Tom Cruise's first manager speaks out: "Tommy had a terrible temper...I put it down to his insecurity"

https://www.lipstickalley.com/threads/tom-cruises-first-manager-speaks-out-tommy-had-a-terrible-temper-i-put-it-down-to-his-insecurity.4831604/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10491177/Tom-Cruises-manager-says-obsessed-looks.html

Former manager Eileen Berlin says she was a surrogate mother to the youth who went on to become Hollywood's highest-paid star. "Tommy had many faces – you see it in the photos,' Berlin said during an interview. There's contempt, arrogance, frustration, charm sadness"

'He wasn't making enough money to rent a place so we told him he could move into our apartment. Our son was at college so we gave Tommy his room and when he needed a car he drove my husband's blue Cadillac. 'He was having some difficulties with his mom but she would come and visit him at our house or he'd use the car to see her in New Jersey.' The new lodger charmed Eileen at first because he 'was sweet, respectful and mannerly to a fault' and 'always addressed me as "ma'am" and my husband as "sir," she said.

Berlin explained how Cruise's now-infamous December 2020 expletive-ridden rant on the set of Mission: Impossible 7 stems from a hair-trigger temper that she first witnessed when he was a teenager. One of his fits of rage, which she said were fueled by his father's bullying, culminated in him turning a birthday present into a makeshift missile that struck her in the face.

'What I have never seen is a real display of happiness in Tommy. He was always very, very ambitious, very, very determined to be a star. And that made him a perfectionist.'That's what drove him when I managed him and I'm sure that's what drives him now.'

He was only 14 when his mother, Mary Lee, broke up with his father, Thomas Cruise Mapother III. In a 2006 interview, Cruise said Mapother was a 'bully and a coward,' adding: 'He was the kind of person where, if something goes wrong, they kick you. It was a great lesson in my life - how he'd lull you in, make you feel safe and then, bang!'

Tommy had a terrible temper,' she claims. 'He harbored a lot of anger at his natural father. He was moody and would get angry in a snap of your fingers. ’It was like something was smoldering and it would boil up and explode. I put it down to his insecurity.