Teflon Tom

Of all the rumors and innuendo flying around Tom Cruise in recent months, one bit of gossip must have particularly troubled those responsible for the care and grooming of his image. No, not all the talk about the control he supposedly wields over fiancée Katie Holmes (described by even the normally celeb-friendly Parade magazine as ''dazed, passive, and vacant''). Not the speculation that he pulled strings to get a South Park episode lampooning him yanked from Comedy Central's rotation. Not even the stuff about him chowing down on his newborn baby's afterbirth (come on, people — Cruise may not be the king of yuks, but the man was clearly joking). It was a widely circulated piece of gossip from Fox News' Roger Friedman (citing a Paramount insider) that at an early test screening of Mission: Impossible III, during a scene in which Cruise's character, Ethan Hunt, is being beaten within an inch of his life, the audience did something that once would have been unthinkable: They clapped. Applauding at the sight of Cruise being pummeled — has it really come to this?

Though he's done some work to repair the damage lately, Cruise's public image has taken a pounding in the past year. From his whooping gymnastics exhibition on Oprah to his feud with Brooke Shields to his impassioned anti-psychiatry rant on the Today show, Cruise bestowed late-night talk-show hosts, gossip columnists, and the bloggerazzi with a bonanza of fodder for mockery, putting him just one hunting accident away from a full-scale media meltdown. Even now, after a period of relative quiet, Jon Stewart can still launch into a bit on The Daily Show with the line ''Here's how freaky Tom Cruise is'' and be confident that everyone will know what he means. That's a startling change for an actor who wrote the modern playbook on keeping one's private life stowed away in a tamper-proof lockbox.

Just how much harm this feeding frenzy has done to the star's career is anyone's guess. Cruise is still the industry's standard-bearer in terms of bankability. Collectively, his films have grossed more than $2.5 billion in North America — the average is north of $100 million — and he's one of a tiny handful of stars whose movies are as eagerly anticipated in Singapore and São Paulo as they are in Cincinnati. Still, that stupendous drawing power comes with one of the heftiest price tags in Hollywood history — and now it comes with a hefty amount of baggage to boot. In an industry facing shrinking profit margins and skyrocketing costs, at a time when old-fashioned star vehicles seem to be losing box office ground to cheapo horror flicks and animated kids' movies, some people are wondering, How much is Cruise really worth?