Young Tom? No pleasure cruise
Tom Cruise says he was bullied as a child by both his father and his schoolmates.
“He was a bully and a coward,” the 43-year-old actor says of his father, Thomas Cruise Mapother III, in an article coming in Sunday’s Parade magazine.
“He was the kind of person where, if something goes wrong, they kick you. It was a great lesson in my life – how he’d lull you in, make you feel safe and then, bang!”
The star of the upcoming “Mission: Impossible III” also says he was bullied regularly in the 15 different schools he attended in 12 years.
In 1974, when Cruise was 11, his parents divorced. Ten years later, he reunited with his father, who was “in the hospital dying of cancer, and he would only meet me on the basis that I didn’t ask him anything about the past.
“When I saw him in pain, I thought, ‘Wow, what a lonely life,’ ” Cruise says. “He was in his late 40s. It was sad.”
No bending for Beckham
British soccer star David Beckham has revealed he has obsessive-compulsive disorder.
“I have got this disorder where I have to have everything in a straight line or everything has to be in pairs,” says Beckham, aka Mr. Posh Spice (Victoria Beckham).
“I’ll go into a hotel room and before I can relax I have to move all the leaflets and all the books and put them in a drawer.
“I have tried to, and I can’t stop,” he adds.
Master and his Romijn
Rebecca Romijn is settling down with fiance Jerry O’Connell – in an old brothel.
“It’s called Wagon Wheel Ranch,” the star of the WB’s new “Pepper Dennis” tells Time magazine. “Jerry was quite a bachelor when we met. There was nowhere to put your cocktail down in his place. Just the ping-pong table.”
“Pepper Dennis,” about a news reporter, debuted nationally Tuesday but will air locally on Saturday at 9 p.m. on KSKN-22, which showed a baseball game Tuesday night.
Oh, she’ll be bringing suit
Russell Simmons and his wife, Kimora Lee, may have announced their separation, but they plan to host a fund-raiser Saturday at Donald Trump‘s estate in West Palm Beach.
The dinner and auction at Mar-a-Lago will benefit Art for Life, which the hip-hop mogul and his brothers founded.
“This will be the best party Mar-a-Lago has ever seen,” Simmons said, adding: “I have to tell Kimora to bring one of my suits.”
Desolate housewife
No, it’s not a mirage – that really is a giant, bikini-clad Eva Longoria perched on the solitary sands of southern Nevada’s desert.
The vinyl-mesh image is a re-creation of Maxim’s current cover, which features the “Desperate Housewives” star.
It’s all part of the magazine’s 100th-issue celebration in Las Vegas.
The birthday bunch
Actor R.G. Armstrong (“Gunsmoke”) is 89. Sitar player Ravi Shankar is 86. Actor James Garner is 78. Actor Wayne Rogers (“M*A*S*H”) is 73. Country singer Bobby Bare is 71. Director Francis Ford Coppola is 67. Television personality David Frost is 67. Singer John Oates (Hall and Oates) is 57. Singer Janis Ian is 55. Actor Jackie Chan is 52. Actor Russell Crowe is 42. Actor Bill Bellamy is 41.