According to a forthcoming article from Vanity Fair, before Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes fell head over heels in love with each other, the Church of Scientology went through an internal audition process to find Cruise a new girlfriend.
The big audition process is the crux of a forth-coming article in the October issue on the church's role in the Cruise-Holmes partnership from Vanity Fair's special correspondent Maureen Orth. Orth reports the church vetted members of the church in a top secret auditing process to try and find him a mate that was already in the church:
Scientology embarked on a top-secret project headed by Shelly Miscavige, wife of Scientology chief David Miscavige, which involved finding a girlfriend for Tom Cruise. According to several sources, the organization devised an elaborate auditioning process in which actresses who were already Scientology members were called in, told they were auditioning for a new training film, and then asked a series of curious questions including: “What do you think of Tom Cruise?” Marc Headley, a Scientologist from age seven, who says he watched a number of the audition videotapes when he was head of Scientology’s in-house studio, tells Orth, “It’s not like you only have to please your husband—you have to toe the line for Scientology.”
Nazanin Boniadi, an Iranian-born actress, was the lucky girl selected. She dated Cruise for three months between 2004 and 2005. She was put through Scientology's auditing process for "a very important mission" for an entire month, but they never said what for. Scientology officials instructed her to "lose her braces, her red highlights, and her boyfriend," before she dated Cruise. It wasn't until the church flew her to New York for a date that she started to pick up what was going on. Unfortunately, things didn't take for the arranged lovers. Boniadi and Cruise broke up in January of 2005, and Cruise made his first public appearance with eventual wife Katie Holmes the following April. Things didn't work out for them, either.
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