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• The Couch Jump That Rocked Hollywood

Tom Cruise’s 2005 appearance on ‘The Oprah Winfrey Show’ was an iconic episode of television—and a turning point for how we discuss and understand celebrities

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In the spring of 2005, an unknown 20-something in California uploaded a 19-second video of himself to the internet. “Me at the zoo,” the first YouTube video, featured cofounder Jawed Karim rambling about animals. “The cool thing about these guys is that they have really, really, really long trunks,” a man said, gesturing toward an elephant enclosure. It was boring, but it was the beginning of something.

That same spring, Karim’s YouTube quickly found one of its first hits. Its origins were far less obscure than a tech guy on a field trip. At the time, Tom Cruise had a more-than-reasonable claim to the title of biggest celebrity in America. He was the movie star, a leading man with mom-approved handsomeness, a nimble physicality, and a gung-ho intensity that played on the big screen as magnetic instead of disturbed. He counted Top Gun , Jerry Maguire , and two Mission: Impossible movies among the idol-making roles under his small belt. Meanwhile, Oprah Winfrey had already established herself as not only the biggest celebrity on daytime television, but the biggest celebrity in media. She’d made the careers of Drs. Phil and Oz. She’d debuted O, the Oprah Magazine . She’d hollered “You get a car!” to a euphoric crowd. Cruise’s May 2005 interview on The Oprah Winfrey Show seemed destined to be yet another fluffy meeting of monstrously famous minds. Instead, traditional media’s powerhouse duo was about to provide the new video-uploading service with a clip that would demonstrate the format’s growth potential far better than a rinky-dink recording of a random dude musing about zoos.

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Before Cruise came out on stage that day, the crowd at Chicago’s Harpo Studios had already hyped itself into an ecstatic frenzy, whooping and clapping and jumping in overwhelmed pleasure at being in the presence of Winfrey, in her space, living their best lives. By 2005, Oprah had transformed her daytime talk show from a variation on Phil Donahue’s talk theme into something new, something that took the voyeuristic thrills of seeing televised confessions and elevated them with the language of self-help seminars and the polish of Hollywood. “Oprah is sitting in the throne of American pop culture,” said WBEZ anchor Jenn White on the podcast Making Oprah , describing Oprah’s cultural cachet in the early aughts. “She commands a regular worldwide audience of tens of millions. She can turn a book into a bestseller, a product into a trend, and people into stars.” At that point, Christianity Today had identified Oprah as “one of the most influential spiritual leaders in America.” Her audiences resembled gaga congregants.

Cruise was in Chicago to talk about his upcoming movie, Steven Spielberg’s remake of War of the Worlds . Instead of sticking to the promotional script, though, the compact action star gushed about his new girlfriend, actress Katie Holmes. “You’re gone,” Oprah said, searching for words to describe Cruise’s over-the-top infatuation. Within 15 minutes, Cruise had leapt onto Oprah’s couch in a spontaneous outburst of enthusiasm for his personal life. Cruise’s offbeat showboating was memorable in part because of its unusual setting; The Oprah Winfrey Show was where celebrities traipsed to shine up their reputations and get a warm embrace from a sympathetic fellow star. Oprah would polish, not grill. But Oprah, usually so masterful at empathizing with her guests, appeared to be at a loss. “You’re gone,” she repeated. The charismatic preacher had been sidelined by an even more earnest proselytizer.

People hated it. More importantly, they loved to hate it. Most importantly, they loved to talk about hating it. Divorced from its context and remixed into YouTube clips and GIFs, Cruise’s couch outburst looked far more bizarre than it had during the episode, when at least the studio audience had been equally hyped up and Oprah had encouraged him to talk about his personal life. Within the context of the episode, Cruise’s behavior was strange but not outrageous. On the internet, isolated and amplified into a single furniture-leaping moment, it looked like an A-list meltdown . The most popular spoof was called “Tom Cruise Kills Oprah,” where Cruise appeared to kill Oprah with lightning. Family Guy parodied it. Even Sesame Street eventually parodied it. But the couch clip went beyond launching parodies and viral videos. The response to the Cruise episode signaled a changing of the guard in Hollywood media, from a pecking order where publicists and studios could strike deals with access-hungry press toward a more democratic and chaotic media landscape. Even though Cruise had been in a terrific mood during his Oprah appearance, it was appropriate that his tomfoolery was reframed to look far more aggressive than it was. The internet and the media were about to get much sharper.

“Tom’s couch-jumping coincided with the rise of gossip blogs,” Matt James, who runs the celebrity gossip site Pop Culture Died in 2009, told The Ringer . “The entire incident became a testament to the way public opinion could form online in the pre-Twitter era, and how damaging it could be in the long run.”

Longtime Hollywood gossip blog Lainey Gossip also credited Cruise’s leap onto Oprah’s couch with galvanizing the media landscape. “This rise of the gossip blog quickly accelerated,” site creator Elaine Lui wrote in 2015. “Celebrities were not being contained the way they used to be. And the PEOPLE and Entertainment Tonight coverage just wasn’t cutting it anymore. Not when these illusions were so quickly being destroyed. This incident became one of the most critical chapters in the Origin Story of Internet Gossip.” The intense online response to Cruise’s convention-breaking presaged a shift in how celebrity freakouts were covered, as it was one of the first major entertainment-world meltdowns to saturate the blogging world. “There was something so personal, so oversharey, so necessarily engaged with the audience in Cruise’s couch-jumping that it set the tone for the kind of one-person media circus we’d expect and enjoy in the years to come, to varying degrees of sadness (Britney Spears), amazement (Charlie Sheen) and despicableness (Chris Brown),” Gawker ’s Rich Juzwiak wrote in 2012. While the word “meme” hadn’t yet entered the mainstream lexicon, Cruise’s furniture leap went viral. “Culturally, it was, in my mind, one of the first celebrity memes,” Brandon Ogborn, the writer behind The TomKat Project , an excellent play examining Tom Cruise’s reputation, told The Ringer . “That clip was reenacted so many times. It was kind of a watershed moment for internet culture.”

Along with memes came a cascade of internet commentary on Cruise’s behavior, most of it overwhelmingly negative. While Oprah’s studio audience had been pleased with his effusiveness, the story line soured in the digital world. “Now, whenever something happens in the news, we can go online and quickly find the tide in which public opinion is turning. In the early days of the internet, it wasn’t that distinct,” James said. “That changed with Tom. The people who watched Tom’s appearance and felt it was maybe even the slightest bit heartwarming went online to find that the majority opinion was Tom had lost his mind.”

It was an exciting time for bloggers, and terrible timing for Cruise. He had fired his longtime publicist, Pat Kingsley, in March 2004. Kingsley was a powerhouse with a viselike grip on the dicks of traditional outlets. “She was adamant about keeping Cruise out of the tabloids. At press junkets, she demanded that journalists sign contracts swearing not to sell their quotes to the supermarket rags,” film critic Amy Nicholson wrote for LA Weekly in 2014, arguing that internet culture was to blame for Cruise’s fall from grace. “Then Kingsley expanded her reach and insisted that all TV interviewers destroy their tapes after his segment had aired.” Without Kingsley, Cruise didn’t have his usual PR fixer at hand to tell him what not to do, to tell him how to course-correct once the backlash began, or to tell the press to lay off. Instead, Cruise had replaced the flinty Kingsley with his sister, Lee Anne DeVette, a fellow Scientologist. The public reaction to his romance with Holmes was no good even before The Incident. According to a People poll, the majority of respondents saw the relationship as a publicity stunt . “We can’t get enough of the TomKat show because eventually the paint will start to chip and we will hopefully see all the ugliness as openly as we’ve been shoved the lovey-dovey bullshit,” Perez Hilton wrote. Cruise’s past habit of keeping his private life to himself and manicuring his public image had given him an idyllic but distinctly artificial sheen, one that may have counterintuitively exacerbated the response when he finally stepped out of line. “He had never done anything publicly wrong before,” Nicholson told The Ringer . “He’d always been so perfect.” Cruise’s over-the-top display of hyper-public affection, possibly made more intense by his desire to prove that his love was real, backfired. Instead of making people think he was a romantic, Cruise just made people think he was weird.

He quickly got weirder, and darker. Shortly after his couch leap, Cruise started a feud with Brooke Shields by dismissing her experience with postpartum depression. He went on Today to go even further, insisting that psychiatry and psychiatric medicine were dangerous. While Cruise was a longtime Scientologist, he had never openly advocated for the abusive group’s more controversial beliefs so publicly before. “It was a time when he really just let himself go, and let his freak flag fly. And it was also a time when he was really proselytizing for Scientology. I think it was a huge explosion of press that was bad press, because the Tom Cruise machine just stopped,” Ogborn said. “He said, This is who I am, I’m going to jump on that couch, I’m going to tell Matt Lauer he’s glib. ”

In less than a year, Cruise contorted his reputation from a hard-working, eccentric leading man into Hollywood’s premiere guileless kook. “Cruise: I will eat the placenta,” a 2006 Daily Mail headline , is a good example of the sort of news he generated. When California banned the sale of ultrasounds for personal use that year, it was known as the “Tom Cruise law” because Cruise had publicly purchased an ultrasound machine to view his daughter in the womb. South Park went for the jugular, as expected, but ridicule came from all over. Noah Baumbach wrote a New Yorker piece where the joke was that his dog was stupid and enthusiastic … just like Tom Cruise. Even Lauren Bacall dissed him to reporters. People still showed up for Cruise movies. War of the Worlds had a huge opening , but studios feared that Cruise’s bankability was tainted after Mission: Impossible III made nearly $150 million less worldwide than its predecessor. Cruise’s reputation was undeniably threatened. His Q rating, used to measure celebrity appeal, dropped 40 percent. “From that point on, we all accepted Tom Cruise was crazy,” James said. “It was a done deal.”

Cruise’s uninhibited media blunder bender cost him a lucrative, long-term production deal with Paramount. His behavior was blamed for the deal’s destruction. “His recent conduct has not been acceptable to Paramount,” Viacom chairman Sumner M. Redstone told The Wall Street Journal . The Oprah Winfrey Show , meanwhile, continued on as an unstoppable cultural force. From all accounts, as much as the couch-jumping episode yoked Oprah and Cruise together for eternity as a punch line, it also ruffled feathers at Harpo. “She was not invited to his wedding, and he was not invited for a very long time to come interview with her,” Ogborn pointed out, noting that Harpo employees would frequently come talk to him after the Chicago run of The TomKat Project to discuss that period of time. “They said she was fucking pissed when it happened.”

Regardless of Oprah’s personal opinion of Cruise’s behavior, the interview didn’t hurt her professionally. A mock set from the show is now on display in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of African American History and Culture as part of an exhibit on Winfrey. There was no lasting damage to her legacy. (Curators declined to comment on the role of the interview in her cultural history.) If anything, the couch-jumping episode only provided a bolstering example of Oprah presiding over must-watch TV. The show’s guiding ethos focused on going big and doing the best, resulting in ever-more-elaborate gift giveaways and surprises for the audience. While Cruise’s antics might have thrown off the dynamic between guest and host that Oprah preferred, his interview ultimately fit the bill for the gripping, unexpected, and wholly memorable. “Tom’s televised freakout was just another notch in her belt,” James said. Talk-show hosts now manufacture segments specifically to do well on YouTube and other online platforms, but it was Oprah who generated the first viral talk-show clip.

The incident certainly did not kill Cruise’s career, either. In 2008, his comic turn in Tropic Thunder helped undercut his reputation for unrelenting self-seriousness. (The same year, Cruise reunited with Oprah for a much calmer interview.) Cruise maintained his career throughout his reputational turmoil by sticking with Mission: Impossible and thematically similar films. “He’s always done such great work with this franchise, but he’s almost clinging to it nervously, like he’s afraid to let go and take a real risk,” Nicholson said. “He’ll take risks inside the film with stunts, but he’s not taking risks inside his own career, like doing the dramatic work that marked a lot of what he did in the ’80s, or by chasing an Oscar, which is something he gave up on.” Although he never quite regained his status as a Hollywood golden boy, he has mellowed into an aging statesman of action flicks—and anyway, his divorce from Katie Holmes and continued association with Scientology have left a longer-lasting stink on his name than his exuberant talk-show appearance. In 2015, GQ heralded “Cool Tom Cruise.” This summer, he is starring in the sixth Mission: Impossible movie. The critical response to both the film and Cruise’s performance has been overwhelmingly positive. “What’s always been so ironic to me about the Tom Cruise quote-unquote backlash is that it seemed to me that audiences still really loved him, even if newspapers were telling them that they didn’t,” Nicholson said. “I feel like he’s proving something that never needed to be proven.”

The real legacy of the couch-jumping incident has almost nothing to do with Cruise or Oprah specifically and everything to do with how people reacted online to the moment. Tom and Oprah’s strange conversation, and the reaction it provoked, is now preserved as thousands of digital artifacts, emblematic of how information traveled in the early aughts. Rewatching the episode and the viral videos it spawned feels quaint now. The bloggy media cycle that produced Cruise memes has been replaced by a cesspool of broken newsfeeds smushing conspiracy theories and branded content against real news and irrational presidential tweets with such velocity that it seems deeply unlikely that Cruise’s hop onto a loveseat would provoke much at all in 2018. However, it’s even less likely that Cruise would’ve been able to make it so far into his career without finding his kooky personality exposed as he did in 2005.

Up-and-comers have learned to respond to a different and less controllable form of media attention. There is a whole brand of celebrity in which the famous are expected to engage with fans on social media. Celebrity PR disasters don’t often happen in such glossy settings anymore; instead, they are frequently facilitated by social media and accelerated by fans and detractors who dig up old tweets . The last time a daytime talk-show guest created a media supernova after their appearance, it was Danielle Bregoli, a.k.a. Bhad Bhabie, a.k.a. “Cash Me Ousside” Girl, who parlayed a viral moment shit-talking on Dr. Phil into a viable rap career . I doubt Bregoli knows about Tom Cruise’s Oprah appearance, but her own twist on the daytime meme underscores how much has changed since Cruise took his happy hop. Performative, contrived freakiness in front of a live studio audience can be an asset now. The big leap is figuring out how to navigate internet criticism without spinning out—a frequently impossible mission.

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Relive the Moment When Tom Cruise Jumped On Oprah's Couch

Updated on 5/23/2015 at 5:30 PM

On May 23, 2005, Tom Cruise showed his incredible cat-like agility by jumping on Oprah Winfrey's couch. Ten years later, we celebrate this moment that went down in pop culture history.

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Tom Cruise Jumped On Oprah's Couch And Lost His Mind 11 Years Ago

Entertainment Writer, The Huffington Post

Eleven years ago today, actor Tom Cruise jumped on Oprah Winfrey's couch like a trampoline when he appeared on "The Oprah Winfrey Show."

Cruise declared his love for then girlfriend (and future ex-wife) Katie Holmes and hopped up on the furniture before Oprah said, "He's gone. He's gone. The boy is gone."

The daytime host was more right than she knew. Though Cruise's name is still a big box-office draw, these days, he is better known for being an outspoken advocate for Scientology and for his public antics. The couch jump marked the first shift in Tom Cruise's image away from the heartthrob he'd been. (Pop quiz: Which movie was Tom Cruise promoting when he appeared on "Oprah" in 2005? Answer: It was "War of the Worlds," but no one remembers because he jumped on Oprah's couch.)

The same year as Couchgate, Cruise got in hot water for criticizing actress Brooke Shields for using antidepressant Paxil to treat her postpartum depression. He later got in an argument with Matt Lauer on " The Today Show" for his criticism of psychiatry.

As for his romance with Holmes, Cruise has been divorced from the "Dawson's Creek" star since 2012. He is also reportedly feuding with actress and former Scientology member Leah Remini over her tell-all memoir , which made many claims about Cruise and his family, including one that he had a meltdown over cookie dough.

What's up with Jerry Maguire now? He recently wrapped up filming "Jack Reacher: Never Go Back," and there are rumors of a "Top Gun" sequel . In Sunday night's premiere of AMC series "Preacher, " an unknown force possessed a number of religious figures, including Cruise, which caused the actor's head to explode on the show (real-life Cruise reportedly wasn't happy about the joke ).

Cruise may still be a movie star, but he's mostly a Scientology punchline at this point. Jumping on that fateful couch was just the tip of the iceberg.

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Let's revisit the Tom Cruise/Oprah's couch incident

It was one of the most-watched moments in the Internet’s relatively brief history. When Tom Cruise jumped on Oprah’s couch and declared his love for Katie Holmes, it was the daytime TV moment for a DVR, GIF-ready age.

But, as Amy Nicholson reports for L.A. Weekly , the moment we all thought we saw never happened. He never jumped up and down on the couch; he simply stood. The nitty-gritty of the infamous May 2005 Oprah appearance is but one revelation in her fascinating piece, How YouTube and Internet Journalism Destroyed Tom Cruise, Our Last Real Movie Star .

In the article, Nicholson explores how Tom Cruise went from the biggest movie star in the world to an Internet joke (who still manages to open films), with fascinating insight that attempts to explain the context behind the Oprah appearance (for example, that Cruise was playing to an audience that was quite different than bloggers), as well as larger points about that time period — it’s hard to believe all that media craziness was nine years ago.

As Nicholson points out, the Oprah Couch Incident happened at a time with a lot of rapid changes in entertainment culture — the launch of PerezHilton.com, the growth of TMZ, the inundation of camera phones making everyone paparazzi, etc. The piece is interesting from a How We Got Here angle, as well as its ability to shed some light on what publicity meant in the ’90s versus now — Nicholson also gets great scoop about how that infamous Matt Lauer/Tom Cruise interview came to be (never underestimate a good publicist).

For old times’ sake, watch the Cruise clip below, and then go read Nicholson’s full article :

Related Articles

It’s Been 10 Years Since Tom Cruise Made Oprah’s Couch Famous

Tom Cruise’s infamous Oprah interview turns 10 on May 23. And while the episode of the show has been exaggerated in the popular consciousness (Cruise never really jumped up and down on the couch, merely stood on it briefly and then did a lot of kneeling), the Internet never forgets.

That’s thanks largely to videos like “Tom Cruise Kills Oprah” and an endless succession of GIFs and memes that cemented Cruise’s appearance on the show in the zeitgeist.

“Certainly, I did not think it would turn into the brouhaha that it did,” Oprah told TV Guide later . She has since refused to re-air the footage, calling the wave of viral clips that have sprung up around it “unfair.”

But it continues to live on, particularly in situations like the one above, in which Wayfair PR placed a couch in Boston’s Copley Square and asked people what would make them happy enough to jump up on it, à la Cruise, complete with Oprah and Cruise masks.

This article originally appeared on People.com .

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How Tom Cruise Jumping on Oprah's Couch Changed Everything

Ten years ago, a media event took place that changed the public's perception of one of its most beloved stars. And while he has continued to see success, his image has never recovered — and it's possible it never will. I'm referring of course to the jump heard 'round the world: Tom Cruise 's interview with Oprah Winfrey .

Freshly in love with Katie Holmes , a relationship long speculated to be the result of a "wife search" sanctioned and lead by the Church of Scientology, Cruise visited his friend Oprah — and a very on-board audience who loved every moment of the interview — and discussed his newfound happiness. And he did so by grabbing Oprah's hands, standing on the couch, and retrieving Holmes from backstage to show off his prize.

Some things go viral and when we look back years later, we see they weren't such a big deal. This is not one of those things. This is just as awkward as it was in 2005.

People responded. And the response was an embarrassment. While the studio audience was incredibly stoked, the viewers at home — and online — were weirded out. This display of emotion was so intense, so striking, that it rang false. Or, if not false, definitely kind of creepy. It was too much. So, the memes began.

Cruise would continue to have box office success thanks to the Mission Impossible franchise — though for a few years his star dimmed a bit. (Anyone remember Lions for Lambs or Knight and Day ?) But the public's image of him has never been the same. Never again would he be dreamboat Tom Cruise, universally beloved celebrity. He has been since and will remain the overly intense guy who either must be hiding something or has lost the ability to act like a regular person.

Critics have blamed bloggers and internet culture for their abuse of the clips, like the above, ultimately leading to the backlash that still exists against Cruise, but it was more than just a couch jump. This was also a time when the internet was giving the public more information than ever before, meaning most of us were learning about Scientology for the first time. We saw this video on YTMND , we could read about Operation Snow White and other scary stuff, and we would soon all be able to read this still terrifying Katie Holmes W magazine interview . If you missed that interview back in 2005, it's still a great, creepy read. Holmes answers every question with a robot-like focus on how perfect Cruise is (whether that was the question or not) and is often answered for by a Scientology handler. Cruise's Oprah exuberance was clearly contagious — here's one example:

...A security guard lumbers into the dressing room and presents Holmes with a giant silver box tied in a thick purple ribbon. A small crowd gathers to watch her gleefully tear open the package and pluck out a Chanel diamond necklace—a gift, naturally, from Cruise. “He’s my man! He’s my man!” she screams, then jumps up on her chair to do an impression of her fiancé’s now-famous sofa shtick from Oprah.

People begin to cheer. “This is your moment!” cries the manicurist.

“I can do splits too,” Holmes says, jumping down and splaying herself across the floor. On that note, I suggest, we should probably get the photo shoot started.

“On that note,” she replies, “I love him.”

And when the two split years later, no one was surprised by tales of Holmes's harrowing escape — and no one saw that as mere media hyperbole. Our eyes had been opened to the fact that movie star Tom Cruise was also perhaps weird public figure Tom Cruise. And he likely always will be.

What came first: the couch or our discomfort? Oprah may have been the impetus, but Cruise was hardly a victim of mean memes and viral videos. He was a victim of a public that had become too difficult to fake it in front of.

Tom Cruise jumped on Oprah's couch 16 years ago and it hasn't aged well

In May 2005, Tom Cruise momentarily lost the run of himself and trampled all over Oprah's couch as he proclaimed his love for Katie Holmes during an interview.

After months of speculation that the pair were together, Tom finally spoke of their relationship on Oprah's chat show and sent the host and viewers in the studio into the frenzy with his antics.

A month before this, Tom and Katie -- known as TomKat for a period -- made their first public appearance together in Rome, making them the most talked-about Hollywood couple of the time.

So, you can only imagine the mileage fans, haters, and the media all got out that *that* Oprah interview.

The actor , then 42, wasn't appearing on the show to lep about, and shout his love for the Dawson's Creek star , then 26, but instead to talk about his upcoming movie War of the Worlds also starring 11-year-old Dakota Fanning.

The interview was happening as Oprah's talk show was at the height of its popularity and audience members were regularly leaving with cars and a feeling of having been in the presence of royalty.

With the excitement in the studio already high, Oprah introduced Tom to the crowd, and, well, it all went downhill from there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qQgXEkL3NV4

At the time, some called it sweet watching Tom talk about his new romance, however, I never felt it right to categorise it as 'sweet' but rather cringe-inducing.

'You're gone,' Oprah said of Tom's first pumping and victory laps of the studio -- a fairly appropriate and presumingly unintentionally Irish way of describing the moment.

As the frenzy in the studio began to die down with Tom's ongoing victory lap, Oprah took the reigns and prompted Tom to create another headline moment.

'Get Katie out here,' the host told Tom as the actor headed for backstage to push -- literally -- his new girlfriend out in front of the cameras and the hysterical viewers.

A reluctant Katie joined Tom and embraced Oprah as audience members continued to exert themselves at the sight of the pair together.

The moment was all over celebrity blogs and made his relationship with Katie the only celebrity love story worth talking about for the foreseeable.

Within months, Katie and Tom announced they were expecting their first child and a year later, the couple was married in a Scientologist ceremony in front of many A-lister pals.

Some 16 years later, with Katie and Tom long divorced and their daughter Suri now celebrating her 15th birthday, looking back at this iconic TV moment feels totally removed from where we are now.

The moment continues to be a pop culture reference for many who will think of Tom when gushing about a new love or testing out a new sofa.

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Freeze Frame: How the world reacted to Tom Cruise's infamous couch jump on Oprah in 2005

By April Glover | 4 months ago

When most people think of Hollywood star Tom Cruise , his most famous roles come to mind.

Some recall his '80s portrayal of pilot Pete Mitchell in Top Gun, while others might think of his character Ethan Hunt in the Mission: Impossible franchise.

But for Oprah Winfrey fans in 2005, Cruise will forever be immortalised for his bizarre couch jumping antics and public declaration of love for his then-girlfriend, Katie Holmes, live on television.

Watch the video above.

READ MORE: The 10 words that cost Oprah Winfrey $1 million in 1996

Cruise's appearance on the talk show was a huge coup for Winfrey. The Jerry Maguire actor, hot off the heels of his divorce from Nicole Kidman, was having a huge career moment.

The actor was supposed to be promoting his new Stephen Spielberg-directed blockbuster, War of the Worlds, but the conversation with Winfrey quickly devolved to his new romance with Holmes.

The interview had little to do with Cruise's new film and it's now part of pop culture folklore because of how he acted while sitting on the infamous couch.

READ MORE:  'That's not the truth': Infamous Ellen moment four years on

Minutes into the interview, Cruise began to gush about Holmes, barely able to contain his passion and excitement. He couldn't stop laughing as he darted around the room.

A bemused Winfrey could only utter this sentence. "Something happened to you," she said.

"I'm in love!" Cruise proclaimed, before embarking on a series of physical displays of pure euphoria. "She's truly extraordinary."

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"I've never seen you behave this way before, have you ever felt this way before?" she asked, before Cruise jumped onto the couch – a moment that has followed him for the past 18 years.

Winfrey could barely contain her own shock at Cruise's behaviour as the segment quickly spiralled out of control.

The veteran interviewer seemed unable to return the interview to normality. "You're gone," she kept repeating.

Cruise's comical outburst became front-page news, was splashed across TV screens and inspired countless op-eds and articles.

Parodies began rolling in, one even airing on the children's show Sesame Street.

Winfrey would later admit she was surprised Cruise's couch jump turned into such a pivotal cultural moment.

"Certainly, I did not think it would turn into the brouhaha that it did," she told TV Guide . 

"I thought it was an expression of delightful exuberance and love that any woman...would be thrilled to have her man jump on a sofa in love with her."

Cruise's display of affection did nothing to save his relationship (and later marriage) to Holmes.

After welcoming daughter Suri the year after the interview in 2006, the couple called it quits in 2012.

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The mood of their bitter, drawn-out split was world's away from Cruise's freshly-in-love elation.

Three years after the infamous interview, Winfrey and Cruise met again on The Oprah Show.

It marked one of the few times he acknowledged his antics on the couch - and this time, he was a little calmer.

"It was a moment," he said. "It was something that I just felt that way. And I feel that way about [wife Katie Holmes]. And it's something, you know, that's just how I felt."

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Tom Cruise Revealed He Was Intentionally Setup During His Wild Oprah Winfrey Interview

Behind closed doors, Tom Cruise told Seth Rogen how he really felt about the strange Oprah Winfrey interview.

Now if only every Oprah Winfrey interview can be like her time alongside Tom Cruise , or the rollercoaster with Lindsay Lohan . In truth, Oprah has had some dud interviews and the host even revealed that she has a code word when things aren't as interesting... RELATED - Tom Cruise Called Paramount Pictures Himself After A 30-Minute Meeting Telling The Studio 'We’re Making Another Top Gun' In the following, we'll review the controversial Tom Cruise interview from 2005. We'll examine what Cruise really thought about the interview and what he told Seth Rogen about it behind closed doors.

Tom Cruise's Couch-Jump On Oprah Went Completely Viral

The moment went absolutely viral and The Ringer described it best, within a couple of minutes, everything went completely south between Oprah and Tom Cruise.

"Within 15 minutes, Cruise had leapt onto Oprah’s couch in a spontaneous outburst of enthusiasm for his personal life. Cruise’s offbeat showboating was memorable in part because of its unusual setting."

It is said that the 2005 moment launched internet blogs and in addition, it showed the dangers of public opinion online, and how it can shape a person in the long run.

RELATED - This Actor Said He Doesn't Respect Tom Cruise On Live TV, Here's Why

Of course, the moment was all about Tom Cruise discussing his love for Katie Holmes, doing so in a very energetic way to say the least. "I just felt that way, and I feel that way about her. I can't even articulate it, to be honest. That feeling, that connection. Just who she is and what she means to me," Cruise stated.

We all know by now, the relationship did not last and the two went their own ways despite the "connection." Both sides kept very quiet about the interview during the years that followed.

However, Seth Rogen revealed that Cruise did in fact have an opinion about what had transpired.

Seth Rogen Revealed That Tom Cruise Stated The Interview Was Purposely Edited

We'll never really know the validity of this, but Rogen would reveal the details in his memoir book Yearbook . The moment in question took place during a five-hour Knocked Up meeting, which included Tom Cruise himself.

Over those couple of hours, Cruise had a lot to say, including the discussion of what went on during that interview. According to Tom, the interview wasn't as bad as it seemed and a lot of it was completely setup that way due to the editing.

“Well, yeah, they're making it seem like I'm losing my mind, there’s a coordinated effort to make it appear that way” Cruise allegedly told Rogen.

"They edited it to make it look so much worse than it was. They do that all the time.”

RELATED - A Rumoured Theory On Why Tom Cruise And Leonardo DiCaprio Never Worked Together

Tom had the same to say following his interview with Matt Lauer, claiming pharmaceutical companies were out to get him, “because my exposure of their fraud has cost them SO much money that they're desperate. They're scrambling and they're doing everything they can to discredit me so I won't hurt sales anymore.”

In terms of his public comments about the Oprah interview, there really hasn't been many...

Tom Cruise Had Said Very Little About The Interview Publicly

In terms of actual words from Tom himself that we know of, there hasn't been many relating to the interview. He did make a joke about it , claiming he was in his "year of jumping dangerously," referencing the film, The Year of Living Dangerously.

Tom did touch base on his reputation back in 2008 alongside Pop Sugar . Similar to what he discussed alongside Seth Rogen, Cruise stated that he doesn't stress about it, given that the media spins it however they choose to.

"Listen I, I feel like definitely things have been misunderstood, and there are things I could have done better. But then there's also that world where you go, 'Oh, it's been spun to such an extent that. That's a truth also.' Knowing when and where to communicate, I think that's important. A lot of times I was nervous giving interviews. Or I wasn't sometimes as comfortable about things. And I realized that it's okay. There's stuff you have to just let go. I just have to do the best I can."

Clearly, all of that is in the past nowadays, as Cruise continues to enjoy serious success, especially from a career standpoint.

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Sad reality of Tom Cruise and daughter Suri’s relationship

Long estranged from her famous father, as she turns 18 Suri Cruise faces a huge choice about which direction her life will now take.

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Suri Cruise was once the most famous baby in America.

The arrival of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes’ daughter on April 18, 2006, sparked a global frenzy for the first glimpse of the A-list infant.

But it wasn’t until five months after her birth that she made her debut — on the cover of Vanity Fair, wrapped in the arms of her doting parents, in glossy photos taken by photographer to the stars, Annie Leibovitz.

Now she turns 18 this week and faces a choice: Whether to return to the level of fame she had as a kid — when there were blogs devoted to her fashion — or maintain the carefully-guarded life Holmes has built for her since she blindsided Cruise by filing for divorce.

The dark-haired teen has grown up in Manhattan largely shielded from the spotlight by her loving and highly protective mum, 45, far removed from her 60-year-old father’s Church of Scientology.

As Page Six revealed last year, Suri is estranged from her famous father and the pair have no relationship.

An industry source told us this week that the Mission: Impossible star has not seen Suri since 2012. “Katie has safeguarded Suri and she’s a devoted mum,” the source said.

“This is a girl who is a private citizen. She hasn’t lived her life in public.”

Holmes told Glamour magazine in 2023 that she likes to “protect” Suri from the public eye “because she was so visible at a young age.”

“I’m very grateful to be a parent, to be her parent. She’s an incredible person. She’s my heart,” she added.

Being the only daughter of a protective single parent is a stark contrast to how Suri’s life began, of course.

“My whole life I always wanted to be a father,” Cruise gushed to VF back in 2006.

“I always said to myself that my children would be able to depend on me and I would always be there for them and love them — that I’d never make a promise to my kids that I couldn’t keep.

“I’m not one of those people who believe you can spoil a child with too much love. You can never give a child too much love. There’s just no way.”

He already had two adopted children, Bella, now 31, and Connor, now 29, from his marriage to Nicole Kidman and after her Vanity Fair debut was happy to parade Suri for the paparazzi.

Cruise had famously declared their romance by jumping up and down on Oprah Winfrey’s couch in May 2005, yelling “I’m in love!”

But when Suri was just 6, Holmes filed for divorce after six years of marriage with the help of her dad, Martin Holmes, a fierce lawyer, and through a secret plan that entailed using burner phones.

Cruise was taken completely by surprise by the filing while he was on the set of Oblivion in Iceland in June 2012.

He and Suri were last seen together at Disney World in the summer of 2012.

In November 2013, during a deposition in his $US50 million court battle against a pair of tabloid magazines, the Top Gun star admitted that Holmes had filed for divorce “to protect Suri from Scientology,” court documents revealed.

Despite not having a relationship; as per their divorce agreement, Cruise, who has an estimated $US600 million fortune, agreed to pay Holmes $US400,000 a year until Suri turns 18 as well as future “medical, dental, insurance, education, college and other extra-curricular costs”.

Scientology lies at the heart of the question over Suri’s future.

Holmes, who rose to fame in the TV hit, Dawson’s Creek , is believed to have signed multiple nondisclosure documents that will prevent her from ever talking about her marriage to Cruise — and her time inside Scientology.

But when Suri turns 18, NY state declares that she is at the age of majority, when an individual is legally considered an adult.

That would allow her to speak about her father, his beliefs and their rift.

Tony Ortega, who has covered Scientology in depth for decades, told Page Six, “Suri would have been too young to sign any agreement, but she will now be free to talk if she wants to and it’s going to be really interesting if she has something to say.”

We have reached out to reps for Cruise, Holmes and the Church of Scientology.

“Part of why Katie left when she did when Suri was 6 was that Katie would have seen Isabella and Connor going through Scientology,” said Ortega.

Cruise is of course Scientology’s most famous follower and seen as one of its most powerful figures, possibly second only to its leader, David Miscavige.

That power has led Ortega and former Scientologists to question what action Miscavige and other top Scientologists may have taken against Holmes and her daughter.

Regular members who quit are declared “suppressive persons (SP)” and those who stay in Scientology are told to completely cut them off.

“We don’t know for sure if Katie was ever declared an SP,” Ortega said.

“If you are a regular church member you could be told to disconnect from your wife and daughter, but because Tom is a celebrity — he’s the top celebrity — he gets to ignore all this stuff.

“Your average member would be kicked out, but David Miscavige can’t do that with Tom.”

Both Mike Rinder and Jeff Augustine, two high-profile former Scientologists, agreed with this claim.

Augustine is married to Karen de la Carriere, who was one of the highest-ranking church leaders until she left in 2010 and told Page Six, “The situation with Suri is a larger story about Scientology and the subject of how they make people no longer useful to them or threats to them non-persons.

“It’s like they cease to exist and that’s what happened to Suri.”

Back in August 2020, Leah Remini — one of the most famous celebrities to leave and speak out against Scientology — told us that she believed Cruise, who now lives mainly in the UK, was waiting until Suri is older so he could indoctrinate her into Scientology.

Remini, who attended Cruise and Holmes’ November 2006 Italian wedding at the 15th-century Odescalchi Castle, said, “I’m sure his master plan is to wait until Suri gets older so that he can lure her into Scientology and away from her mother.”

Suri has tiptoed very gently into her parents’ showbusiness world while attending her exclusive Manhattan day school, singing B lue Moon in the opening credits of Holmes’ 2022 movie, Alone Together.

“I always want the highest level of talent,” Holmes said. “So I asked her! She’s very, very talented. She said she would do it and she recorded it, and I let her do her thing.”

Suri also sang in the film Rare Objects , which Holmes also directed.

Holmes will this year return to Broadway in a revival of Thornton Wilder’s Our Town .

She has not remarried but had a six-year romance with actor Jamie Foxx which she kept under the radar before their split in August 2019 and went on to have a brief fling with Nolita restaurateur Emilio Vitolo Jr. in 2021.

Holmes is careful not to speak out too much about her daughter, who is now preparing for college, once saying, “She came out very strong — she’s always been a strong personality.”

But she is now getting ready for her daughter to leave the nest.

“You want them to stay with you forever, but they’re these amazing beings, and you have to do everything you can to give them what they need — and then they’re going to go,” she told Town & Country in 2017.

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“And that’s going to be very, very sad for me.”

As for the future, former Scientology spokesperson Mike Rinder, who has not seen his own two eldest children since he quit the organisation, told Page Six, “Suri is not a Scientologist and never will be … she deserves love and sympathy.”

This story originally appeared on Page Six and is republished here with permission.

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Suri Cruise turns 18 and is still estranged from Tom: ‘Not a Scientologist, never will be’

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Suri Cruise was once the most famous baby in America.

The arrival of Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes’ daughter on April 18, 2006, sparked a global frenzy for the first glimpse of the A-list infant.

But it wasn’t until five months after her birth that she made her debut — on the cover of Vanity Fair, wrapped in the arms of her doting parents, in glossy photos taken by photographer to the stars, Annie Leibovitz.

Now she turns 18 on Thursday and faces a choice: Whether to return to the level of fame she had as a kid — when there were blogs devoted to her fashion — or maintain the carefully-guarded life Holmes has built for her since she blindsided Cruise by filing for divorce.

The dark-haired teen has grown up in Manhattan largely shielded from the spotlight by her loving and highly protective mom, 45, far removed from her 60-year-old father’s Church of Scientology.

As Page Six revealed last year, Suri is estranged from her famous father and the pair have no relationship.

An industry source told us this week that the “Mission: Impossible” star has not seen Suri since 2012. “Katie has safeguarded Suri and she’s a devoted mom,” the source said.

“This is a girl who is a private citizen. She hasn’t lived her life in public.”

Holmes told Glamour magazine in 2023 that she likes to “protect” Suri from the public eye “because she was so visible at a young age.”

“I’m very grateful to be a parent, to be her parent. She’s an incredible person. She’s my heart,” she added.

Being the only daughter of a protective single parent is a stark contrast to how Suri’s life began, of course.

“My whole life I always wanted to be a father,” Cruise gushed to VF back in 2006.

“I always said to myself that my children would be able to depend on me and I would always be there for them and love them — that I’d never make a promise to my kids that I couldn’t keep.

“I’m not one of those people who believe you can spoil a child with too much love. You can never give a child too much love. There’s just no way.”

He already had two adopted children, Bella, now 31, and Connor, now 29, from his marriage to Nicole Kidman and after her Vanity Fair debut was happy to parade Suri for the paparazzi.

Cruise had famously declared their romance by jumping up and down on Oprah Winfrey’s couch in May 2005, yelling “I’m in love!” 

But when Suri was just 6, Holmes filed for divorce after six years of marriage with the help of her dad, Martin Holmes, a fierce attorney, and through a secret plan that entailed using burner phones.

Cruise was taken completely by surprise by the filing while he was on the set of “Oblivion” in Iceland in June 2012.

He and Suri were last seen together at Disney World in the summer of 2012.

In November 2013, during a deposition in his $50 million court battle against a pair of tabloid magazines, the “Top Gun” star admitted that Holmes had filed for divorce “to protect Suri from Scientology,” court documents revealed.

Despite not having a relationship; as per their divorce agreement, Cruise, who has an estimated $600 million fortune, agreed to pay Holmes $400,000 a year until Suri turns 18 as well as future “medical, dental, insurance, education, college and other extracurricular costs”.

Scientology lies at the heart of the question over Suri’s future.

Holmes, who rose to fame in the TV hit, “Dawson’s Creek,” is believed to have signed multiple non-disclosure documents that will prevent her from ever talking about her marriage to Cruise — and her time inside Scientology.

But when Suri turns 18, NY state declares that she is at the age of majority, when an individual is legally considered an adult.

That would allow her to speak about her father, his beliefs and their rift.

Tony Ortega, who has covered Scientology in depth for decades, told Page Six, “Suri would have been too young to sign any agreement, but she will now be free to talk if she wants to and it’s going to be really interesting if she has something to say.”

We have reached out to reps for Cruise, Holmes and the Church of Scientology. 

“Part of why Katie left when she did when Suri was 6 was that Katie would have seen Isabella and Connor going through Scientology,” said Ortega.

Cruise is of course Scientology’s most famous follower and seen as one of its most powerful figures, possibly second only to its leader, David Miscavige.

That power has led Ortega and former Scientologists to question what action Miscavige and other top Scientologists may have taken against Holmes and her daughter.

Regular members who quit are declared “suppressive persons (SP)” and those who stay in Scientology are told to completely cut them off.

“We don’t know for sure if Katie was ever declared an SP,” Ortega said.

“If you are a regular church member you could be told to disconnect from your wife and daughter, but because Tom is a celebrity — he’s  the top celebrity — he gets to ignore all this stuff.

“Your average member would be kicked out, but David Miscavige can’t do that with Tom.”

Both Mike Rinder and Jeff Augustine, two high-profile former Scientologists, agreed with this claim.

Augustine is married to Karen de la Carriere, who was one of the highest-ranking church leaders until she left in 2010 and told Page Six, “The situation with Suri is a larger story about Scientology and the subject of how they make people no longer useful to them or threats to them non-persons.

“It’s like they cease to exist and that’s what happened to Suri.”

Back in August 2020, Leah Remini — one of the most famous celebrities to leave and speak out against Scientology — told us that she believed Cruise, who now lives mainly in the UK , was waiting until Suri is older so he could indoctrinate her into Scientology.

Remini, who attended Cruise and Holmes’ November 2006 Italian wedding at the 15th-century Odescalchi Castle, said, “I’m sure his master plan is to wait until Suri gets older so that he can lure her into Scientology and away from her mother.”

Suri has tiptoed very gently into her parents’ showbusiness world while attending her exclusive Manhattan day school, singing “Blue Moon” in the opening credits of Holmes’ 2022 movie, “Alone Together.”

“I always want the highest level of talent,” Holmes said. “So I asked her! She’s very, very talented. She said she would do it and she recorded it, and I let her do her thing.”

Suri also sang in the film “Rare Objects,” which Holmes also directed.

Holmes will this year return to Broadway in a revival of Thornton Wilder’s “Our Town”.

She has not remarried but had a six-year romance with actor Jamie Foxx which she kept under the radar before their split in August 2019 and went on to have a brief fling with  Nolita restaurateur Emilio Vitolo Jr. in 2021.

Holmes is careful not to speak out too much about her daughter, who is now preparing for college, once saying, “She came out very strong — she’s always been a strong personality.”

But she is now getting ready for her daughter to leave the nest.

“You want them to stay with you forever, but they’re these amazing beings, and you have to do everything you can to give them what they need — and then they’re going to go,” she told Town & Country in 2017.

“And that’s going to be very, very sad for me.”

As for the future, former Scientology spokesperson Mike Rinder, who has not seen his own two eldest children since he quit the organization, told Page Six, “Suri is not a Scientologist and never will be…she deserves love and sympathy.”

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