Katie Holmes Blindsided Tom Cruise with Their Divorce

Who: Three-time Oscar nominee Tom Cruise, 56, and Dawson’s Creek alum and modern fashion icon Katie Holmes, 39.

How They Met: Well, it’s complicated — like really, really complicated. As the story goes, after Cruise divorced Nicole Kidman and subsequently split from girlfriend Penelope Cruz, the actor’s beloved Church of Scientology set out to find him a worthy (and malleable) wife. After reportedly courting (and ultimately scaring off) famous women like Sofía Vergara and Scarlett Johansson, the task proved more difficult than expected. Eventually church officials’ prayers were answered in the form of a Seventeen magazine article. In 2004, Katie (then engaged to Chris Klein) told the teen ‘zine, “I used to think that I was going to marry Tom Cruise.” Six months later, Klein and Holmes announced their breakup, and just one month after that, Tom and Katie (aka TomKat) made their red carpet debut in Rome. Coincidence? We may never truly know.

Why We Loved Them: SO. MUCH. ENTHUSIASM. HAS ANYONE EVER BEEN MORE IN LOVE THAN COUCH-JUMPING TOM CRUISE AND KATIE HOLMES? NO! NEVER!

When They Peaked: When they created Miss Suri, the inspiration for one of our favorite pop culture artifacts of all time: Suri’s Burn Book.

The Breakup: According to Cruise himself, the actor “didn’t expect” Holmes’s summer 2012 divorce filing. Though he was blindsided by Katie’s decision, the legal proceedings ran smoothly and a settlement was reached in just 11 days.

Tom and Katie have rarely spoken on the record in regard to their split, but it’s rumored that Holmes’s motivation was to free her daughter from the unique constraints of Scientology. Cruise admitted as much in his deposition against Bauer Media (whose tabloids claimed he’d abandoned Suri). When asked if Holmes left him “in part to protect Suri from Scientology,” Cruise was insulted and said “there is no need to protect my daughter from my religion.” But when prodded again, specifically as to whether Katie had mentioned that she was leaving in an effort to protect Suri from Scientology, Cruise responded, “Did she say that? That was one of the assertions, yes.”

Holmes was granted primary custody of Suri in their divorce, and though Tom was afforded ample visitation, it’s been widely reported that he rarely sees his daughter. In 2016, InTouch Weekly asserted that the actor hadn’t seen or spoken to his youngest child in more than 1,000 days (over two-and-a-half years).

Where They Are Now: It’s rumored that Katie and Tom’s divorce settlement stipulated that she was not allowed to publicly date for five years after their split, which would account for Holmes’s incredibly private (though increasingly public, in the past year) relationship with actor and rapper Jamie Foxx. Since Katie and Tom’s filing passed the five-year mark in July 2017, she and Foxx have been decidedly less cagy about their romance, and were even photographed at the same table during a public event last winter.

Holmes has several projects in the works, including a film opposite Patrick Stewart.

Though several rumors have abounded in regard to Tom’s post-Katie dating life, nothing has been confirmed. Cruise was recently linked to his Mission Impossible — Fallout co-star Vanessa Kirby, but the Crown alum has vehemently denied any truth to the tabloid reports. In June she confirmed that she was still dating longtime boyfriend Callum Turner.

The action star is currently working on the modern sequel to his 1986 classic Top Gun.