The Cruicible

''Regrets?'' he ponders. ''That's a hard question. Let's see.'' He pauses to scour his brain. ''I guess I wouldn't have gotten my nose broken when I was a kid. I got a fastball on my ninth birthday. I had this party and this girl was up in the stands. I was up at the plate and I gave a look over to my girl and the ball knocked me off my feet. I was gushing blood all over the place.''

Gee, just think: If not for that fastball, he might have been a good-looking guy. Of course, you can't blame Cruise for being cagey. He and Kidman, who have adopted two children (Isabella, 3 1/2, and Connor, 1 1/2), have endured an invasion of privacy so galling it would have George Clooney organizing a march on Washington. Rumors have been printed about Cruise's sexual preferences, his marriage, his controversial religion (Scientology), even his virility — none of them remotely substantiated. ''I think people must sit in a room and make it up,'' he says. ''I know they do. They sit there and wonder, 'Okay, what can we say next?'''

''There's a big jealousy factor working here,'' says Crowe. ''Tom's been able to put a lot of successes back-to-back. When somebody has that kind of success, this Greek tragedy thing kicks in. People start searching for a dark side.''

Good luck. Not even the IM Force could crack the enigmatic vault of Cruise's interior life — and even if they could, they probably wouldn't download many dark secrets. It's not that Cruise is excessively coy or psychotically upbeat. It's just that he seems almost blithely oblivious to the complexities of his own personality. Oblivious to his power. Oblivious to the effect he has on people (like the two waiters hovering by the table, so nervous their trays are practically rattling). Oblivious to subtle hand signals regarding that green leafy thing on his mouth. Oblivious, in short, to the fact that he's Tom Cruise — which, when you think about it, isn't a bad way to be when you're the biggest movie star in the world.

''He has no idea how people perceive him,'' says pal Rob Reiner. ''It's one of his most endearing qualities. He forgets he's a star. He just goes along like a normal person.''

''Yeah, that's true,'' says Kidman. ''I'll take him to a party and I'll find him standing in the corner by himself. He assumes people don't talk to him because they aren't interested. I'll have to explain that it's because they're too nervous to come over. That just never occurs to him.''

And yet, there are times when Cruise seems anything but oblivious...

A few weeks later, he calls. ''Listen, about that question — do I have any regrets? I walked out of the restaurant and felt bad about my answer. My nose? I don't give a s--- about my nose. It's not a regret.'' What's his replacement regret? ''One thing does stick out,'' he says. ''We had only 20 days to cut Days of Thunder. My regret is making a movie to meet a release date like that. Big mistake. I won't do it again.''

And there you have it — the dark, brooding coils of Tom Cruise's tortured soul laid bare.