When Bennifer was run over, it was replaced by TomKat as the media's celebrity pet - although the Cruise-Holmes partnership has endured much public derision, writes Donald Clarke.
On Tuesday evening a mysterious binary organism known to the world's press as TomKat spawned something called Suri. The gorgeous beings that make up this entity - Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes - quickly let it be known that the name of their new daughter derives either from Hebrew or Persian. In the language of the Jew, Suri apparently means princess. In the ancient tongue of Iran it translates as red rose. Two ways of responding to this information suggest themselves. Happy, trusting folk (and Scientologists) will celebrate the couple's apparent commitment, symbolised in the naming of their first-born, to peace in the Middle East. Cynics will see the announcement as yet another piece of news management from TomKat's publicity outriders.
In a recent interview, while discussing his troubled childhood, Cruise made a telling comment about his attitude to life. "I decided that I'm going to create for myself who I am, not what other people say I should be. I'm entitled to that," he said. Those cynics might read that as an admission of the actor's inclinations towards image manipulation.
A year or so ago, the news that Cruise, then 42, had attached himself to Holmes, two inches taller and 16 years younger, was greeted with some hilarity. Of course, none of us would dare doubt the couple's commitment to one another, but the liaison, coming shortly before the release of Cruise's War of the Worlds and Holmes's Batman Returns, certainly knitted in with their professional interests quite nicely.
Tom, the target of unsupported and furiously denied accusations of homosexuality, gained a life partner. Katie, whose career had not properly ignited since her appearance on the TV show Dawson's Creek, would find her profile boosted mightily.
For suave Europeans such as ourselves, proposing to your girlfriend atop the tourist trap that is the Eiffel Tower may seem about as romantic as popping the question in Madame Tussaud's, but when it was announced that Tom had done just that the supermarket tabloids ate it up greedily. The bicephalic TomKat, though surely born out of love, might have been created from genetic blueprints drawn up by its own PR wonks.
Or so it seemed at first. For somebody so keen on managing his persona, Cruise has encountered an extraordinary slew of bad publicity recently.
Where to begin? Well, there was that astonishing appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show last May. Tom, already aware of suspicious mutterings about the relationship, chose to confirm the sincerity of his feelings for Katie by bouncing on Winfrey's sofa like a chimpanzee that's spied a peanut vendor just beyond the bars of his cage.
Then there was his run-in with Brooke Shields. Cruise, who to our knowledge has never given birth, took it upon himself to berate the actor and model for taking antidepressant medication when she was suffering from post-natal depression. Scientology, the quasi-religion founded by American science-fiction writer L Ron Hubbard in 1955, to which Tom has subscribed for close to two decades, regards psychiatry and its pharmaceuticals as inherently evil. Shields garnered a significant amount of respect for publicly standing her ground. (Ironically, she gave birth to her second child on the same day that Suri came into the world.)
Further snorting greeted the rumours that Holmes, who has herself become a Scientologist, was to follow one of her new philosophy's many eccentric dicta and give birth silently. Placards saying "Be silent and make all physical movements slow and understandable" were seen being carried into the couple's home. Cruise was forced to deny that he had had an adult pacifier manufactured for his partner.
And so on. While Tom grinned and yapped his way around the media, Katie, admittedly never a ball of fire, appeared content to remain compliant.
"Holmes wore a large diamond engagement ring. She seemed dazed, passive and vacant. She never stopped smiling," Dotson Rader, a reporter for Parade magazine, wrote in a recent interview.
Two separate polls initially seemed to offer conflicting evidence as to the public's tolerance for TomKat's shenanigans. In December last year, the readers of Empire magazine voted Tom Cruise the most irritating actor on the planet. Then, finally, came some good news. Eighty-four per cent of respondents to an internet questionnaire on Parade's website blamed the press for the bad publicity gathering around Cruise and his fiancée.
Unfortunately, it was later discovered that 14,000 votes appeared to emanate from just 10 computers and the result was declared invalid. Cruise's spokesman denied any knowledge of the poll.
THERE ARE SIGNS that Cruise has recognised the problem. He recently relieved his own sister, Lee Anne, a raving Scientologist, of the responsibility for managing his media contacts.
Yet, for all the negative hubbub, Cruise remains a massive draw. War of the Worlds took in $77 million on its opening weekend and Mission: Impossible III, which opens worldwide on May 5th, appears likely to be similarly successful.
In truth, since he first burst before us dancing in his underpants in 1983's Risky Business, the contrast between the rigid order in his professional life and the instability in his private affairs has been marked. The relationship with Holmes is the fourth serious high-profile liaison that Cruise, who comes from the most broken of broken homes, has pursued during his fame years.
From 1987 until 1990, while consolidating stardom in such pictures as Rain Man and Born on the Fourth of July, Tom was married to the actor Mimi Rogers. She introduced him to Scientology, with its guff about alien warriors scattering our prehistoric souls into volcanoes.
He then fastened himself to Nicole Kidman and the two remained together for a decade. Following their divorce, after which the usually icy Kidman was famously pictured clenching the air with joy, he and Penélope Cruz, an actor who has so far failed to make a noise in Anglophone cinema, padded around happily after one another for a while. It didn't last.
Perusing that grisly history of ultimately unhappy affiliations, Ms Holmes, who dated fellow actor Chris Klein for five years, might reasonably wonder how long the TomKat amalgam can hold together.
It is, perhaps, significant that Tom's longest relationship, that involving Kidman, quite rapidly evolved into one between two similarly successful people. Nothing frays romantic bonds in Hollywood more effectively than the knowledge that one half of a couple is selling more cinema tickets. The dissolution of Bennifer, the first celebrity fusion to attract a single-word moniker, coincided with Ben Affleck's professional decline and Jennifer Lopez's coronation as queen of whatever it is she does. By way of contrast, Brangelina, the corporate melding of Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, still looks like a coalition of equals.
IN CAREER TERMS, Holmes is still a dot in Cruise's rear-view mirror. Batman Returns did well, but her performance in a smallish role was sufficiently poorly received to earn her a Razzie nomination as worst supporting actress of 2005. Her latest film, Thank you for Smoking, has been a significant hit on the independent circuit. This is nice for her, but Mission: Impossible III will probably take as much in Akron, Ohio as Holmes's tart satire on big tobacco will take throughout the whole universe.
Worse news for the long-term future of TomKat is the unavoidable evidence that the relationship, far from gaining both partners respect, is attracting ever greater ridicule. A recent instalment of South Park, Comedy Central's satirical cartoon series, hilariously trashed both Cruise and his religion. The episode, which appears to have been banished to the internet by the network, a corporate relative of the studio behind Mission: Impossible, sees Cruise hiding stubbornly in a cupboard, thus allowing the folk of South Park to repeatedly bellow: "Tom Cruise won't come out of the closet." The cartoon Cruise, who clearly is aware of the United Kingdom's unforgiving libel laws, eventually loses his patience. "I'll sue you in England," he shouts.
Let's say it again: Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes are very much in love.
What is it? Ubiquitous celebrity amalgam formed by the romantic intermeshing of differently sized actors Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes.
Why is it in the news? Last week it reproduced. The composite's first-born, a girl, has been saddled with the name Suri. Mission: Impossible III, starring those bits of TomKat that look like Cruise, opens on May 5th.
Most appealing characteristic: Addiction to the sort of social infelicity and personal vulgarity - Cruise purchased his own ultrasound scanner to view the developing TomKat foetus - that permit ordinary people to regard themselves as its moral superiors.
Least appealing characteristic: Faintly jarring, almost nauseating combination of broad-grinned perkiness (Tom) and sleepy inhibition (Kat).
Most likely to say: "I love her. Love her. Love her. Love her" (Tom, while bouncing). Nothing (Kat).
Least likely to say: "We will be retiring from public life now. Please direct your cameras elsewhere."
The Tom KatFile