After a lifetime playing wholesome, all-American heroes, Tom Cruise has finally discovered his dark side. He's also ditched his publicist, moved in with his sisters and is looking for the third Mrs Cruise. So is Hollywood's leading man having a middle-youth crisis? Interview by Neil Strauss [Picture: "What sinister ambitions lie concealed behind that smile? ... Tom Cruise. Photograph: Domenico Stinellis / AP"] Want to meet my mom?' Tom Cruise asks as we walk through the halls of the Celebrity Center, ...

He's been a child star, cult film director and bestselling peddler of Hollywood scandal. Now in his seventies, Kenneth Anger is back with three new films, an exhibition presented by that 'bitch' Anita Pallenberg and plans to publish the last in his Hollywood Babylon trilogy, a book that threatens to unleash an avalanche of litigation. Sanjiv Bhattacharya coaxes him out from behind his chicken-wire fence Auteur, occultist and Hollywood scandal-spreader Kenneth Anger is a famously irascible old man. Within minutes of ...

For a second or so the needle proceeds smoothly along the dial. I watch its progress while clutching two can-shaped metal devices, wired to the small machine housing the dial. Suddenly, the needle jerks violently. 'What was that?' asks Janet Laveau, head of the UK Office of Special Affairs, the Church of Scientology's PR machine. I'm disturbed and temporarily impressed - the needle jumped just as I was thinking of a friend who is seriously depressed. How could the machine 'know' ...

He is best known for rummaging through the dustbins of the rich and famous. But Benjamin Pell has betrayed an appetite for Hollywood glory in a bizarre legal action launched against John Mappin, an heir to the Mappin and Webb jewellery empire. 'Benji the binman' has been a legend in Fleet Street since the Sunday Times and other papers began to base exclusives on his smelly but newsworthy discoveries. And when the idea arose to make a movie about his life, ...

John Travolta's vanity project Battlefield Earth has taken 10 years to make and is set to be the turkey of the year. But, as Mark Morris explains, he's not the first star whose labour of love has resulted in risible self-indulgence There's nothing like a real Hollywood flop. Not an average bad movie doing averagely badly, but a complete wreck of a film that makes you wonder what the hell anyone was thinking of when they decided to make it and ...

Pressure from the Church of Scientology International was at least partly responsible for the recent shutdown of a well-known Internet messaging service based in Helsinki, according to the Finnish operator of the service. The service, known by its Internet address, anon.penet.fi, was used by hundreds of thousands of people worldwide to send and receive electronic messages without divulging their true identities. It was the best known of a small, global network of special computers known as remailers, whose legitimate users include ...

A Finnish operation that allowed people to send anonymous email on the Internet was shut down after accusations it was used for child pornography. Johan Helsingius, who has operated the electronic message relay service since 1993, denied the pornography allegations but said he had received calls from people accusing him of pedophilia, according to the Associated Press. Helsingius called the end of his service "a blow for Internet users and computer privacy," and said the charges are "not even possible." About ...

The Scientology cult was branded "corrupt, sinister and dangerous" by a High Court judge in London yesterday when he ordered two young children to be placed in the custody of their mother. He described the practices of the founder of the so-called "church", Ron Hubbard and his helpers, as "grimly reminiscent of the ranting and bullying of Hitler and his henchmen". Mr Justice Latey ordered a Scientologist father to hand over his son, aged 10, and daughter, aged eight ...

LONDON (AP)—The Church of Scientology lost a London court battle Friday to prevent two of its members from being extradited to the United States on charges of counseling and procuring burglary of American government offices. But the church immediately announced an appeal to the Divisional Court in London and said that if necessary it would pursue the appeal through the House of Lords and the European Court, which has jurisdiction because of Britain's membership in the European Economic Community. Magistrate William ...

New London may soon have a drug rehabilitation program that guarantees 80 per cent rate of cure after only four to eight weeks of treatment. "There are no other existing program that have a higher rate of cure than 30 per cent," said the Rev. James Meisler, minister of public relations of the Church of Scientology of New York. "Narconon guarantees an 80 per cent effective rate of cure." Narconon is an offshoot of the Church of Scientology. "If a drug ...

THE case of the Scientologists raises a very prickly issue. On the one hand, it is difficult to fault the verdict of Mr Kenneth Robinson, the Minister of Health, that the cult is 'socially harmful.' On the other hand, the Government's decision to ban followers of the cult from entry into Britain does raise a very basic issue: should moral and social disapproval be translated into executive action? In each and every case, the damage done to the principle of freedom ...

The main Edinburgh practitioner, it seems, is a Mr Ernest Saren, and at the appointments he produces a personality "graph" showing the questionnaire results on ten "personality dimensions" such as happy-depressed and capable-inhibited. The final column on the capacity analysis chart gives an I.Q. figure. Saren's qualifications for discussing people's problems on the basis of this questionnaire, according to a H.A.P.I. spokesman, are scientology qualifications only. One of those tested in the H.A.P.I. building this week, a 19-year-old apprentice who had ...