In the vein of you can’t keep baby in the corner, you can’t dump Tom Cruise in a supporting role. Except if you’re the royal family.
You can keep your missions, impossible and your guns, top, Scientology’s answer to Willy Loman has repeatedly in recent years happily taken back seat, a B-list, second-string parts in events when asked to by the House of Windsor.
The eerily ageless A-lister happily played second fiddle to Kate the Princess of Wales at the London “Top Gun: Maverick” premiere and then accepted a simple ensemble role in 2022’s televised Royal Windsor Horse Show – the real star of which was Platinum Jubilee gal herself, the late Queen.
This week Cruise was back at it, taking his place in the third row in the royal box at Wimbledon for the men’s finals for Kate the Princess of Wales’ return, briefly, to rapturous public view.
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The princess’ entry prompted not only Cruise but notably Julia Roberts, Benedict Cumberbatch and the 15,000-strong crowd to give Kate a standing ovation as she arrived.
And my, those Tinseltown sorts were delighted with the princess, with Roberts grinning with unabashed delight while Cruise looked happier than that one time he managed to raise his Thetans to level alpha.
Cruise and Roberts now join Gwyneth Paltrow, Idris Elba, former British Vogue editor Edward Enniful and Kate Moss in having publicly shown their support for the royal family of late.
Hollywood, it turns out, and to borrow liberally from Somerset Maugham, just might be “a sunny place for changeable people” with the Wimbledon scene capping off several months that have seen starhhhs showing their support for Team Crown.
Right as this has all been happening, the Californian outpost of the House of Windsor, manned by Prince Harry and Meghan the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, has been experiencing what outwardly appears to be something of a cooling relationship with Tinseltown.
“The tide has turned,” an observer based in Hollywood recently told The Times of the couple. “People in America have been welcoming but they won’t like the way they’ve treated the late Queen and now the King. Mostly, people I speak to say they either don’t like the Sussexes, or don’t care.”
Meanwhile back in London, it was just this that Sussex wedding guest and “Avengers” star Elba turned up at St. James’s Palace to co-host, with the King, a mini-summit on youth crime.
They also invited along wet-behind-the-ears Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer, taking a break from cleaning out the almond snack packs littering the Number 10 desk drawers and left behind by Rishi Sunak and representatives from community organizations. Positive forces, assemble!
Beyond this, the actor’s Elba Hope Foundation is working with the King’s Trust (formerly the Prince’s Trust set up by Charles in 1976) on various other charity initiatives. Elba has been involved with the Trust since at least 2010, having received a $2900 grant to help him train as an actor when he was 18.
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However Elba also happens to have, in the past, been closely aligned with the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, not only attended their wedding but DJ’ed the reception to boot.
Yet there the “Luther” actor was this week, posing for the cameras with the King, a man who so often just happens to be busy to see his son when he’s in town.
Then there is Gwyneth Paltrow who reportedly joined the Sussexes for dinner last year, along with Cameron Diaz and Bumble founder Whitney Wolfe Herd, who also attended Ellen DeGeneres and Portia de Rossi’s vow renewal with the Duke and Duchess.
