As Katie Holmes finally goes public with new man Jamie Foxx, I’m questioning why she ever agreed to marry Tom Cruise
WHAT would you do if someone offered you 15million dollars, or more, to marry a leading Hollywood actor?
Imagine that he is handsome, rich and, on the face of it, so madly in love with you after just a few weeks he is declaring it publicly to chat show hosts up and down the land.
Who could turn that down, right?
But if you have ever found yourself daydreaming about becoming rich through marriage, overnight, a quick glance at the past 11 years of Katie Holmes’s life might persuade you otherwise.
Think back to 2005 when Tom Cruise and Katie’s romance and engagement, after just seven weeks of dating, were one of Hollywood’s biggest headlines.
Remember Tom jumping on Oprah’s sofa, declaring he was in love?
It was all so promising but, sadly, it ended in divorce five years ago.
So why has it taken five years for Katie to publicly acknowledge that she and Jamie Foxx are an item?
Whenever they’ve been spotted as a couple in the past, Katie, 38, and Jamie, 49, dismissed rumours insisting they were “just friends”.
But on Monday they finally appeared in public together, enjoying a day at the beach.
The lengths they have gone to, to keep their relationship secret, were baffling until claims emerged that Cruise included a clause in their 2012 divorce settlement banning Katie from publicly dating for five years.
Imagine that.
Divorce is never easy and it’s even harder when it’s being carried out on a public stage.
There are a few examples of public figures that have managed to keep things amicable, Gary Lineker springs to mind, but all too often, things spiral into hatred and depression — as anyone watching Doctor Foster can attest.
But the reason people get divorced is to draw a line under a failed relationship then get on with their new life.
Banning your ex from doing so for five years seems unbelievably controlling. If those rumours are true, I wonder what motivated Cruise to ban Holmes from dating someone else in public.
Maybe he worried if she dated someone hotter and younger than him, the world would assume he’d been dumped and she’d upgraded.
It would reflect badly on him and his ego couldn’t live with that.
Another motivation may have been that, as long as Katie is not publicly seen with someone else, she will still be referred to as “Tom Cruise’s ex” and he still owns her.
One thing seems clear. His approach to marriage is part of the projection of his meticulously sculpted and managed image of himself to the public.
I feel for Katie. Imagine being locked into six years of marriage, and locked in for a further five years after that.
Even if it meant walking away with millions of dollars, I wouldn’t surrender to that kind of controlling set-up for all the tea in China.
I feel Katie has paid a very high price for her multi- millionaire. The thing is, you can’t put a price on happiness.
Many marry for love, then things go wrong and divorce can happen.
But when you hear about the massive prenuptial agreement put together by Katie’s lawyer father, it’s easy to speculate everyone had a hunch the marriage wouldn’t last.
And, if you enter a marriage with the number of prenuptial conditions these two had going, I guess the end result is fairly inevitable.
Given that this was Cruise’s third divorce, it seems marriages are his attempts to try to lead a life that doesn’t come naturally to him, and that his time with Katie was more a business arrangement than a marriage.
So, going back to my question, whether you’d exchange marriage for money. Maybe we’d all consider it. It might seem bloody tempting.
But you only get one life and it’s important to live it right.
This is 11 years of Katie’s life that she won’t get back.
If only she had spent them making her own money, so she could make her own choices and do what the heck she liked.
Meg's top is cream of crop
I’M a huge believer in people dressing as they like.
And I really wrestle with the concept of “mutton dressed as lamb” because I like to live and let live.
That said, although none of us want to feel old, look old, or even get old the fact remains that we do.
And I’m going out on a limb here when I say that crop tops are not a good look for anyone over 15 years old!
That said, Meg Mathews has got the abs . . . to nearly pull it off.
NIGHTMARE OF FINDING A BABYSITTER
DID you see the story about the father in the US who took revenge on his babysitter after popping home to pick something up and finding her asleep on the sofa?
After taking a photograph as evidence, he decided to take his children with him so that it looked like they had been kidnapped.
Unsurprisingly, when she woke up and discovered the children were missing, the babysitter began frantically calling and texting her boss.
But he really made her suffer, refusing to pick up the phone and asking her to tell him via text what she wanted.
The babysitter, no doubt, did her nut trying to work out where the kids were and how to break the news to her boss that she had lost them . . . in their own home.
To be fair, you can see his point. If you pay someone to do a job – regardless of what it is – you expect them to do it and not fall asleep.
When you make the decision to go to work and leave your kids in the care of someone else, it’s important to know they are responsible.
So I can’t help but ask whether this man chose his babysitter carefully enough.
Perhaps he should be more careful next time.
But mainly, I just can’t understand how she managed to go to sleep on the job.
When my kids were babysitting age, they were so loud you could hear them down the street.
Mamma Mia!
How stunning did Goldie Hawn – who is 71, I might add – look in that silver tasseled dress on the red carpet this week? Sensational.
MOST READ IN OPINON
I am made-up for Alicia
THERE’S no denying that Alicia Keys looks a million dollars on the cover of Elle Brazil wearing just a touch of blush.
I love the spirit behind her campaign for women to ditch the make up in a bid for self-acceptance and I’ve been wondering if I can show my support by doing the same.
My conclusion? I’d be more inclined to if I was gorgeous, young and had great skin.