Scarlett Johansson denies ex-Scientologist's claim she 'auditioned' to be Tom Cruise's girlfriend
Reportedly, Scarlett Johansson is fighting back against the claim that she had auditioned to date Tom Cruise following his split up with Nicole Kidman. According to Hollywood Reporter, she said, "The very idea of any person auditioning to be in a relationship is so demeaning. I refuse for anyone to spread the idea that I lack the integrity to choose my own relationships. Only a man aka Brendan Tighe would come up with a crazy story like that." In a report, Vanity Fair had informed that earlier in 2004 Scientology had embarked on a top-secret project to find a girlfriend for Tom Cruise. The article states that the organization had devised an elaborate auditioning process in which actresses who were Scientology members were called in for the audition.
Ex-Scientologist Brendan Tighe in an interview on 'Megyn Kelly Today' revealed the inner workings of the Church of Scientology and spilled out some of the secrets about one of the church's most well-known faces - Tom Cruise. Tighe worked as a security guard at the church, before he quit his position about six years ago, during which time he has also served as the guard of Tom Cruise. Tighe revealed that while serving as a member of the church, and Tom Cruise's Scientology security unit, he came across reports of women who wanted to audition to be in a relationship with him (or as his second dimension in Scientology terms) immediately after he split with Nicole Kidman.
He mentioned that he came across the names of two famous Hollywood personalities in the list- Scarlett Johansson and Erika Christensen - after the reports were accidentally sent to his printer. In the conversation, Tighe said, "Purely by accident, a bunch of reports kept coming to my printer by mistake. Tommy Davis, who was previously Tom Cruise's personal handler he would get interviews to make sure he would get stay on the level of, you know, hailing Tom Cruise properly and anything that he would say would be written down as reports. A lot of it was about those interviews." He further mentioned, "It [the report] just simply said that it didn't go well and that another actress, Erika Christensen [who was friends with Johansson], had to disconnect from Scarlett Johansson because that didn't go well."
According to Huffington Post, among the famous actresses (apart from Scarlett), Lindsay Lohan too had appeared for the audition. The article quotes a source saying, "Lindsay met with Tom before he met Katie...At first, she was super excited to work with Tom and thought it was about a role in 'Mission Impossible.' It soon became clear that he wasn’t looking for an actress but something very different.”
The former Scientologist also opened up about the ill-treatment he had received at the church after he was caught kissing a girl when he was 16-year-old. The church had to say that Tighe's access to celebrities was limited to viewing security cameras from his booth, the position from which he was removed for dereliction of duty.
Tighe's mentions of auditions, however, does ring a bell, since we have heard the rumors of there being auditions held being held in order that Scientology find Cruise a wife. A report in The Independent had quoted journalist Tony Ortega interviewing Anette Iren Johansen, a Norweigan woman who claimed that she had auditioned for Scientology and that the audition took place in Copenhagen in 2005. She is a former Scientologist and had ceased taking Scientology classes in 2010 and has started blogging about her experiences, including what she describes as “terrible abuses committed within the Church”.
She claims she was invited for an audition by the Church in January 2005, however, there was no script. Instead, she said: “They asked me so many questions about my life, my family background, everything I’d ever done in Scientology." She was made to sign a waiver promising not to divulge details of the audition. Later she received a call with a man asking her a string of questions about her private life and if she had any sexual perversions. Ortega, writes in his article that Johansen was one of the several woman auditioned by the Church between the years 2004-2005 for the role of Tom Cruise's wife.