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Cruise and kids take plunge in Sky Jump spree
17.03.2003 By NATASHA HARRIS

The Sky Tower received a celebrity endorsement yesterday when actor Tom Cruise booked the Sky Jump attraction for two hours for his family’s exclusive enjoyment.

Cruise, daughter Isabella, 10, and son Connor, 8, arrived at Sky City in the afternoon and spent the full two hours enjoying the thrill of the 192m jump.

Sky City media relations manager Delwyn Lewer helped the family to get organised and watched the jumps.

“They all dived out like Superman, and then on Tom’s second jump he did a little run and did a big ‘Whoop’ when he got on the ground.”

Ms Lewer said Cruise stopped to talk to a crowd of about 20 surprised people who had gathered at the bottom of the tower.

“He struck me as a very charming and very friendly man,” she said.

“He seemed very much a family man because he hugged his children after they jumped and he put Connor on his knee while waiting to jump.”

Ms Lewer said the family left at 6pm in a van after spending the day in Auckland. Penelope Cruz, Cruise’s partner, was not with the group.

Cruise is currently living in Taranaki while filming The Last Samurai.

Despite booking the Sky Jump exclusively – it normally costs $195 a jump – his reputation in New Zealand is far from that of a prima donna.

Before Christmas he helped to raise $14,000 for a sunshade for a small school near his Taranaki film set.

He also stopped his car on a Taranaki back-road to offer help to a family changing a wheel.

Thanks Erin!

Tom Cruise Saves Stepdad
March 14, 2003

Tom Cruise has been hailed a hero by his family after saving his stepfather’s life.

The movie hunk was dining with assorted family members at his rented home in New Zealand, where he’s filming The Last Samurai, when his stepdad Jack South, 77, fell ill.

Choosing not to take any chances, Cruise dashed to hospital with South only to learn that had he not acted as quickly as he did his stepfather would be dead.

The emergency was just that – South had suffered a renal(kidney)failure.

A hospital source says, “Doctors credited Mr South’s recovery to his stepson’s quick thinking and even quicker actions.”

Thanks Chantal!

Everyone loves Tom…
The temporary visit of a short but sexy 40-year-old Hollywood movie megastar with a blinding smile, casual clothes and a penchant for surfing. Since the world’s highest-paid actor, Tom Cruise, and the cast and crew filming The Last Samurai quietly took over New Plymouth this year, a change has come about in Nakiwood.

It’s evident in the main drag banners flapping about in the prevailing southwesterly Tasman Sea breezes welcoming the film’s cast and crew to the city; it’s in the shop windows sporting handmade signs that offer Cruise free icecreams and cups of tea; it’s in the way my mother looks up into the brilliant blue sky over New Plymouth Airport at a hovering helicopter and nonchalantly observes, “That’s just Tom”. The gentle fall of Hollywood glitter has seemingly ensconced New Plymouth in a gleaming embrace, and it appears few are insusceptible to its charm.
The producers acknowledge that Tom Cruise has been the secret ingredient to the way in which local people have supported and encouraged the movie. He is, after all, the Hollywood megastar of our time.

Not so much megastar as mega-friendly, if local lore is to be believed. Cruise has sneaked into New Plymouth’s only cinema complex to watch the latest Lord of the Rings movie among locals unaware of his presence. He has helped a family stranded at the side of the road with a flattie. He’s donated $7000 to Urenui Primary School in a now-famous telephone conversation with The Edge radio station’s announcers.

He’s eaten fish and chips with his son Connor (8) on Oakura’s main street, responding cheerfully to the plethora of welcomes from locals passing by. He has reputedly put offers in on the million-dollar coastal mansion he has leased from businessman Grahame Symons for a staggering $5000 a week, and frequently swims and surfs at beaches along the 105km Surf Highway 45. His red-and-black helicopter piloted by New Plymouth’s Matt Newton is a daily sight ferrying Cruise and family across the eight film sets dotted from Oakura to Uruti.

His presence here has given the city a buss, one local journalist says. We’re dreading the day he leaves.

Tour buses now include in their itineraries a slow cruise past Pukekura Park’s cricket pitch, protected by a high concrete wall and covered with a tent city ready for filming. Backpacker hostels say late summer visitor numbers have doubled as enthusiasts hope to get a glimpse of Cruise and his fellow actors.

For now, New Plymouth is humming to the beat of a Hollywood drum, with one of Tinseltown’s most powerful actors constantly hovering overhead. Ask Peter Avery what he hopes Cruise will tell his Hollywood pals about Taranaki, and he doesn’t hesitate in replying. “I just want him to have a good movie. If he is happy, then that is my primary focus and I’ll be satisfied. And maybe another place he can call home.

Tom Cruise and other cast and crew on the star’s latest film have been hit by surprise tax demands from the New Zealand Government.

The bills are asking for tax to be paid on daily living allowances and have angered industry officials in the country.

Cruise is spending four months in New Zealand to film the $100m (£69m) historical epic, The Last Samurai.

Ironically, the bills arrived just a few days after Prime Minister Helen Clark visited the set and posed with Cruise for a photo.

The amount demanded on the bills has not been made clear.

New Zealand has a growing reputation with film-makers partly because of the tax-free incentives for production companies.

New Zealand film industry spokesman David Madigan said: “To impose the tax in the middle of a shoot is just shocking.”

Tax free

Mr Madigan said daily allowances and living allowances paid to cast and crew had been tax free in the country for at least 25 years.

The tax was not applied to recent high-profile productions such as Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy.

The bill affects local production crews and actors plus international actors – including Cruise – but not international crew members.

More than 200 New Zealanders on the production crew receive hundreds of dollars each a week in allowances.

The Inland Revenue has refused to comment on the Samurai film, but said it was “working through tax issues”.

Jane Wrightson, head of the Screen Production and Development Association, said the new tax regime would have an inflationary impact on future film budgets.

In the film, Cruise plays a retired US army captain hired by the mid-19th Century Meiji Emperor of Japan to create a modern Japanese army.

More tidbits from Tom making “I Married A Witch”

“Tom Cruise, 40, is considering the starring role in the proposed remake of the 1942 romantic movie comedy “I Married a Witch,” to be directed by Danny DeVito, reports Variety. Coincidentally, Cruise’s ex-wife, Nicole Kidman, 35, is said to be the frontrunner to play Samantha — a lovely married woman who happens to be a witch — in the movie version of the ’60s sitcom, “Bewitched.” Go figure.”
From: People.com

Hollywood witch project
By LOUIS B. HOBSON — Calgary Sun

HOLLYWOOD — Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman may soon find themselves embroiled in a battle of witches.

Kidman has been signed to star in the big-screen version of the 1960s TV series Bewitched as Samantha, a witch who marries a mortal and is thwarted in her attempt to give up her powers and become an ordinary housewife.

Nora Ephron, whose screenplays include When Harry Met Sally, Sleepless in Seattle and You’ve Got Mail, is working on the adaptation.

Before their divorce, Cruise and Kidman were planning to star together in a remake of I Married a Witch, a 1942 comedy that inspired Bewitched and featured Fredric March and Veronica Lake as a mortal and the witch he marries.

Both Bewitched and I Married a Witch, to be directed by Danny DeVito, are being prepped for a 2004 release.

Kidman is negotiating to star opposite Brad Pitt in the action comedy Mr. and Mrs. Smith, about a bored married couple who discover they’re actually enemy agents that have been assigned to assassinate each other. (More on Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman)

From: Canoe

Hollywood’s Finest…
04/03/2003

Every year Vanity Fair’s Hollywood issue brings together a group of actors that it considers the hottest, hippest, or biggest stars in town for a photoshoot that must be a nightmare to organise. Last year, the likes of Kate Winslet, Gwyneth Paltrow and Jennifer Connolly graced the magazine’s cover and this year it’s the boys’ turn.

As you’d expect of any gathering of Hollywood’s finest, the usual suspects like Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise and Tom Hanks are there. It’s also nice from a purely patriotic standpoint to note that just under a quarter of the line-up is taken up by British stars – namely Hugh Grant, Jude Law and Ewan McGregor, even if none of them made the crucial first panel of the three-fold cover.

But we have to ask, what the hell are Don Cheadle and Dennis Quaid doing up there with the big guys? Did someone else drop out at the last minute? And how do you suppose Ben Affleck feels that his best mate Matt Damon got the call, and he didn’t – especially as Daredevil still reigns supreme at the top of the 2003 US box office? Come to think of it – maybe that’s how the two of them got those shiners the other day

You can view the picture here and a clean version here.

From: Empire Online

Cruise Impresses New Zealand Premier
Tue Mar 4, 7:20 PM ET

WELLINGTON, New Zealand – New Zealand’s often flinty Prime Minister Helen Clark is the latest member of the fan club of Hollywood heartthrob Tom Cruise (news), local media reported Wednesday.

Clark spent much of Tuesday with Cruise, his girlfriend Penelope Cruz (news) and his two children on the set of the “The Last Samurai” being shot near the city of New Plymouth, 320 kilometers (200 miles) from the capital, Wellington.

The center-left politician also watched footage from the movie inside Cruise’s trailer, then posed with for a photo with the actor.

Clark, 53, later described the Hollywood star as a “very attractive young man.”

“I saw cuts of the film. Taranaki (the region of the filming) people will be pleased to see it on screen,” she said.

“He’s very nice,” Clark said of Cruise.

Clark said New Zealand will enjoy positive spin-offs from the movie. “If a film does well there’s a lot of benefits associated, like tourism,” she said.

Cruise is in New Zealand for four months of location shooting for the NZ$180 million (US$100 million) blockbuster.

“The Last Samurai” is set in 18th century Japan. A Japanese village set has been built, with distant dormant volcano Mt. Taranaki serving as a Mt. Fuji look-alike. About 500 Japanese extras will be flown in for battle scenes.

From: Yahoo! News

Thanks Chantal!!