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Cruise Restrains Himself in London

The Times reports on Tom Cruise's encounter with London Channel 4's latest attempt to punk a celebrity. The station sent a fake reporter with a fake microphone to attend a walkabout where Cruise was meeting fans. The "reporter" put a water gun that looked like a microphone in the star's face and sprayed him with water, hoping for an explosive reaction. But Cruise surprised everyone. From the clip on CNN this morning, Cruise looked like he wanted to pound the guy's face in, but showed admirable restraint, electing instead for a tersely delivered lecture and restraining the jokester so he couldn't melt away into the crowd. The joke bombed for the show, and the entire crew is facing assault charges. As one commentator noted on CNN, "How do you know what was being sprayed? It might not have been water." Good point.

The crew was shooting a comedy sketch at last night's London premiere of the War of the Worlds, where Cruise and fiancee Katie Holmes, who got engaged in Paris last Friday, were greeting the crowds. As he answered questions from journalists a bogus reporter, wearing a white and green T-shirt, stuck out a joke microphone and used it to squirt water into Cruise's face. The actor struggled to keep his cool, turning on the man to say: "Why would you do that ... why would you do that ... why would you do that?" As the interviewer offered a barely audible excuse, Cruise said: "That's incredibly rude. I'm here giving you an interview and you do that ... it's incredibly rude. Do you like thinking less of people, is that it?... You're a jerk ... jerk ... you're a jerk."

Cruise then held the man back before security guards escorted him into the Odeon cinema, where he was arrested along with the three members of his crew. A spokeswoman for the star was quoted as saying today: "Tom does want to take action but we will decide in due course what that will be. He is not just going to forget about it. He wants to make sure we get to the bottom of it. We want to know who was involved and what it was all for. We have not received an apology and are still waiting to get hold of the people at Channel 4 and at the production company. We have been told that there is no one there at present. We are doing everything we can to get some answers."

"I understand that the prank was for a new Friday night show and that they did a similar thing to Paris Hilton in Cannes and they pulled a similar kind of stunt on Sharon Osbourne a couple of weeks ago."

When Channel 4 pulled this stunt on Sharon Osbourne, the feisty star marched into a nearby restaurant, picked up a champagne bucket full of ice and dumped it over the camaraman's head.

We're with Cruise on this one. We hope he sues everyone even remotely involved in this stupid stunt.

Now, picture the same incident, only this time the star is Russell Crowe. Instead of a tongue-lashing, no doubt the punkster and his crew would now be in intensive care. Now that would be funny.

Posted on June 20, 2005

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