest movie not being asked about any of this stuff, or indeed any of his other extensive “stuff” – as always – but instead doing things like giving Travis and Jason Kelce’s podcast…