Suri Noelle, the daughter of actors Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, arrived at dress rehearsals for her stage debut at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival. The 20-year-old performer is making her theatrical debut in Midsummer!, a queer adaptation of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream, which begins on Thursday for a 13-day run.
Noelle spent more than three hours preparing for the show at a venue in St Andrews Square in Edinburgh, Scotland. She arrived wearing a pillbox fascinator, a yellow shirt with a purple corset, and a matching skirt alongside eight fellow students from Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
The show is described as bursting with queer transformative joy. Her father, 64-year-old Top Gun and Rain Man star Tom Cruise, is a devout member of the Church of Scientology, a religion that is profoundly homophobic. Cruise is a known fan of Scotland who has played golf in St Andrews, but reports indicate he is unlikely to attend.
College Production and Family Distance
According to voter records, Noelle registered in Pennsylvania, where she currently lives, under her mother's middle name after legally changing her surname from Cruise. Two years after graduating from the Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts in New York City, she has pursued her parents' profession despite previous reports that she was studying fashion.
Cruise has reportedly been estranged from his daughter for years following his 2012 divorce from 47-year-old Dawson's Creek star Katie Holmes. A source close to the actor has repeatedly denied that the father and daughter are estranged.
After their six-year marriage broke down, Holmes received full custody of their daughter and raised her in New York. Cruise was granted visitation rights and paid £298,000 a year until her 18th birthday to meet living expenses.
Parental Custody and Religion
Cruise previously admitted that he had not seen his then six-year-old daughter for 110 days over the summer immediately following the breakdown of the marriage. He agreed that over a five-month period he saw Noelle for ten days total, six of which were spent on a bonding trip to Disney World.
Instead of spending time with her, he flew between Pittsburgh and London for an annual Scientology event and spent several days holidaying in Croatia with friends.
Noelle was raised as a Scientologist during her parents' marriage, but after the divorce she and her mother split from the church and turned to Catholicism. Scientology is known for discouraging members from having family relationships with people outside the religion, which is believed to be the reason behind the fractured relationship.
