Tom Cruise outside Asha's in Birmingham.

Gulf Today Report

Rumours have become the unwanted staple in a movie star’s life: they dog him or her wherever they go. Particularly when it comes to salacious gossip involving either another starlet or a vivacious arm candy at an event.

However, some of the canards turn out to be false.

The media quotes ‘anonymous sources’ as the source of the information. Mission: Impossible director Christopher McQuarrie who directed Tom Cruise in Rogue Nation and Fallout among other movies, slams articles featuring ‘anonymous sources,’ particularly those relating to Cruise.

“When you read ‘anonymous sources’ or ‘sources close to the production say,’ that’s somebody putting it out there for a specific reason,” he said. “That’s someone wanting others to think that for a specific reason, and you can never know for sure what those reasons are. You learn to ignore it and laugh at it.”

McQuarrie’s comments come after it was asked whether the rumour mill surrounding the next two Mission: Impossible films, which have been billed as the final instalments in the franchise, won’t actually be the end for Cruise’s character, Ethan Hunt.

“Let me tell you, I’ve been working with Tom Cruise for 15 years and I cannot tell you the number of times I’ve been standing next to the man, witnessed an event and then read about it in the trades the next day and none of what they describe is actually true,” he told Variety.

To emphasise his point, McQuarrie then singled out one media story that was “100 per cent factually correct.”

They were in Birmingham filming a scene between Cruise and actress Haley Atwell. The next day a report was splashed across the papers that Cruise and four other guests had dinner at an Indian restaurant.

The report said Tom insisted on sitting at a table not in a private room but in the main hall of the restaurant with the other customers. The article also said that Tom placed three orders of chicken masala because he liked it so much, according to the Independent.

McQuarrie continued: “I called Tom the next day and said, ‘There’s something weird about this article. It’s 100 per cent factually correct!’ That’s the first time I’ve read an article in which everything happened exactly as written.”

There was a reason why the report was so right. The restaurant Asha’s had spilled the details on its official Twitter page, writing in August 2021 “It was an absolute pleasure to welcome Tom Cruise to Asha’s Birmingham yesterday evening. Tom ordered our famous Chicken Tikka Masala and enjoyed it so much that as soon as he had finished, he ordered it all over again - The greatest compliment.”